Latest news with #BenRobertsSmith
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Court's nuanced analysis of Nick McKenzie's secret recording in Ben Roberts-Smith appeal a far cry from Sky News claims
When three judges dismissed Ben Roberts-Smith's appeal in his defamation case against Nine Newspapers last week, they made some insightful comments on journalism practices, in particular the delicate relationship between a reporter and a source. Dismissing Roberts-Smith's interlocutory application to reopen the appeal over a secret recording of the journalist Nick McKenzie and a source, the judges noted the 'very experienced investigative journalist' was 'accustomed to getting the most out of his sources'. It was a far cry from the way some media framed the recording two months earlier. 'Explosive confessions from star Nine reporter caught on secret tapes expose tricks against Ben Roberts-Smith war crimes trial', Sky News Australia said. The appeal judges said the 'unlawful' recording of a conversation between Australia's most celebrated journalist and a potential witness was part of a longer conversation and they could not be confident 'that the contents of the recording have not been doctored by removing sections or splicing together different parts of a recorded conversation'. They rejected an attack on McKenzie's credibility by Roberts-Smith's barrister Arthur Moses, saying they 'generally accept his evidence'. But it was their analysis of the nature of the conversation that demonstrated they understood the nuances of a journalist talking to a source. McKenzie was 'seeking to reassure an important potential witness' and had 'an incentive to exaggerate', they said. In the witness box the Age and Sydney Morning Herald journalist explained how in speaking to another source he gave an 'impression of excitement in order not to reveal that he already knew some of what he was being told', they said. 'This is a reason why the recording should be treated with caution in so far as it is relied on as an admission of wrongdoing or otherwise as evidence that Mr McKenzie really was receiving briefings on the appellant's 'legal strategy'.' McKenzie, who has won an incredible 16 Walkley awards, said it was a 'terrifying experience to be put before the full bench of the federal court'. But two days after the court published its reasons for rejecting a wider defamation appeal, McKenzie was back in print with an exclusive story about the ongoing investigation into war crimes. Next month Hachette Australia will release an updated edition of McKenzie's book Crossing the Line, including new material on the appeal and the emotional and professional toll of the case. SBS has leaned into its old reputation as the 'Sex Before Soccer' network with the release of a cheeky new campaign to celebrate its 50th birthday. With the tagline 'We Go There', the 60-second ad features a middle-aged man running naked through the SBS shows Alone, Insight, The Point and, of course, a football match (not that the network has the rights to many competitions these days). The film is 'so daring and so SBS, it can't be played anywhere but SBS', the network said. And that is exactly what happened this week when ABC's Gruen panellists analysed the ad. Although all the panellists praised its originality and ingenuity, the public broadcaster had to censor the full frontal nudity. Host Wil Anderson, who dubbed SBS 'Sweaty Ball Sack', said full frontal nudity was not allowed on Aunty. Editors put a sticker saying 'Too rude for the ABC' over the man's genitals as he ran across the pitch. David Crowe, the outgoing chief political correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, was farewelled at the National Press Club on Wednesday evening before heading off to London as Europe correspondent. Journalists and staffers particularly enjoyed two messages read out at the Canberra event: one from Labor minister Tanya Plibersek and one from the former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. Unsurprisingly, they both referred to Peter Dutton's infamous attack on 'Crowey', as he is affectionately known to all. In January 2024 the then opposition leader posted a tweet in response to news that Guardian Australia's then-political editor, Katharine Murphy, was joining Anthony Albanese's office. 'I am genuinely shocked to see Murpharoo take up a spot to now be officially running lines for Labor,' Dutton said on X. Sign up to Weekly Beast Amanda Meade's weekly diary on the latest in Australian media, free every Friday after newsletter promotion 'The real outrage is David Crowe missed out. What more must he do to prove his credentials to formally be employed by the Labor Party? #givecroweago.' The Canberra Times' political analyst Mark Kenny said it was 'not just churlish but clearly intimidatory'. Plibersek and Turnbull both said Crowe had the last laugh. His final column contained a critique of Dutton's disastrous media strategy. 'Thanks to the internet and the smartphone, the media is a landscape of earthquakes and eruptions – and Peter Dutton has shown everyone how to be engulfed in lava when you think you're at the top of the mountain,' he wrote. 