Emails from the Daily Mail newsroom before a controversial article was published about Nine presenter Erin Molan have been revealed in court.
An editor at the Daily Mail emailed a journalist about Nine broadcaster Erin Molan saying “Let’s rip into this sheila” before the site published an article that is now the subject of a bitter defamation battle.
Internal newsroom emails were revealed in the Federal Court on Monday as the high profile trial between the sports presenter and the online news website kicked off.
Ms Molan’s barrister Kieran Smark accused the Daily Mail of having “manufactured” a news story and subsequent social media frenzy about Ms Molan out of a “small, innocuous” fragment of audio from a popular NRL program.
Ms Molan claims the outlet defamed her by painting her as “racist” and an “arrogant white woman of privilege” after she said “hooka looka mooka hooka fooka” on radio.
She uttered the phrase on 2GB’s Continuous Call Team after a co-host mentioned practicing how to pronounce player names.
The Daily Mail is defending the case and has filed a truth defence.
Mr Smark said the Daily Mail had “distorted” Ms Molan’s comment, which were a reference to a “humorous story” previously told on the show about father-son duo Ray and Chris Warren getting “into a tangle” while practising names.
“So far as there was a butt of the joke, it was the Warrens,” Mr Smark said.
“It was lighthearted humour at their expense ... their good faith but not completely adequate attempts to get on top of some tricky players’ names.”
Ms Molan was harking back to this story when she uttered the “gibberish” phrase, Mr Smark said, and it was just another moment of ad libbing on the “silly” and “lighthearted” show.
He said the comment generated no complaints until the Daily Mail published a story on June 4 that invited public opprobrium.
This was in turn used to generate a second story the next day, he said, which is the one Ms Molan is suing over.
On the morning of June 5 a Daily Mail reporter emailed editor Barclay Crawford alerting him to comments critical of Ms Molan from University of Auckland academic Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, co-head of the School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies.
Mr Crawford forwarded the email to a different journalist, writing “Let’s rip into this sheila”, Mr Smark said.
“That’s the instruction to use this material in a particular way,” Mr Smark said.
He said the lecturer’s comments were responding to the Daily Mail article of June 4 and it was “an example of the way in which the content was generated”.
“It’s all seeded out of the Daily Mail’s own publication,” he said.
“Having provoked this outrage, they now harvest it, and turn it into their content.”
Ms Molan alleges the Daily Mail falsely reported she had refused to apologise and made up a quote from her about the comment being an “inside joke”.
Mr Smark said nothing in the communications between Nine, Ms Molan and the Mail’s journalists “could be fairly characterised as a refusal to apologise”.
He said a text asking if Ms Molan would apologise was sent half an hour before the story was published and the presenter did not reply.
Ms Molan in fact recorded an apology which was broadcast on 2GB that afternoon, he said.
The Nine star also alleges the outlet is responsible for generating a wave of further criticism over the remark that flowed into her direct messages and mentions in the weeks after the stories.
Mr Smark read out an Instagram post from former NRL star John Hopoate, who wrote: “It was an inside joke between colleagues so it’s OK. Just like when I accidentally trip this racist bitch over and she falls and scrapes her racist mouth on the ground.”
This was clearly a response to the Daily Mail articles, not Ms Molan’s actual conduct, Mr Smark said.
Ms Molan is expected to give evidence on Monday afternoon.
More to come
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2021-08-30 04:04:14Z
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