It has taken a rapidly changing social norm to flush out what has long been wrong with Australia’s laws for regulating personal reputation. Federal Court judge Michael Wigney says the #MeToo movement has limited relevance for determining whether Sydney tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph defamed Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush with its over-the-top “King Leer” coverage. Yet the economic damage that Mr Rush has suffered – and for which the court is set to order the Telegraph to compensate him – is driven by the new real world benchmarks established by #MeToo. The court has found for Mr Rush, arguably against the standards of #MeToo. But it is set to determine damages according to the punishment inflicted by the new #MeToo rules.

Justice Wigney says the relevant legal principles must be “approached from the perspective of the ordinary reasonable reader”. He adds that “the ordinary reasonable reader who reads publications of the sort in issue in this proceeding is taken to be prone to a degree of ‘loose thinking’ and to ‘read between the lines’ in light of their general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs”. But in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, what would an ordinary, reasonable loose-thinking reader of the Telegraph think about the newspaper’s coverage and the subsequent trial?