FOX Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch today dropped a high-profile defamation case against a small Australian website that accused his family’s conservative media empire of inflaming the 2021 US Capitol riots.

Lawyers for Crikey said Lachlan, the eldest son of billionaire Rupert Murdoch, had “discontinued his defamation case”, adding that Crikey would seek to recoup legal costs. 

Lachlan had launched legal action after a June 2022 article described the Murdochs and “poisonous Fox News commentators” as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the January 6 post-US-election riots.

With the support of a high-powered legal team, Lachlan had widely been expected to win the case and ruin the small independent publisher with legal costs.

His abrupt decision to drop the lawsuit comes just days after US-based Fox News agreed to pay US$787.5 million for falsely claiming US election voting machines were rigged.

That US case, brought by voting machine company Dominion, had exposed messages between Fox News staff that showed the network knew defeated candidate Donald Trump’s claims of fraud were untrue.

In a statement to Australian media, Murdoch’s lawyer claimed there was “no truth” to Crikey’s claims, but decided to drop the case anyway.

Crikey had sought to introduce evidence relating to the Dominion case to help its defence, a potentially problematic development for Lachlan. 

“Mr (Lachlan) Murdoch remains confident that the court would ultimately find in his favour,” lawyer John Churchill said.

“However, he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers.”

Crikey had repeatedly dared Murdoch to sue them over the articles, and launched fundraising and subscription drives off the back of the legal action.

Fox News still faces a separate US$2.7 billion lawsuit from another electronic voting company – Smartmatic – which claims that the right-wing network broadcast lies that “decimated” its business prospects. – AFP, April 21, 2023.