From Man Bites Murdoch (Bruce Guthrie, 2010)
pp 324-5
Harsh judgements
No-one can say News Limited wasn’t warned. In addition to his entreaty to parties at the conclusion of the fourth day of the trial that they work towards settlement, Justice Kaye had another go at the end of the sixth and final day, saying: ‘I only repeat to the parties the very wise words I imparted to them last Friday.’
Despite the clear messages the judge was sending, News never budged. My legal team had made themselves available over the weekend separating the fourth and fifth days of the trial, anticipating an approach from the other side It never came. I later learned Blunden had been telling anyone who cared to listen at television’s Logie awards, held in Melbourne at Crown Casino on the Sunday night, that he believed News had right on their side and would win the case. Clearly Justice Kaye’s words had been wasted.
This was despite it being obvious to most observers that Blunden certainly and Hartigan probably were going to suffer if the matter went to judgement. So why wouldn’t they settle? They may have genuinely believed the judge’s words were directed at us or they may simply have been in denial. But more likely it’s because News believed they could act inside the court as they routinely do outside it – with arrogance, aggression, hubris.
Besides, they dominated the court of public opinion and could manipulate it pretty much any way they wanted. I had learned this to my cost over the first four days of the trial: the Murdoch press
selectively presented what actually happened in court. If the judge did make adverse findings against senior News executives, their papers could simply ignore them, leaving such trifling matters to the Fairfax press or the ABC.
Certainly no News Limited readers were made aware of justice Kaye’s comments on the Friday evening. By then the representatives of the mainstream media had left for the day, meaning they had missed one of the most dramatic moments of the entire case. In another journalistic era it would have been an unforgivable sin, drawing punishment by an enraged news editor or chief of staff.
Only blogger Stephen Mayne reported it in real time (The Sunday Age reported it two days later), posting his account within hours of the court rising at 4.15 pm. on Friday. It was a very real comment on the changing nature of mainstream media. Mayne wrote:
Herald & Weekly Times managing director Peter Blunden spent all of Friday in the box and at the end of it justice Stephen Kaye sent his legal team a very strong message to settle, warning that there was [sic] substantial contested facts and he would be making judgments on people’s credit which could have implications well beyond the court.
Mayne predicted ‘the parties will heed the judge’s advice and reach a confidential settlement over the weekend’, adding: ‘News will pick up Guthrie’s legals and give him a useful six figure sum to make the whole messy saga go away.’
But against all expectations, they did not do that.
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p 337
If I needed any further evidence of how toothless some newspaper journalism had become, I needed only to look at The Australian’s reporting of justice Kaye’s judgement. The national broadsheet failed to mention the judge’s damning findings against Hartigan and Blunden. If, say, executives at the same level in BHP Billiton or Fairfax had been similarly denounced by a Supreme Court judge, their credit and honesty called into serious question, it would have almost certainly led The Australian’s business section and, quite possibly, the paper itself. But it didn’t rate a mention in Rupert’s flagship. The eight-paragraph story the paper carried on page seven did manage to squeeze in the company’s denunciation of the judgement and their completely false claim that the damages were in line with their settlement offer a year before. It wasn’t journalism: it was corporate spin. The Herald Sun’s story on page 12 was similarly slanted against me.
The company’s reporting of the judgement – selectively, even barely honest and lacking transparency – was in keeping with its management style or, at least, my experience of it. Interestingly, two months after it was handed down, the former chairman of the Melbourne Storm rugby league club, Rob Moodie, sacked by News Limited along with his fellow independent directors after they mounted a court challenge alleging lack of due process – there’s that word again – in the club’s treatment, likened News and its tactics to those of big tobacco.
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