Media outlets lose defamation appeal over liability for readers’ Facebook comments
The Court of Appeal has stood by a contentious Supreme Court decision that media outlets are ‘publishers’ of reader comments on Facebook, and are therefore liable to be sued if those comments are defamatory.
The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Sky News were appealing the landmark ruling made last June by Justice Stephen Rothman in a defamation case brought against the publications by former Don Dale youth detainee Dylan Voller. But this morning, New South Wales’ highest court dismissed the appeal, and ordered the publications to pay for Voller’s legal costs.
The significance of Justice Rothman’s decision last year led to Seven West Media, Daily Mail Australia and Bauer Media – which were not part of the case – to also attempt to intervene in the appeal to have the decision overturned on a different legal basis. The Court of Appeal rejected that motion because the issue the three publishers’ raised was not part of the original proceedings.
Take them off.
The comments on most sites don’t do anything except embarrass the publication by showing how selfish, vacuous and/or hateful its readers are.
Except, of course, Mumbrella were the “robust” comments from anonymous ******* like me really add value to the already extremely valuable pages.
Best I keep my comments and opinion to myself… wouldn’t want anyone being sued over my opinion
… as long the people who call themselves journalists who work for media outlets such as the ABC, The Guardian and The New Daily continue to routinely block, delete or hide posts that they do not agree with, no court is going to believe that this cannot be done in a more controlled manner to avoid the sorts of problems raised in this case …
Clearly an out of touch judge with no idea how social media works. It’s like suing a newspaper of someone hand placed flyers with defamatory comments inside magazines or newspapers. Media organisations can’t control the comments that are writting on articles – that’s a limitation of Facebook.