News takes Mail Online to court

NEWS Corp Australia is preparing to take the Mail Online to the Federal Court in what will be a global test case.

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NEWS Corp Australia is preparing to take the Mail Online to the Federal Court in what will be a global test case on the aggregation of original journalism.

Since the first legal letter sent by News Corp three weeks ago over the Mail Online’s blatant lifting of content, the Mail Online, a partnership between the Daily Mail Trust and Nine Entertainment Co, has responded claiming four stories published by News should have been attributed to the Daily Mail Australia.

Sources said two of the four examples provided occurred long before the Mail Online’s Australian arm launched, in August 2012 and July last year, and both were published legitimately under the licensing agreement News Corp has with the Daily Mail in Britain. The Daily Telegraph considers the third story a piss-take. News believes the Mail’s only potentially legitimate gripe was a story on Big Brother’s Reggie Bird in May that the Hobart Mercury accidentally republished, thinking it was part of the licensing arrangement. It has since been taken offline.

The Mail Online could come up with only one example in a two-year period where News Corp, which publishes thousands of articles each week, had lifted its content. News Corp’s newspapers generate original content while the Mail Online’s business strategy is to employ reporters on low wages to rehash stories that have run elsewhere.

By contrast, there have been days when all of the top stories on the Mail Online’s home page were major exclusives rehashed from News Corp’s major mastheads; there are dozens and dozens of examples. It’s a practice Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade calls “parasitic” and without a shred of journalistic merit; a sentiment News Corp critic and Media Watch host Paul Barry agreed with.

Given the Mail Online has refused to comply with the terms requested in News Corp’s original cease and desist letter, the company is preparing to pursue the matter in the Federal Court, believing it has a compelling case. Hopefully, this will set a precedent for the entire industry and identify in clear terms how much content is appropriate and fair to lift.

Fairfax Media may also be pursuing a case against the Mail Online. When asked whether it had sent a legal letter to the organisation, a spokeswoman for Fairfax Media said “no comment”.

Seven West Media commercial director Bruce McWilliam is also keen to pursue a case against the Mail Online in court, last week telling Diary the Mail Online was guilty of “a heist unparalleled since the Great Train Robbery of 1963 and the crimes of convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff”.

He said: “Nine should know better.” Diary understands Nine chief David Gyngell is hoping the whole matter will die down, but, up against editors who take pride in their exclusives and refuse to put up with the shameless theft of content by junior reporters, he is burying his head in the sand.

2GB’s $4 million in fees

IN other court battles, 2GB has spent up to $4 million on its eight-year legal fight against Keysar Trad, who was pursuing the radio station for defamation over comments made by former host Jason Morrison.

Without repeating the comments, Morrison pointed out on-air how offensive he found Trad’s views on women, Jews and gang rape.

2GB continued to defend the case even when Morrison left to go to 2UE.

Trad fought the case, which went to the NSW Supreme Court, the NSW Court of Appeal, back to the Supreme Court, the High Court and then Trad requested a High Court Appeal.

Diary can reveal on June 20, the High Court of Australia dismissed the application for appeal. It’s uncertain whether 2GB will ever see a cent of the money it spent defending the case.

Among the court findings over the years are that Trad holds significant anti-Semitic views, that his views are capable of influencing others and he described gang rapists as “stupid young boys”.

Extraordinarily, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi said in a recent speech that Trad had had discussions with the Liberal Party and Labor about entering politics.

Gina’s new PR man

GINA Rinehart is worth $20 billion, according to the BRW Rich List, but until now she has not had a communications expert to ­handle the media coverage she generates. Rinehart’s company Han­cock Prospecting has hired the aforementioned Morrison as an adviser and consultant — the first time she has had a permanent media representative. It’ll be interesting to see now if the rival children, Bianca and John, also hire a corporate spinner.

Dickie’s detox

KYLE and Jackie O’s show and the Telegraph’s Sydney Confidential almost ruined the surprise party for Richard Wilkins’s 60th that his son Christian and daughter Rebecca had spent months planning. Former Big Brother winner Tim Dormer mentioned the party on Kyle and Jackie O’s show on Thursday, but no one at Nine noticed until Sydney Confidential published a story about the faux pas in Friday’s Daily Telegraph.

Dickie said when he arrived at the Today Show that morning, Karl Stefanovic said to him, “What about that bloody Dormer?” When Dickie asked what Dormer had done, Stefanovic quickly walked the other way. Nine’s wardrobe assistant said to Dickie, “Here, I’m going to take the newspapers and put them in the bin. I said why, what’s in there? I assumed that Ros Reines was having a carve-up,” Dickie recalled. Thankfully, the surprise remained a secret.

Dickie said his daughter had “chutzpah” to organise a party, held at Sokyo at The Star casino, with so many doyens of the industry. Attendees included Delta Goodrem, Kylie Minogue, who sang happy birthday, Graham Richardson, who was preparing for chemo this week, Gretel Packer and her daughter Francesca, Ken Sutcliffe and 60 Minutes executive producer Tom Malone.

The partying continued at the elegant Marquee VIP room long into the night. Dickie said his post-birthday detox would start today.

