Protesters outside The Age building in Melbourne (Image: Free Palestine Melbourne/Twitter)
Protesters outside The Age building in Melbourne (Image: Free Palestine Melbourne/Twitter)

This week’s Media Briefs brings you a protest outside The Age’s Bourke St building, a big win for press freedom, and an insight into what it’s like to actually win a defamation trial.

The Age building blocked by protesters

A protest group called No More Bodies in Gaza conducted a silent “die-in” outside the front of The Age‘s newsroom in Melbourne on Wednesday, criticising the Australian media’s “censorship, bias, and conflicts of interests” in reporting on the war in Gaza. 

Around 60 protesters blocked the entrance to the Nine building on Bourke St until they were told to move on by police.

Speaking to Media Briefs, spokesperson Linda (who asked us not to use her last name out of fear for her family’s safety) said the Nine building was chosen owing to the policy enacted by its mastheads that journalists who signed a recent open letter calling for objectivity on reporting in Gaza were banned from covering the conflict. 

Linda, a nurse, told Media Briefs that while the organisers of the protests weren’t journalists, and were “just normal people”, she found the media coverage of the conflict condescending, referencing News Corp’s Samantha Maiden’s interview on ABC Radio National earlier in the week in which Maiden said she wasn’t convinced “mummy bloggers” could have found Palestine on a map before October 7.

“Regular people have been fully informed from Palestinian journalists coming out of Gaza, via social media,” Linda said. “The punter is seeing that live stream, the punter is seeing fathers pull their dead children out of rubble and then standing up to report on it at the same time.” 

The Age editor Patrick Elligett did not respond to a request for comment. A memo sent to staff last Friday said the 717 Bourke St building had been vandalised with red paint and a note, and asked staff to work from home on the Monday due to fears of “potential activist activity”.

The protest came as Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera said this week it intended to refer the death of journalist Samer Abudaqa to the International Criminal Court, calling it an “assassination by Israeli occupation forces”. Abudaqa was killed in a drone strike in the southern Gaza Strip while reporting on the bombing of a school. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 68 journalists and media workers have been confirmed dead as of December 19.

Defamation battle comes to an end

The defamation battle between The Chaser’s Julian Morrow and former business partner Nick Murray came to an end this week after more than four years in the courts. Morrow was denied leave to appeal to the High Court over a dispute stemming from the decommissioning of consumer affairs show The Checkout, produced by Murray’s production company CJZ. At the same time, Morrow was pitching a similar show to the ABC behind Murray’s back.

Morrow would then sue for defamation over a variety of furious emails sent by Murray to ABC management, including one that described him as “Lord Voldemort”. 

Speaking to Media Briefs, Murray said the marathon case “felt like being sued by Gina Rinehart”. 

“There were a million interlocutory hearings beforehand, and they kept running these highly technical arguments, and they kept winning them. It was like [the Rinehart case] in that it was relentless, and seemingly without merit,” he said.

“It’s a stupid cause of action, and it’s a stupid jurisdiction.” 

Murray’s CJZ was sued by the mining magnate in 2016 over her portrayal in the CJZ/Nine miniseries House of Hancock, with lawyers for Rinehart at a point seeking to use the case as a test case to establish a privacy tort in Australia. 

Morrow was represented by eminent barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC, who is currently also appearing for Lisa Wilkinson in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against her and the Ten Network.

Murray described the experience of being put under cross-examination by Chrysanthou as “bizarre”. 

“She’s really, really aggressive — she’s shouting at me for answering the questions … [but] as you’re waiting for the hearing to start, she’s chatting to you about beekeeping and stuff.”

Morrow did not respond to a request for comment.  

On the other court

The courts have been busy this week, with the Nine papers scoring a significant victory in their defamation battle against Dr Munjed Al Muderis. 

Al Muderis is suing the Nine Network over a series of stories published in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes in 2022, which he claims defamed him as a negligent surgeon who pressured his patients. 

He sought to have the identities of sources relied on by Age reporter Charlotte Grieve revealed — sources that included “high-profile surgeons” who alleged Al Muderis had an aggressive approach to surgery. One claimed Al Muderis operated on a homeless and psychotic patient who was found 72 hours post-op walking around a train station on an infected stump. 

However, Justice Robert Bromwich found that the public interest in protecting Grieve’s sources outweighed the public interest in disclosure. 

Elsewhere, Justice Michael Lee, presiding over the Lehrmann defamation trial against the Ten Network and Lisa Wilkinson, said “disgraceful” things had been published on social media about the trial, as well as its key players. Lee said he intended to issue contempt orders for those publishing such material online. 

“I made it clear that I wouldn’t tolerate abuse of witnesses for the purposes of giving evidence, and I said that the law of contempt is an appropriate remedial response in the event that there has been,” he said.

“I regret to say when it comes to all the principal witnesses being Mr Lehrmann, Ms Higgins and Ms Brown, some of the things that have been published on any view of it are disgraceful. And I do propose at the end of this process to consider — and also threats against the court I might say — to prepare a schedule of the persons to whom orders will be served.”

Moves 

  • Patricia Karvelas will return as anchor of Q+A in 2024.
  • Nine managing director James Chessell leaves the company to go into the corporate world, with The Australian reporting he will join consulting firm Bespoke Approach, working with Nine in an external capacity in 2024.  

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