Erin Molan awarded hefty payout from defamation case win
Erin Molan has won her defamation case against Daily Mail Australia, after a Federal Court found the online newspaper defamed her by alleging she was racist in an article.
The sports journalist sued the Daily Mail for defamation last year, saying an article and two tweets by the news site falsely portrayed her as racist because of her mispronunciation of Polynesian names.
In the verdict, Justice Robert Bromwich found both sides had both a “measure of success and a measure of failure”, as he found both Erin and the publication made mistakes.
Daily Mail Australia must pay the Sky News host $150,000 plus interest in damages, including aggravated damages for the online article.
Justice Bromwich said the sum was “substantial” for “closely interrelated and unwarranted online slurs, sufficient for any ordinary person to be well and truly satisfied that they were untrue and should never have been published”.
“I consider this sufficiently meets the sting of the article as reflected in the imputations,” he said.
“Dailymail.com needs to substantially improve the care that it takes, or face further and greater awards of damages. Freedom of expression must be balanced with responsibility and basic professionalism which was sadly lacking in this case.”
The Mail’s story was based on Molan saying “hooka looka mooka hooka fooka” when referring to a Polynesian sportsperson on the show in May 2020.
During the trial, the publisher argued the imputations carried were true – and Molan had demonstrated a “pattern” of racist comments in her time at 2GB’s Continuous Call Team program.
Justice Bromwich is allowing Molan to be heard on an injunction to take down the Daily Mail article, which was the basis of the defamation case, if it had not already been removed.
He said the Daily Mail should “sensibly and promptly” take down the article if it had not already done so.
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