Meakin spreads wings

ANOTHER TV veteran, Peter Meakin, is playing a much greater role in programming at the Ten Network than he did in his role at Seven.

Meakin, who was heavily involved in programming at Nine, responsible for the shows Getaway, Money and This is Your Life, among others, is developing some new projects for Ten, to be announced soon.

“I’m not involved in dancing shows or singing shows or drama because I’ve discovered, after all these areas, the years in which I’m inexpert,’’ he said yesterday.

“Hamish (McLennan, Ten’s CEO) invited my ideas for other programs before I even joined Ten.”

Hamish is certainly hearing the views of many of his high-profile staff. Studio 10 host Ita Buttrose is known for her tough attitude, but she won the respect of many at Network Ten when she called a meeting with McLennan to save the job of a young, talented producer facing the chop.

The producer had already been made redundant when Buttrose went to McLennan, arguing the girl’s job was worth saving.

The producer was lucky. Sadly, Nine may be taking advantage of the high number of producers on the market at the moment, offering salaries up to $20,000 less than the rates at Ten.

The redundancies continued in Ten Brisbane on Friday, with only about six local reporters now remaining.

Senior reporter and part-time newsreader Max Futcher and veteran political reporter Cathy Border, a former ABC morning presenter, are among the departures.

Border, one of Queensland’s most highly respected broadcast journalists, will fill in for Patrick Condon on 4BC, and then will take a break.

Former WakeUp host Natasha Exelby has landed on her feet, happily, after she was unkindly dumped by former WakeUp executive producer Adam Boland in the show’s carpark at Manly.

Diary can reveal she will join Seven News, filling in for network reporter Chris Reason who is taking long-service leave until ­December.

Seven News Sydney news director Chris Willis said Exelby “is a terrific reporter and we are delighted to have her”.

During her few months off work, Exelby spent time with her family in Queensland and travelled overseas.

Meanwhile, her former co-host Natasha Belling will continue to fill-in on Studio 10, this time when Sarah Harris takes holidays.

Cater joins think tank

A HUGE congratulations to the former editor of The Weekend Australian, Nick Cater who has joined the Menzies Research Centre as its new executive director.

Cater, a columnist with The Australian and a former Sunday Telegraph deputy editor, replaces Don Markwell, who finished in October last year to take on a role as senior adviser on higher education to federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne.

Aston looking for love

WHO says there’s a man drought? Fin Review columnist, lonesome dove Joe Aston — well known for costing Fairfax Media $95,000, paid to former News Corp chief executive Kim Will­iams over inaccuracies in one of his articles — appears to be back on the meat market, with his profile appearing on dating app Tinder. We know the demands of occasionally writing a daily column are onerous, so we thought we could help him improve his profile.

Treading on toes

IT’S been a while between potshots. Not since his journalism in jeans remark, where he bagged Sunday Telegraph editor, Mick Caroll for lazy reporting on a Sunday, has his predecessor, Neil Breen caused such affront at News Corp.

Driving home on Wednesday night, at least two News Corp editors were listening to 2GB’s Steve Price show when Breenie came on to discuss the Clive Palmer and Al Gore farcical press conference that day.

Introducing Breen as a former Sunday Tele editor, Price said Breen “would love the front page of tomorrow’s Courier-Mail newspaper. It’s picture of Clive and a picture of Al Gore with a headline bring in the clowns.”

Breen said: “Chris Dore edits the Courier-Mail now, he was my deputy at the Sunday Tele for a while. I think he used the clown line on Palmer in the lead up to the election so he might have gone back to the well there. “

But Price had got it wrong. That front page never existed. Dore’s splash was actually on Allison Baden-Clay, and the Palmer fiasco was relegated to page three with the headline “An inconceivable truth”.

The headline Breen was referring to, Bring in the Clowns, was actually about former Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie joining Kevin Rudd’s team as a candidate during the 2013 election campaign.

Price then moved onto The Telegraph’s excellent front page headline that day, “Kick hizbut outta here”.

Price said it was “clever” and asked “who is the key man down at the Tele writing those? That’d be Whittaker (editor, Paul Whittaker) wouldn’t it?”

Breen had a little niggle and said he didn’t think headlines were Boris’s great skill and he wasn’t sure who was writing the splash heads these days.

Diary understands Whittaker writes or has a hand in 80 per cent of the paper’s headlines — including that one.

ABC tries to derail exclusive

The ABC tipped off journalists from The Guardian and Fairfax when it discovered The Australian had obtained a leak copy of the Peter Lewis efficiency review executive summary.

When the ABC was advised on Tuesday night that The Australian would be publishing full details of the Lewis Review’s executive summary, Diary understands the ABC in haste contacted The Guardian and Fairfax Media to tip them off.

The journalists involved had not had the story earlier in the day, and so it did not appear in The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age newspapers the following day. After taking 7 months to apologise to Chris Kenny, it is the first time we’ve seen the slow-moving managing director Mark Scott, often accused of weak leadership skills, act quickly. Scott and Public Affairs chief Michael Millet did not answer questions about how appropriate and ethical this sort of behaviour was.

But it certainly puts to rest any questions over whether the billion dollar a year taxpayer-funded ABC is biased against News Corp and in favour of Fairfax and the Guardian.