Crikey

Breaking news out of Australia:

Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch has dropped his defamation case against the Australian publisher of news outlet Crikey and several of its editors and executives.

Friday’s move came [after] Fox News and Dominion Voting reached a last-minute settlement in a billion-dollar defamation case in a US court on Wednesday, in the final minutes before a trial was due to begin.

Mr Murdoch launched legal action against Crikey publisher Private Media in the Federal Court in August, claiming it defamed him in referring to his family as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the US Capitol riots.

The action related to a June 29 opinion piece that was taken down and then posted back online on August 15.

Mr Murdoch alleged the article – titled “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator” – conveyed a meaning that he illegally conspired with former US president Donald Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol” in Washington DC on January 6.

In its defence, Crikey said Mr Murdoch was “morally and ethically culpable” for the attack on the US Capitol.

To put it very very very mildly. Murdoch has poisoned this country.

Mr Beecher and Mr Hayward released a joint statement on Friday, welcoming the move.

“We stand by what we published last June, and everything we laid out in our defence to the court. The imputations drawn by Murdoch from that article were ridiculous,” they said.

“The fact is, Murdoch sued us, and then dropped his case.”

They described the decision as “a victory for free speech”.

“We are proud of our stand. We are proud to have exposed the hypocrisy and abuse of power of a media billionaire,” the statement said.

“This is a victory for free speech. We won.”

Murdoch lost.

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