Judge rules 10 clarification post in “bad faith”
A Federal Court judge slaps 10 over burying a statement on 10 Play, following a defamation case.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
A Federal Court judge has ruled a clarification posted on 10Play, following a defamation case, was unlikely to be seen by anyone.
The matter centres around a 2018 Project report on the death of Melbourne man Jack Chapman who had a consensual fetish relationship with US man Dylan Hafertepen.
It led to a defamation case you can read more on here.
The parties reached a settlement on April 24 this year.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports 10 agreed to publish a clarification on the 10play website for at least 14 days..
But 10 published the clarification at the bottom of a lengthy “terms of use” page accessed via a link at the bottom of the website which Federal Court Justice Anna Katzmann described as being “a place where it was highly unlikely to come to anyone’s attention”.
“Publishing the clarification in a place where it was unlikely to be seen by anyone, let alone by anyone who had seen or heard the publication the subject of the suit being compromised by the agreement, was an act of bad faith,” Justice Katzmann said.
10 was ordered to pay Mr Hafertepen’s legal costs and run the clarification “on a page of the 10play website relating to the program, The Project“.
The statement now runs under The Project Articles here.
On 6 November 2018, Network 10 aired a story about Australian man, Tank Hafertepen, formally known as Jack Chapman, who died in the United States after injecting himself with silicone.
His former partner Dylan Hafertepen brought defamation proceedings against Network 10 about the story.
Network 10 did not intend to suggest and does not suggest that Mr Hafertepen had anything to do with that death. If anyone took it to mean that, then Network 10 unreservedly retracts any such suggestion.
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3 Responses
Yes I remember the story too….Presented by Hamish Mcdonald. I wonder if Hamish suffered any ramifications. Yes the mother came face to face (courtesy of The Project) with her son’s ex-partner in the USA, blaming him for her son’s death. The subject matter of injecting somebody else’s private area with silicone was an eye opener!!!
When media outlets are ordered or required to publish retractions, they usually end up further down the bulletins or programs, or further away from the front pages, even if they were retracting what was a top story. But a retraction at the end of the terms of use page is intentionally overly concealed.
A fair retraction should be placed on the same page, same position or same time of broadcast as the claims that had to be retracted and it should be legislated that it be done that way so that media outlets are properly held accountable for their reporting instead of trying to cover up their wrongdoings.
I remember watching the original story. It’s pretty disingenuous for 10 to say they weren’t suggesting Dylan had anything to do with Jack’s death. The story was from the mother’s viewpoint, who certainly did blame him. 10 helped her ambush Dylan about the will and cause of death when he came to visit.