Saint Brittany or scheming charlatan?

Don't forget Maiden still boasts a Walkley Award, despite this legal settlement, for the story that the Walkley 2021 Yearbook boasted "sparked a political earthquake and mass protests." We've put together a draft letter to be sent to the Walkley organisation, asking for the award to be revoked, arguing the settlement makes clear Maiden breached media ethics in her reporting. Please use this to frame your own protest letters.

Lisa Wilkinson also still has her Logie television award for her Higgins interview on Channel 10's The Project, despite the audio tape now revealing she coached Higgins, literally putting words in her mouth to ensure the rape allegation could be used to promote the feminist agenda. It is outrageous that she retains this bauble, particularly since her Logie acceptance speech delayed the trial by three months. Interestingly, Channel 7 now has the rights to the Logies. Given that the Lehrmann Spotlight interview has been such a big hit for Channel 7 we figure boss Kerry Stokes might relish the opportunity of making trouble for Wilkinson and Channel 10, but it might be best to wait for the Wilkinson defamation case to be settled to pursue this issue.

It's not enough to just sit back and let all this unfold. This could be a tipping point and now's the time to make our voices heard to ensure consequences for those who weaponized this whole issue to pursue their own agendas - with not one thought for the man they were stitching up.

Lehrmann's defamation action

As for the subsequent defamation battles, don't believe the bluster about the risks for Lehrmann of being cross-examined. One major reason Drumgold may have dropped the case was the realisation that Higgins would have to give evidence in the re-trial, despite his desperate effort to get the law changed to rely on her previous evidence. She's proved to be a trainwreck in the witness stand, unlike Lehrmann who smoothly handled grilling by barristers in the recent hearings about the out-of-time issue re the defamation action.

The top prize for effrontery from the media players in the defamation cases must go to the ABC which is now claiming it offered to make amends to Lehrmann over the broadcast of the National Press Club address by Higgins. Sure, they did – with an offer of $5,000!

Podcaster Chad James has a very interesting discussion about the ABC defamation case which makes the telling point that the ABC kept the video of Higgins' Press Council address up on their website until April this year – despite the criminal proceedings having been dropped late last year, and even after receiving the concerns notice of the defamation action. How malicious is that? There's much more worth hearing in this juicy podcast.

Every day, amazing little gems keep popping up – like theitem on the Channel 7 News in May reporting that Brittany Higgins had previously had sex multiple times in her boss's office. This has since been removed from most media sources, but it was apparently included in text messages the police recovered from Higgins' phone and referred to her escapades with previous boyfriends on the Minister's couch.

The game-changing interview

Now to Bruce Lehrmann's Spotlight interview – which unfortunately is currently not available in full online. Note that the decision by Lehrmann to go public at this stage was prompted by various media outlets jockeying over who would release extracts from the audio recording of the five-hour meeting between Higgins, her boyfriend David Sharaz, television personality Lisa Wilkinson and her producer, where they maliciously plan to employ Labor politicians in their campaign to use the rape allegation to bring down the Morrison government.