ANKARA – Australian media outlets can be sued for comments made by readers on their social media accounts, the country’s top court ruled today, reported the Anadolu Agency.
“Appellants were liable for the publication of allegedly defamatory ‘comments’ that were posted by third-party Facebook users in response to the content,” the High Court of Australia said.
The decision comes after the court rejected appeals by some of Australia’s biggest media houses.
The media outlets had appealed against a defamation case filed by Dylan Voller, a former Northern Territory detainee, who accused them of “publishing” defamatory comments on their Facebook pages.
Debate had raged over whether media outlets are the “publishers” of such material.
“The high court, by majority, dismissed the appeals and found that the appellants were the publishers of the third-party Facebook user comments,” said the court in a statement.
“A majority of the court held that the liability of a person as a publisher depends upon whether that person, by facilitating and encouraging the relevant communication, ‘participated’ in the communication of the defamatory matter to a third person,” it added.
The court rejected the appellants’ argument that for a person to be a publisher, “they must know of the relevant defamatory matter and intend to convey it”.
“Each appellant, by the creation of a public Facebook page and the posting of content on that page, facilitated, encouraged and thereby assisted the publication of comments from third-party Facebook users. The appellants were, therefore, publishers of the third-party comments,” the court said.
The unprecedented judgement follows the 2016 case in which images of cruel treatment meted out to 17-year-old Voller in youth detention was exposed in a TV report.
It sparked a national outcry and many Facebook users made derogatory comments on news stories shared on the social media channels of the media organisations. – Bernama, September 8, 2021
