News Corp goes after Mail Online. News Corp has served a legal letter to the Daily Mail Australia’s legal team after accusing the British tabloid implant of plagiarising its content. The key victims, News Corp claims, are its tabloids, including the Daily Telegraph, according to this report in sister publication The Australian.

Daily Tele editor Paul Whittaker says the Mail set up in Australia and hired young, inexperienced reporters who relied on the “legwork and dedication” of “real reporters” from News and failed to break their own stories. “They might acknowledge the source of a story on occasion, but that does not give them carte blanche to take reams of our ­reporting,’” Whittaker said. Adding insult to injury, he continued, the Mail’s content was free, while News Corp’s was paywalled.

The Mail team doesn’t seem fazed — spokesman Sean Walsh responded to The Australian’s questions by asking media editor Sharri Markson if she was the same Markson who wanted to edit Daily Mail Australia.

Meanwhile, former Oz media editor Amanda Meade, now writing on media for Guardian Australia, uncovered two instances of Daily Mail articles that appear to have been republished in News Corp outlets:

“In May, news.com.au used quotes from an exclusive Daily Mail story by experienced crime reporter [Candice] Sutton … Another story, which ran in several News papers, included screenshots of pictures sourced by the Daily Mail of the English cricketer Stuart Broad paddling in Sydney Harbour.“

In the UK, the Daily Mail has earned rebuke for retelling stories first broken by other outlets.

Fairfax slugged $623,526 for scathing food review. In one final addendum to the Coco Roco review saga, in which Fairfax has been in court for a decade defending a critical review of the once-hyped Sydney restaurant, the New South Wales Supreme Court on Friday awarded $47,000 a pop interest to the three plaintiffs — restaurateurs Aleksandra Gacic, Ljiljana Gacic and Branislav Circic — on the original December 2013 verdict that gave each of them $160,000 in damages.

The final legal bill for Fairfax is well over half a million, and comes after another million on legal fees the company has spent defending the 2003 review by then Sydney Morning Herald food writer Matthew Evans. The restaurant closed down months later — just six months after it opened, and Evans left the SMH in 2005. The defamation case went through numerous appeals, with Coco Roco’s owners, bankrupted, winning the final appeal in 2011.

The case raises difficult questions for publishers — the food critics contacted by Crikey to comment on the case in 2012 were largely sympathetic to Fairfax’s plight. — Myriam Robin

Chase Carey sticks around at Fox for a cool $54 million. 21st Century Fox co-chief operating officer Chase Carey will earn at least US$54 million in total over the next two years after renewing his employment contract with the Murdoch family company overnight. The agreement, signed back in 2010, had been due to expire at the end of this month and after the promotion of James Murdoch to share the chief operating officer’s role in March, there was speculation a miffed Carey might quit.

But he’s sticking around. The only significant change from the contract is that Carey can quit at the end of 2015 if he gives six months notice (i.e. on July 1, 2015). If he does he will receive his entitlements in full, but will have to consult to Fox on a non-exclusive basis for the last six months of the new deal, subject to a non-compete clause. US media analysts say this strongly suggests Carey will quit sometime from July 1 next year. He made US$27 million in the year to June 2013. That becomes the minimum for the next two years.

James Murdoch oversees Fox Networks Group and also has “direct responsibility for the strategic and operational development” of Fox’s pay TV interests in Europe and Asia, reporting to Carey. In effect Carey remains the “senior” chief operating officer of Fox, but Lachlan Murdoch is the co-non-executive chairman of the company, sharing the role with dad Rupert.

Carey is now the face of the key company in the Murdoch broadcast, film and content empire. He makes speeches and had been appearing at the company’s quarterly results briefings instead of Rupert Murdoch, who has lowered his profile (except on social media). — Glenn Dyer

Front page of the day. We wonder what British comedian Rik Mayall would have made of the headline accompanying his photo. He died in London on Monday, aged 56…