Lachlan Murdoch drops case against Crikey, days after Fox News paid $787m to Dominion

Lachlan Murdoch is dropping his defamation case against Private Media, the publisher of Crikey.

Murdoch’s lawyer says “it is a matter of public record that Crikey admits there is no truth to the imputations that were made about Murdoch in the [disputed] article.”

This comes just days after Fox News paid $787 million to settle a lawsuit brought by voting machine maker Dominion.

The lawyer says a contributing factor to Murdoch’s decision was the case against Dominion settling.

In June 2022, Crikey’s political editor published an article linking the Murdoch family to the January 6 Capitol attacks in the U.S.

The headline called Murdoch an “unindicted co-conspirator”.

It was taken down after a formal legal complaint from Murdoch, but was later republished.

“Murdoch remains confident the court would ultimately find in his favour, however he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction,” the lawyer said.