'The former Liberal leader is a case study in what not to do.' Crowe has been replaced as chief political correspondent by Paul Sakkal, who was described internally by the executive editor of Nine's metro mastheads, Luke McIlveen, as 'one of the best news breakers in the gallery', which he joined in early 2023. Natassia Chrysanthos, who McIlveen said had a 'forensic eye for detail', has been appointed federal political correspondent. It's been a rapid rise for the two reporters, both 29, who began as trainees in 2018. Buried in the documents filed by Sky News Australia in defence of a defamation claim brought by the lawyer Adam Houda is a rare full disclosure of how many people watch The Bolt Report across all Sky platforms. Here is the rundown of Bolt's audience. For the 7pm broadcast on Foxtel on the night the allegedly defamatory comments were made (23 January 2024) there was an average audience of 57,000. For a rough comparison, Bolt is up against ABC News and Nine's A Current Affair in the 7pm time slot. Both free-to-air shows usually have up to 1 million viewers. On Sky News Regional, Bolt picked up another 43,900 and Sky News Now had 10,100 streams. On Foxtel's streaming platform the program had an average audience of 4,600 with 250 video-on-demand streams. On the Flash service there were 757 streams and an additional 48 on the Sky News website. The content was also published on Facebook and YouTube. After a complaint from Houda, the episode was removed from all platforms and an apology remains online, although it was not enough to stop the lawsuit. Sky News and Bolt are defending the defamation claim on the grounds of truth.
Free Malaysia Today
20-05-2025
- Free Malaysia Today
Decorated Australian soldier loses war crimes defamation appeal
Perth-born Ben Roberts-Smith had been Australia's most famous and distinguished living soldier. (AP pic) SYDNEY : One of Australia's most decorated soldiers lost a legal bid today to overturn bombshell court findings that implicated him in war crimes while serving in Afghanistan. Former SAS commando Ben Roberts-Smith has been fighting to repair his tattered reputation since 2018, when newspapers unearthed allegations he took part in the murder of unarmed Afghan prisoners. His multi-million dollar bid to sue three Australian newspapers for defamation failed in 2023, with a judge ruling the bulk of the journalists' claims were 'substantially true'. The 46-year-old suffered another setback today, when Australia's federal court dismissed his appeal. Justice Nye Perram withheld the reasons for the decision, saying there were national security implications the government must consider before they are released. A published summary said there was sufficient evidence to support findings that Roberts-Smith had 'murdered four Afghan men'. Roberts-Smith argued in his appeal that the judge 'erred' in the way he assessed some of the evidence. Perth-born Roberts-Smith had been Australia's most famous and distinguished living soldier. He won the Victoria Cross – Australia's highest military honour – for 'conspicuous gallantry' in Afghanistan while on the hunt for a senior Taliban commander. The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times shredded this reputation with a series of reports in 2018. The papers reported Roberts-Smith had kicked an unarmed Afghan civilian off a cliff and ordered subordinates to shoot him. He was also said to have taken part in the machine-gunning of a man with a prosthetic leg, which was later brought back to an army bar and used as a drinking vessel. The 2023 court ruling ultimately implicated Roberts-Smith in the murder of four unarmed Afghan prisoners. Civil court matters such as defamation have a lower standard of proof than criminal trials. Roberts-Smith has not faced criminal charges. Australia deployed 39,000 troops to Afghanistan over two decades as part of US and Nato-led operations against the Taliban and other rebel groups. A 2020 military investigation found special forces personnel 'unlawfully killed' 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners, revealing allegations of summary executions, body count competitions and torture by Australian forces.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Sad but simple explanations in veteran's lost appeal
Fear of reprisal drove soldiers serving alongside disgraced veteran Ben Roberts-Smith to look the other way as he committed war crimes, appeal judges have found. The Federal Court on Tuesday published its reasons for dismissing Roberts-Smith's appeal against the finding he was responsible for the murder of four unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. The incidents, first reported by journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters in Nine newspapers in 2018, sparked a years-long defamation fight. Justice Anthony Besanko in 2023 found the claims were substantially true. The court dismissed the Victoria Cross recipient's appeal against that finding on Friday, adding to a legal bill expected to run into the tens of millions of dollars. Roberts-Smith argued the judge erred in finding he killed a man with a prosthetic leg and ordered the execution of another, elderly man at a compound called Whiskey 108 in order to "blood the rookie". The judge failed to give weight to official records suggesting the pair were insurgents legitimately killed while fleeing the compound, or adequately deal with the improbability of a widespread conspiracy to conceal the truth when those records were made, the appeal argued. Rather than a widespread conspiracy, the court ruled there were other, simpler explanations. "It can be explained by the more pedestrian, if disappointing, path of widespread individual failure. "All the soldiers that knew or suspected looked the other way," Justices Nye