Sydney-based journalist Nick Cater has been a central character in the latest in a series of defamation cases brought against the media by the Wagner brothers — cases which have seen damages totalling nearly $8 million.
The cases stem from stories from various corners of the media — across radio, print and TV — which claimed that a quarry owned by the Wagners, a prominent Toowoomba family, contributed to a number of deaths in Grantham during the 2011 Queensland floods.
Damages payouts have mounted across two separate cases already: a payout (settled out of court) of more than half-a-million dollars from Spectator Australia in 2017, and a damages payout of $3.75 million found against Alan Jones and his then-employer Harbour Radio (owned by Macquarie Media, now part of Nine).
Last week the Queensland Supreme Court delivered a $3.6 million judgement against Nine and Cater for a 2015 episode of 60 Minutes (featuring Cater) which was found to have defamed the Wagner brothers. On Friday, Justice Peter Applegarth ordered Nine and Cater to pay $2.4 million and $1.2 million respectively.
So who is Nick Cater? Well according to the Liberal Party affiliated Menzies Research Centre (where Cater is an executive director), Nick’s a gem; “one of the nation’s leading political commentators”.
But he comes across rather less polished in a summary of Applegarth’s judgement:
“Mr Cater’s statements on the program … were gravely defamatory of the Wagners. The injury to reputation and other harm caused by his defamation was aggravated by his unjustifiable or improper conduct, including his miserable post-publication conduct towards the Wagners … Mr Cater disregarded the evidence of an eyewitness which undermined his story … The injuries inflicted by the defendants’ defamations were made worse by their failure to properly apologise and withdraw the defamatory imputations. That unjustifiable conduct, which has aggravated harm, has continued to this day.”
The Weekend Australian (where Cater is a columnist and a former editor) ran a report of the judgement on page five of the weekend’s edition, under the misleading headline of “Nine’s $3.6 million bill over flood deaths”. Nine’s bill was $2.4 million and the rest was Cater’s, a point that was only reported deep in the story.
Cater was described in the story as “a columnist for The Australian” with no mention of his time as editor of the weekend paper, his deputy editorship of the Sunday Telegraph or his current gig at the Menzies Foundation.
Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald buried the story in a brief, three paragraph story (with pic) at the top of page12 in Saturday’s paper. At least the Weekend Australian gave the story a big headline, even if it was misleading.
Seriously rich and beautiful stuff – the wheels of Justice grind slowly.
We can only hope that more of these loudmouthed shock-jocks and propaganda merchants get their just deserts in due course.
What we would be really, really beautiful would be to see Newscorp run right out of the country – then real journalists might be able to get a go at providing genuine reporting and analysis to the masses.
I caught that story in the SMH, but I do have eagle eyes for stories that a paper might not want me to read.
Those Grantham flood stories just keep paying out.
Interesting that Cater was directly awarded against. Wonder if he will personally pay up or somehow be covered, I have no idea how liability is covered in such a situation.
I’m sure a certain editor of Justinian will mention it in his Saturday paper column.
This is the only ruling possible given the libels and the evidence, thus blowhards are getting their education in public… not that Cater seems the slightest able to fathom that.
Cater, Nine and Jones utterly failed to do some simple maths on this matter, seemingly convinced by Nine’s own risible animated recreation of the scenario. How could a half empty quarry make a flood worse? The water moving to Grantham had to fill that half void in it path. Their incredulity at the sheer volume and speed of the flood was rooted in their antagonism towards the BOM and all things earth science [ unless it’s an assertion by the coal-dusted Plimer].
It’s also hard to ponder how they thought the Wagners would cop it, they were known to be not short of a dollar or fight.
Cater and Jones of course are climate change denialists…of course. Innumeracy and serious over self-estimation hand-in-hand.
Viva “Don’t let facts and research get in the way of your mouthy opinions”?
I’d suggest that the likes of Alan Jones, would be cursing that his name in connection with this particular debacle has arisen again..
His talkback show has already lost 50% of its advertising revenue, it may be in for another round of losses, we will see how the Cater case effects their advertising, by association..
I wonder if Jones is cursing the day he picked up this story, this remains to be seen…
I was taught at university to always corroborate the information we were going to use, so we had the whole referencing thing down pat, it seems that the many journalists, researchers that are employed to do this, may need to have a refresher on this particular skill.
Now all the Australian media needs to do is learn this face and money saving process is very much a necessary skill, which really they should have cottoned on to well before now, the thing is that the fact that no one at Newscorp until now has realised that people with deep enough pockets would be brave enough to take them on, well there’s an expensive lesson well learned….
Hopefully this will create a better media environment all round, but “we shouldn’t count our chooks” (before they’re hatch etc..) they maybe more inclined to report more factual stories than get themselves in such an expensive & image damaging situation again, but going by the media behemoths, Newscorp, Foxtel, Channel 9, 7 West, Sky news & CNN, (& the list goes on) that find their organisations in hot water because they can’t or wont, either take responsibility or again ensure that the information is correct before they go spreading it far & wide…