Erin Molan wins defamation case against Daily Mail

SKY News presenter Erin Molan has won a high profile defamation case against the Daily Mail.

Molan was today awarded $150,000 following an article and two tweets by the Daily Mail which accused her of appearing to mock Polynesian names on 2GB in 2020. She maintained the broadcast had nothing to do with mocking someone’s name and ethnicity.

Guardian Australia reports Justice Robert Bromwich said each side had a “measure of success and a measure of failure”.

The court found five of the eight imputations Molan alleged were wrongly conveyed by the Daily Mail, including that she “deliberately mocked the names of Pacific Islanders on air” and that her “inability to pronounce the names of Polynesian NRL players is so disrespectful and incompetent that she is unfit to be an NRL commentator”.

Bromwich found that Molan was not putting on a Polynesian or Pacific Islander accent on the radio program but rather putting on an accent of her colleague Ray Warren who had stumbled over the names.

“I conclude that Ms Molan was trying to put on two different accents: she was trying to put on an accent of Ray Warren as though it was him who was saying ‘hooka, looka, mooka, hooka, fooka’, rather than putting on a Polynesian or Pacific Islander accent; and putting on the accent of Chris Warren as saying ‘Dad’ in response, reflecting the interplay between the two which is inherent in the Warren story,” Bromwich said.

The Daily Telegraph notes while the judge ruled in Molan’s favour, she was still found to have been “ignorant or thoughtless” and caused offence by saying the words on air.

However, Bromwich found that “the most serious pleaded imputation” that Molan is a racist, was not conveyed.

“They went too far, were not careful enough, and made a number of material and defamatory errors which were not able to be justified, but did not go as far as Ms Molan’s case and arguments depict.”

Daily Mail argued a truth defence and denied running an illegitimate campaign against her. Bromwich found Daily Mail had not established any basis for the application of the defence of honest opinion and ordered the article be taken down.