Perram, Anna Katzmann and Geoffrey Kennett said in the published findings. Soldiers told the court they feared reprisal. "I was afraid what would possibly happen to me if I was seen to be the bloke who was speaking out about incidents and not playing the team game," one said. "The primary judge's conclusion that the soldiers had reasons not to speak out was, as His Honour correctly observed, part of the sad facts of the case," the appeal judges said. Roberts-Smith bringing the prosthetic leg back to Australia and encouraging other soldiers to drink beer out of it was also found to be substantially true by the primary judge and was among the findings for which appeals were dismissed. The appeal court found no errors in Justice Besanko's finding that Roberts-Smith had murdered a man named Ali Jan by kicking him off a cliff and ordering another soldier to shoot him. The September 11, 2012, incident in the Afghanistan village of Darwan was among other reported claims found to be substantially true that conveyed to readers that Roberts-Smith was a war criminal who had disgraced his country and its army. Similarly, no errors were found in a finding Roberts-Smith ordered another soldier, through an interpreter, to shoot a detained man in nearby Chinartu about a month later. An argument Justice Besanko failed to apply legal principles for determining truth was also rejected. The court ruled he had carefully and repeatedly adhered to them, discussing them at length in his reasoning. The trial judge was "acutely conscious of the seriousness of the findings", resisting some when nonetheless compelling evidence was insufficient, the appeal court said. He had also rejected evidence from Roberts-Smith and others as false. Two errors in the primary judge's reasoning were detected but ruled immaterial on the appeal. The trial ran for 110 days, stretched out over more than a year. More than a thousand documents were tendered and 44 witnesses were called. The appeal itself took 10 days, with numerous pre-trial and post-trial hearings, taking the case's total estimated bill north of $30 million. Roberts-Smith plans to appeal to the High Court. "I continue to maintain my innocence and deny these egregious, spiteful allegations," he wrote in a statement on Friday. Lifeline 13 11 14 Open Arms 1800 011 046
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Ben Roberts-Smith defamation appeal failed because ‘unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses', judges explain
Ben Roberts-Smith acted with 'a certain recklessness or perhaps even brazenness' when he killed a man with a prosthetic leg in Afghanistan in full view of other soldiers by shooting him with a machine gun, the full bench of the federal court has found. 'The problem for [Roberts-Smith] is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder,' the judges wrote. The disgraced former soldier lost his appeal against a defamation case ruling last week, with three justices of the federal court agreeing that he was not defamed by Nine newspapers and journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters when they published reports in 2018 which claimed he had committed war crimes. The decision of the court was handed down on Friday morning in Sydney, but reasons for the judgment were temporarily withheld to give the federal government time to ensure that no matters of national security had inadvertently been revealed in them. The open reasons were published on Tuesday. Roberts-Smith has always denied the allegations against him and indicated he would appeal the decision to the high court. In the open reasons, Justices Nye Perram, Anna Katzmann and Geoffrey Kennett examined the findings of Justice Anthony Besanko, who ruled in 2023 that Roberts-Smith had, on the balance of probabilities, committed war crimes while deployed in Afghanistan. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'We detect no error in his Honour's approach,' the justices wrote, in an analysis of Besanko's findings relating to one of the deaths at the heart of the case – the killing of an unarmed Afghan man who had a prosthetic leg. 'The eyewitness accounts provided cogent evidence that the appellant had machine gunned the man with the prosthetic leg … When all is said and done, it is a rare murder that is witnessed by three independent witnesses. The appellant's efforts to construct uncertainty out of inconsistencies in peripheral detail are unpersuasive.' The bench also dealt with Roberts-Smith's contention that Besanko had erred in his decision by reasoning 'in a fashion which had reversed the burden of proof'. 'There is nothing in this submission,' concluded the appeal judges, who added that some of the criticisms made of Besanko in Roberts-Smith's appeal submission were 'both unfair and unfounded'. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The decision of the full bench of the federal court affirms as substantially true claims made in news reports by McKenzie and Masters in 2018 that Roberts-Smith was responsible for the murder of four unarmed civilians when deployed in Afghanistan. The bench backed Besanko's reasoning, calling it a 'long, careful and clear judgment'. 'We are satisfied that his Honour's conclusions with respect to the substantial truth of the relevant imputations conveyed by the respondents' articles were correct. Consequently, the appeals must be dismissed.' The bench ordered Roberts-Smith to pay costs, which the Sydney Morning Herald has estimated to exceed $40m.
