Nine wins and Ben Roberts-Smith loses in defamation finale
Ben Roberts-Smith has lost an appeal against a 2023 defamation ruling, with the full bench of the federal court again finding he was not defamed by Nine newspapers, who reported the soldier had committed war crimes while in Afghanistan.
This brings to an era a seven-year saga, sparked by 2018 reports from Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters in Nine newspapers that alleged that Roberts-Smith murdered four civilians while deployed in Afghanistan.
Roberts-Smith sued the media company for defamation, with his case funded by Seven chairman Kerry Stokes.
Ben Roberts-Smith
Roberts-Smith was one of the country’s most celebrated war heroes, being awarded the Victoria Cross in 2011. He was appointed general manager of Seven Queensland in 2015, but stepped away in 2021 to focus on his defamation suit.
He resigned from the network in 2023, after Justice Anthony Besanko ruled Roberts Smith had, on the balance of probabilities, committed war crimes.
On Friday morning, the federal court found the published claims by McKenzie and Masters were substantially true.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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