Dr Lisa Pryor’s defamation suit against Mark Latham and Fairfax has been “settled to my satisfaction at a mediation,” the writer and doctor announced on Twitter this morning, bringing an end to the year-long legal dispute.

Today, which incidentally is International Women’s Day, the Fin apologised for Latham’s column on page 2 …

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Latham had used his AFR column of November 2014 to attack an article Pryor had written in Good Weekend a few days earlier about her use of caffeine and anti-depressants to get through studying medicine full time while raising two small children. Pryor’s column stated the reason for her admission was to “makes others feel safe to do the same”. “I’d like to hope this helps build the kinds of connections that protect against psychological trouble in the first place.”

Then-AFR columnist Latham seized on Pryor’s admission as an example of all that was wrong with modern feminists. The former Labor leader wrote:

“Why do people like this have children in the first place? How will the children feel when they grow up and learn that they pushed their mother onto anti-depressants? … Inner-city feminists, more often than not, they don’t like children and don’t want to be with them. They use political feminism as a release valve, trying to free themselves from nature’s way”.

Pryor sued her own publisher and former employer for defamation, garnering the public support of several other Fairfax columnists and writers, but AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury stood firm behind his own columnist.

A petition was started by Fairfax columnist (and journalism academic) Jenna Price calling on Stutchbury to “force Latham to apologise” and remove his column from the website (Latham’s article wasn’t online this morning). Pryor, who contended the article defamed her by implying she didn’t love her children, sought an apology from the paper, but Stutchbury told her he had no plans to apologise.

When Latham eventually quit after being linked to a Twitter account that had been sending abusive tweets to then-Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, an unbylined article in the Fin made reference to feminist criticisms of Latham, and paraphrased Stutchbury’s thoughts on the issue:

“Some feminist websites and activists have campaigned against Mr Latham’s columns, including by complaining to Westpac, which presents the successful Women of Influence awards with the Financial Review.

“Mr Stutchbury said he appreciated the nature of the complaints about Mr Latham’s columns and accepted there was always a line that responsible publications must not cross.

“But he defended the Financial Review‘s right and even duty to publish provocative opinions that some readers and non-readers might find offensive, as this was a hallmark of a vibrant democracy. The various controversies surrounding Mr Latham raised important issues about the robustness of public speech in a social media world, he said.”

A preliminary ruling in the case was issued in the NSW Supreme Court last May. The case was to go before a jury in April this year.

Both Pryor and Stutchbury declined to comment further this morning. But Price told Crikey Fairfax’s reluctance to issue an apology until now put her in mind of how Fairfax dragged its heels over taking action on the Paul Sheehan controversy last month (he was “stood down” from his column on Friday, after SMH editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir conducted a review).

“I think it’s really interesting when mainstream media tries to pretend that it can behave the way it used to behave, which means not to respond to the way readers are reacting,” Price said. “You saw this not just with Latham — though this took longer than I thought it would — and you also saw it with Paul Sheehan.”

As to whether writing like Latham’s contributes to a “vibrant democracy”, as Stutchbury was paraphrased saying in the Fin, Price said Australians were entitled to strongly worded arguments but only if they were based in evidence. “Neither Latham nor Sheehan’s [arguments] were based in evidence,” she said.

Commenting on the Pryor case, Price said she hoped the columnist got more than an apology out of Fairfax, “because she deserves it”. “And I wish Rosie Batty was suing too.” Latham has criticised Batty’s response to her son’s murder in a column.