Today in Media Files, Bauer Media employees are worried the Rebel Wilson defamation payout will mean deeper cost-cutting, and New Matilda is facing its own defamation suit.

Rebel payout angst at Bauer. Rebel Wilson’s record $4.5 million defamation payout is causing angst inside German-owned magazine group Bauer. Some are wondering if the company has defamation insurance to cover the award as well as the yet-to-be-determined legal costs (Wilson has asked for her costs to be covered). 

There is now talk inside Bauer Australia that new boss Paul Dykzeul is finalising another cost-cutting effort and a restructure. The question Bauer employees are asking is whether the strong adverse comments about Bauer by Victorian Supreme Court Justice John Dixon in his judgment will further damage the loss-making operation financially when it comes to awarding costs:

“At no time did Bauer Media attempt to contact Ms Wilson, or her agents, managers or publicists, to give her an opportunity to reply to the allegations that lay at the heart of its defamatory attack. I reject as speculative the defendant’’ submission that their failure to contact the plaintiff was not improper or unjustifiable, because even had they done so it was unlikely that the plaintiff would have responded given her pre-existing attitude towards the publications in question. Bauer Media knew that much of the information provided by its anonymous, paid source was false or contradicted by other information in the public domain … Not only was its conduct unexplained by absent editors, but its motivation attracted false evidence as it sought to deny the obvious truth that it recklessly traded commercially on Ms Wilson’s reputation. Its conduct was not bona fide.”

You can just feel another big hit coming for Bauer. If it has defamation insurance, the judge reckons the company did nothing to mitigate the hurt (indeed, Bauer refused to settle with Wilson for $200,000). Dixon’s comments will make it very hard for Bauer to cover any of the award or legal costs from the Wilson case. If that is the case and the German owners won’t cover the costs then the cost-cutting Dykzeul is said to be planning will be deeper and wider. A further question is whether the final cost to Bauer places the continued operation of the Australian company in any doubt. Bauer paid a reported $500 million for the old Cons Press Magazines business back in 2012. — Glenn Dyer

Today Tonight not ‘trashy’, Seven lawyers say. Channel Seven is suing website New Matilda over an opinion piece it published about a Today Tonight story aired in South Australia. In the article, writer Michael Brull said Today Tonight was anti-Muslim, but also said the program had not been fact-checked and called the reporter David Richardson a “gutter journalist” and presenter Rosanna Mangiarelli a “guttersnipe Today Tonight Adelaide presenter” — comments Seven says are defamatory. New Matilda editor Chris Graham has responded by publishing the claims notice and his response on the website, saying the claims about Richardson and Mangiarelli are not defamatory but simply “mere vulgar abuse”, but that New Matilda would also rely on the defence of truth and opinion in the case of Mangiarelli.

‘Feral’ government. This typo on the Courier Mail‘s website cuts close to the bone.

 

Google’s first-click-free policy to go. News Corp is planning to remove its first-click-free policy, according to chief executive Robert Thomson. He told a media-business conference in New York that the global giant was ready to end the policy, which allows users to access paywalled pages when they arrive through Google News. Industry website NewsMediaWorks reports that Thomson said the negotiations should be celebrated. “That will fundamentally change the content ecosystem, and not just for us but for many publishers. It will allow the creation of coherent, viable subscription models,” he said.

Google encourages publishers to use the first click free principle, and Thomson says if they don’t (instead directing users to a subscription page), their pages are ranked lower.

Total Propaganda: Live and Free! See Crikey contributor Helen Razer and writer-at-large Guy Rundle in the flesh discussing Razer’s new book, Total Propaganda, next month. Razer is promoting her introduction to Marx for Millienials in Melbourne on October 11. Details here.

Glenn Dyer’s TV ratings. A mixed night. Seven won total people, Ten won the main channels because of the grand final of The Bachelor and Nine’s Footy Show was easily beaten in Melbourne for a second night in a row — this time in the regular 8.30pm time slot. But more of that in a moment.

The Bachelor’s final decision topped the night in the metros but was second nationally — a year ago it was top in both. The final decision averaged 1.48 million viewers — down 312,000 viewers from 2016. In the metros, the figure of 1.116 million people – down from 1.32 million a year ago. Perhaps it was the unsympathetic Bachelor, perhaps it was some of the clunky events along the way. Ultimately, nearly 1.5 million viewers isn’t to be sneezed at, especially at Ten. But it didn’t help The Wrong Girl, whose audience was a fraction of that for the final decision on The Bach. The Wrong Girl could only manage 557,000 national viewers (and 423,000 in the metros, meaning regional viewers 134,000, which is a big thumbs down). The drop in the audience was a massive 925,000 people. An overwhelming no vote.

And then there was The Footy Show — it had 349,000 national viewers and 175,000 in Melbourne, and Seven’s The Front Bar managed 340,000 nationally and 190,000 in Melbourne. So another win — on an equal footing — for The Front Bar. Its cheaper and less stressful than The Footy Show, which again distinguished itself with a silly rant by Sam Newman. That’s TV clickbait, but viewers are aware of that and ignore him and the program. Tonight its the Swans v the Cats and tomorrow its GWS v the Weagles. — Read the rest on the Crikey website