The Murdochs, the riots … and a high-risk libel suit against a tiny rival
Rupert Murdoch, so the aphorism goes, doesn’t sue. But his eldest son, it appears, is cut from different cloth.
Lachlan Murdoch is headed to Sydney’s federal court, launching a defamation action last week over a news article, not involving his considerable Australian media empire, but instead Fox News’s reporting of the febrile denouement to the Trump presidency and the January 6 insurrectionist storming of the US Capitol.
In what is being portrayed as a David and Goliath clash between the billionaire and Crikey, a small Australian independent news website, Murdoch’s 40-page statement of claim alleges Crikey has falsely impugned he had illegally conspired with the former US president Donald Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent” to march on the US Capitol on 6 January, and that he should be indicted as a traitor.
Murdoch, the chief executive and executive chairman of Fox Corporation in the US, is already involved in a monumental $1.6bn defamation lawsuit in the US – on the other side of the bar table – defending allegations by Dominion Voting Systems that Fox News pushed false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election in relation to Dominion’s voting machines.
But the Australian suit has opened up the possibility that Fox’s reporting of the Trump presidency and its aftermath, and the corporation’s
