Hockey’s defamation suit shows need for wider free speech debate
With Treasurer Joe Hockey suing Fairfax over an article with a provocative headline David Rolph of the University of Sydney asks if Australia should toughen up its laws around freedom of speech in a piece first published on The Conversation.
Treasurer Joe Hockey’s decision to sue Fairfax Media for defamation over the now-notorious front-page story “Treasurer for sale” raises interesting questions about politicians suing to protect their reputation, allied with the protection of freedom of speech in Australia.
Rolph
Hockey claims the newspapers in question – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times – alleged that he accepted, or was prepared to accept, bribes; that he corruptly solicited payments in order to influence his decision; and that he corruptly sold privileged access to businesspeople and lobbyists in return for donations to the Liberal Party.
Total overkill. Hockey has every right to sue. And the courts have every right to find that he’s a public figure and so on. Get a grip. The real case to worry about is when Obeid et al can use the courts to prevent good reporters revealing what the public really needs to know. This, the “digirati” need to know, is the reason we worry about losing strong independent news organisations. They can afford it.
Did Gillard sue the Tele? Or 2GB? Surely there would have been a case against either. (Not that you can regard either as producers of journalism…)
One sometimes suspects that universities were created so folks like Rolf have quiet corners to strop away to their hearts’ content without alarming small children and horses. It is a pity to see his effusions staining Mumbrella’s pages. A headline alone cannot be defamatory? Sheesh, where does academia find these dills?
As any reasonably competent sub could tell you — and accepting, of course, that Fairfax has laid off all its decent subs in order to cover G. Heywood’s $50K-per-week salary — headlines alone can be extraordinarily defamatory.
With a view to the Hockey headline at issue, consider a hypothetical example: “Law Professor For Sale”. If the story below happens to be about Rolf, those four words level the charge of corruption and do so quite explicitly. The fact that the story might not support the headline, as was the case with the Hockey yarn, would mitigate damages not at all; indeed, that discordance would boost the potential payout, as the misleading headline would pretty much establish a reckless negligence in placing four such loaded words atop a story that says no such thing. A chief sub, a competent one, would have spiked that headline the instant he or she saw it. But as we know, competence has long been exiled from Fairfax newsrooms, its subs’ tables and backbenches most of all.
As to Rolf’s assertion that Hockey would not have a chance of succeeding under US law, well that’s another load of tosh! The Sullivan reference is irrelevant in this case, as malice remains both grounds for bringing suit and adverse judgment against the defendant. Honest mistakes you get away with in the US. But deliberately slanted headlines at variance with the facts presented? Sorry, no such luck. Ask the supermarket tabloids — the National Enquirer and Star about that. Each has been sued (and obliged to cough up) for inaccurate stories about celebrities — stories juries have concluded were maliciously concoted to boost sales at the expense of truth and plaintiffs’ reputations.
Was Fairfax exhibiting malice in describing Hockey thus? Well, that’s for the courts to decide, but Hockey’s lawyers will no doubt point to the antipathy toward Abbott & Co. which the SMH and Age demonstrate on a daily basis. You can just imagine Hockey’s lawyer reminding the court:
“M’lud, let it be noted that, within days of the Coalition’s victory on the 7th of September, 2013, Fairfax papers and websites were promoting an entrepreneurial columnist’s new range of T-shirts bearing the words ‘F**k Abbott.’
“Are we to assume that, having bared its partisanship in one instance, Fairfax was quite suddenly overcome by a fit of journalistic rectitude in covering other aspects of this government and its ministers’ present and past activities?”
One last question for Rolf: Were you part of the legal team providing advice to Craig Thomson is his foot-shooting libel action against the SMH?”
Roger your comments lost all credibility with me as soon as I noticed you were talking through an anti-Faifax / Fairfax is biased filter. I’ll stick with the academic