MEDIA OUTLETS CAN BE SUED FOR SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS: AUSTRALIAN COURT

Wed 08 September 2021:

The country’s top court ruled on Wednesday that media organisations can be sued for remarks posted by readers on their social media profiles.

“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 observed.

The court’s judgment came after some of Australia’s largest media companies filed appeals.

Dylan Voller, a former Northern Territory detainee, had filed a defamation suit against the media outlets, accusing them of “posting” defamatory comments on their Facebook pages.

However, whether the media outlets were the “publishers” of such material was a source of debate.

“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 observed.

In 2016, photographs of a cruel treatment meted out to 17-year-old Voller in youth detention were uncovered in a TV report, prompting the unprecedented ruling.

It created a national outrage, and many Facebook users commented negatively on news reports posted by media outlets on social media.

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