Fairfax ordered to pay $350,000 to teacher wrongly identified as having sex with students
Fairfax has been ordered to pay a female Catholic school teacher $350,000 in damages after a story in the Sydney Morning Herald in January wrongly identified her as having had sex with male students.
Although Melinda Pedavoli, who works at Aloysius College on Sydney’s north shore, was not named in the story, information including her age and subjects she taught led to her being wrongly identified.
However, the article got some of the details about the teacher who was the subject of the allegations wrong, including her age, meaning she did not fit the description.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that NSW Supreme Court Justice Lucy McCallum said Pedavoli had been “grossly defamed” and her reputation “greatly damaged” by the story, which ran in January.
“She is entitled to a large award of damages and to have the court declare to all the world the falsity of that which has been imputed to her by the newspaper,” she said.
In its defence, Fairfax said it had offered to publish an apology and give Pedavoli $50,000 after becoming aware of the blunder, an offer she refused. In court, Fairfax used a defence under the Defamation Act called failure to accept an offer to make amends.
Justice McCallum rejected the argument, saying it was not unreasonable that the teacher refused the offer.
A Fairfax Media spokesperson said: “Considering all of the circumstances this is a very disappointing result. We have yet to make a decision regarding appeal.”
St Aloysius is in MIlson’s Point, right next to the bridge so it’s the north shore rather than the Northern Beaches.
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And to think that Fairfax are hanging their hat on the quality and accuracy of their stories in their current marketing campaign…..
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What a disgrace from Fairfax. And they are yet to make a decision whether to appeal, they’ve got to be joking.
Imagine the fallout if it was a man instead of a woman? A male could have been lynched.
These kind of “mistakes” can ruin peoples lives.
Suck it up fairfax, that’s what you get for sacking all your sub editors.
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On a point of pedantry, it’s St Aloysius’ College and it’s on Sydney’s North Shore, not northern beaches. Sorry to be picky but I used to be an SMH sub – and my boys went to the school.
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Outsourcing subs is cheap, eh?
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Scrap the marketing campaign, I’ll say.
It’s about time they get some fresh blood in to run Fairfax publishing business.
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Fairfax cannot be believed on so many levels.
That it would even think about an appeal epitomises the moral/ethical bankruptcy that pervades this once honourable newspaper.
It’s anti-Catholic left-wing bias is clear for all to see.
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Its.
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this is what Fairfax can expect when their senior management drives around town in Mesarattis autocratically sacking the major line of defence in the mistaken belief their journalists get it right the first time … (HAH!!) And I’m very qualified to say this!
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Dear Baffledsubeditor at Nº9:
“Mesarattis”?
Oh, the baffling irony.
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Says Ken at Nº3: “Suck it up fairfax, that’s what you get for sacking all your sub editors.”
Update, just for the record: I gather that the job of subbing Fairfax’s written output is no longer given to the Brisbane-based AAP-owned rent-a-sub outfit known as Pagemasters.
Anyway, if we’re talking about subediting then we should trust that even any of Fairfax’s so-so subs in Australia or New Zealand would ensure that the published words were “Fairfax” rather than “fairfax” and either “subeditor” or “sub-editor” rather than “sub editor”.
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This isn’t the first time that has happened this year. Fairfax did the same to that Melbourne student incorrectly accused of terrorism. The journalists appear to do very little fact-checking before publishing a story.
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From the intro – ‘a female Catholic teacher”. What has the teacher’s religion got to do with this or did you mean a female Catholic school teacher?
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Hi Fran,
Indeed the word school was omitted – added in now.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella