Business of Media
Ben Roberts-Smith spotted post defamation trial, breaks silence for the first time
Ben Roberts-Smith has broken his silence for the first time since losing his major defamation case, reports News Corp’s Eli Green.
Australia’s most decorated living soldier was first spotted in Queenstown Airport in New Zealand boarding a flight to Australia on Wednesday before touching down in Perth.
The sighting came 10 days after Roberts-Smith lost his defamation action against The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times.
He spoke about the judgment for the first time, saying he was “devastated” with the result.
“It’s a terrible outcome. It’s the incorrect outcome,” he told Nine News.
“We haven’t done anything wrong so we won’t be making any apologies.”
Roberts-Smith said he was “proud” of how he acted when serving for Australia, while a member of the public thanked him for his service.
The 44-year-old said he would be looking to consider whether to file an appeal against the decision.
See Also: Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial: Judge hands down his verdict
Bret Walker looking at Roberts-Smith appeal
Australia’s legal and journalistic fraternity eagerly awaits news of any possible appeal from Ben Roberts-Smith, which must be filed to the Federal Court in the next 29 days (or not at all), report Nine Publishing’s Myriam Robin and Mark Di Stefano.
Having been damned by a civil judge, Roberts-Smith has everything to gain from trying to overturn the ruling. But legal appeals are neither free nor simple.
Billionaire and military enthusiast Kerry Stokes, who funded BRS’ case and still attests to his good character, has yet to publicly commit to funding another attempt to clear the soldier’s name.
For now, BRS seems to have peeled himself off the Balinese pool deck, and has leading Australian silk Bret Walker SC quietly examining what grounds exist for an appeal.
Contacted on Tuesday, Walker was unable to confirm his involvement, while representatives of Stokes (and BRS’ existing legal team) declined to comment. But Walker’s preliminary involvement with the case is widely remarked upon within Sydney legal circles.
How Brittany Higgins’ leaked texts opened yet another sorry chapter
More than two years after Brittany Higgins turned her phone over to ACT police as part of a criminal investigation into her alleged rape, tranches of her private messages have been leaked to select media outlets, opening another sorry chapter in a saga that has already been so damaging to many of those swept into it, reports Nine Publishing’s Lisa Visentin.
The leakers themselves may never be unmasked, but the origin of their material – an alleged victim’s phone records made public without her consent – has provoked a debate about the ethics of reporting the contents and the damage caused to the justice system, even as it ensnared a minister in allegations of misleading the parliament and relaunched a political brawl over who knew what and when.
What is evident, however, is that personal and political machinations are afoot. The leaks and the reporting of them have attempted to reframe the rape allegation against Bruce Lehrmann as a political conspiracy, settle scores in the media and wound a minister.
As the leaks dominated question time in both houses this week, the Coalition trod a precarious line as it pursued Labor over its prior knowledge of the rape allegation, raising questions that demanded answers in the public interest while politically profiting from media reports of an alleged victim’s private text messages in the process.
The blowtorch could ultimately land on the media as the government weighs changes to the Privacy Act.
Reddit moderators vow to continue blackout in API access fees row
Reddit’s battle with its own users over new access fees will continue beyond the planned two-day protest, as hundreds of volunteer moderators declared their intention to maintain a blackout indefinitely, reports The Guardian’s Alex Hern.
The social network, which intends to begin levying swingeing data charges against developers of third-party tools used to browse the site, says it has no intention of backing down from its plans in the wake of the campaign.
The new fees, payable by any service that uses the site’s tools, or API, to access information, are in part intended to allow the company to monetise its popularity among artificial intelligence researchers, who use the database to train in tools such as GPT-4.
“We’re not planning any changes to the API updates we’ve previously announced,” a Reddit spokesperson told the Guardian. “We’re in contact with a number of communities to clarify any confusion around our data API terms, platform-wide policies, community support resources, and timing for new moderator tools.”
“Expansive access to data has impact and costs involved; we spend multimillions of dollars on hosting fees and Reddit needs to be fairly paid to continue supporting high-usage third-party apps,” the spokesperson added.
See Also: Reddit Blackout: Popular subs to go offline to protest monetisation of third-party apps
News Brands
ABC job cuts: corporation to make as many as 100 roles redundant amid major restructure
The ABC is expected to announce as many as 100 job cuts on Thursday, before a major restructure of the corporation kicking in on 1 July, reports The Guardian’s Amanda Meade.
Guardian Australia understands some ABC staff have been notified of meetings with management and the managing director, David Anderson, will be making an announcement about job cuts before the end of the financial year.
The ABC is diverting resources away from traditional broadcasting towards improving its digital platforms – ABC iview, ABC Listen and ABC News – and promoting their use as part of its five-year plan, released on Friday.
The ABC declined to comment.
Murdoch and conservative rivals circle Spectator and Telegraph
The sudden prospect of an auction for The Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine — two of Britain’s most influential conservative titles — has sparked interest throughout the country’s media and financial elite, report Bloomberg’s Thomas Seal, Sabah Meddings and Alex Wickham.
Earlier this month, a unit of Lloyds Banking Group appointed receivers to seize the holding company for both publications and removed the Barclay family’s directors, after talks over long-running debts faltered. Brothers Frederick and David Barclay bought The Telegraph and The Spectator magazine together in 2004, in a deal worth $US1.3 billion ($1.9 billion) at the time. David Barclay died two years ago.
Both titles are famous institutions intertwined with the upper echelons of the ruling Conservative Party. The Spectator is the world’s oldest weekly magazine still in print, founded 195 years ago, while The Daily Telegraph dates to 1855 and claims the scoop for the outbreak of World War II.
Media mogul and News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has coveted The Spectator for decades, and bid as recently as two years ago, at a value of around £50 million ($93 million), according to two people familiar with the matter. Murdoch is in London next week for senior management meetings at News UK, according to people familiar with his schedule.
It would be trickier for Murdoch to acquire the much larger Telegraph Media Group, which overlaps in the premium segment of the conservative press with his British papers — The Times and Sunday Times, which he owns along with The Sun tabloid. Any deal would almost certainly face fierce political opposition and an in-depth antitrust challenge.
Television
End of an era as Foxtel nears cable switch-off
The end is nigh for the Foxtel cable network as the Subscription TV provider nears completion of migrating customers to its iQ4 or iQ5, using home broadband, reports TV Tonight.
Cable delivery has been shut down progressively in neighbourhoods across Australia, although will not be completed by the target of 30 June 2023.
That will leave Foxtel technicians to work with a relatively small number of customers beyond that date to progressively migrate them across to set-top boxes which do not require cable or satellite.
When it finally switches off it will end a delivery service which dates back to the late 1990s. That includes technology for iQ (2005), iQ (2008), iQ3 (2015) and which variously introduced recording and HD capacity.
While iQ4/ iQ5 still allow for recording, Streaming is the new era whether via Foxtel On Demand, Binge, or Kayo.