ABC News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case appeal dismissal judgment released by Federal Court
The Federal Court has published its reasons for dismissing war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith's bid to overturn his defamation loss, which found the Victoria Cross recipient complicit in war crimes while deployed to Afghanistan. The former Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) corporal launched an appeal after losing his defamation case against three Nine-owned newspapers following a civil trial, which ran for more than 100 days over 2021 and 2022. Mr Roberts-Smith's appeal, which was heard in February last year, was unanimously thrown out by the full bench of the Federal Court on Friday. Federal Court Justices Geoffrey Kennett, Nye Perram and Anna Katzmann found "the evidence was sufficiently cogent to support the findings that the appellant [Mr Roberts-Smith] murdered four Afghan men". The publication of the court's reasons for its decision was briefly delayed to give the Commonwealth the opportunity to redact any evidence that may present national security concerns. "In a long, careful and clear judgment the primary judge [Justice Anthony Besanko] correctly identified and applied the relevant legal principles and paid close attention to the serious nature of the allegations and the standard of proof," the judgment read. "His Honour repeatedly reminded himself that the respondents bore the onus of proving the substantial truth of the imputations and of the cogency of the evidence necessary to discharge it." One of the allegations against Mr Roberts-Smith, which was found to be substantially true to a civil standard, was that the soldier committed murder by machine gunning an Afghan man with a prosthetic leg outside a compound during a mission on Easter Sunday in 2009. In its appeal judgment, the court characterised the unlawful killing as "dramatic" and suggested a sense of "brazenness" on Mr Roberts-Smiths part considering the presence of three witnesses. "The killing of the man with the prosthetic leg in such a dramatic fashion does suggest a certain recklessness or perhaps even brazenness on the part of the appellant," the Federal Court found. "The problem for the appellant is that, unlike most homicides, there were three eyewitnesses to this murder." "The appellant's efforts to construct uncertainty out of inconsistencies in peripheral detail are unpersuasive." The full bench also upheld the allegation against Mr Roberts-Smith that during the same mission, he authorised the execution of an unarmed Afghan by a junior trooper in his patrol as an act of "blooding the rookie". "For completeness, we are satisfied that the evidence concerning the blooding the rookie allegation was not only cogently, but in fact powerfully, probative that the appellant and Person 5 had succeeded in having Person 4 kill someone and this is so taking into account the seriousness of the allegation and the presumption of innocence," the judgment read. The court also rejected Mr Roberts-Smith's claim that Justice Besanko failed to give weight to his presumption of innocence. "These were no mere ritualistic incantations, as the appellant suggested," the judgment read. "It is apparent that His Honour was acutely conscious of the seriousness of the findings the respondents called upon him to make and of the necessity that he be reasonably satisfied that the imputations were substantially true without resorting to inexact proofs, indefinite testimony or indirect inferences." Mr Roberts-Smith indicated on Friday that he would immediately seek a High Court challenge to the Federal Court's dismissal of his appeal and application to reopen the matter with the inclusion of new evidence.
