Pauline Hanson: it was not me. I’m suing
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Is it just that Pauline Hanson is somehow fairer game? Can you imagine a situation where 30-year-old nude photographs, of, let’s see, Peter Costello, were presented to a Sunday newspaper editor and that editor, without having actually contacted Costello, saw fit to publish them? That’s what happened to Pauline at the hands of the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun. And the story had legs. Here are the latest Media Monitors mention figures for the past 48 hours:
Hanson has now issued a simple denial. As Fairfax websites report today: “I’m amazed, I’m disgusted, I’m baffled,” Ms Hanson said. “Yesterday I’m walking around [campaigning] and everyone’s looking at me like I’ve got no clothes on. This has been terribly embarrassing for me… but it’s not me.” She told a press conference this morning: “I’ve had enough. The truth is that is not me in those photos.” “It’s not me” — where would that have left Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen if his staff had managed to make contact with Ms Hanson prior to publication? As it was, Breen claims to have made to most stringent tests of authenticity possible, as you would having paid $15,000 for the merchandise:
They might not have been doctored, Neil, but were they of the person you claimed was the subject? Ms Hanson says that her soliticitors have commenced proceedings with News Limited, Channels Nine and Seven today.
News Limited bloggers are divided on the story, after a lame defence of the Sunday publication by the Herald Sun’s Robyn Riley at the weekend, claiming publication of three-decade-old nudes was somehow in the “public interest”:
The Telegraph’s Tim Blair and the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt have taken a counter position. As Bolt argues:
And Blair:
How all this stands in light of Ms Hanson’s point blank denial must be causing some deep unease at News Limited. Her legal action, if it is indeed underway, may not be quite so clear cut as it first appears. According to one defamation law expert this morning, “It’s outrageous if the photos were not her, but whether it’s defamatory is another thing. “It’s hard to see what sort of defamatory imputation you could get out of this.” |
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11 Comments
I sincerely hope that the tabloid publishers of this dreck lose an absolute fortune in court. Truly, there should be a right to privacy in this country but if the execrable Robin Riley of the Herald Sun truly believes that public figures are public property then I hope someone finds some of the many skeletons in her closet and posts same on the ‘net to her great shame and embarrassment.
How are we ever going to get higher quality politicians in this country if every youthful indiscretion can be freely published by Australia’s gutter press?
A great story this has developed into - I hope the media gets sued and highly embarrassed.
It’s hard to see how any half-creative barrister could find any sort of difficulty wringing a defamatory imputation out of the suggestion that Hanson was the kind of 19-year old who would undress for a raunchy photo shoot.
If this was Pauline she had a great body! onya Pauline. But the only way we’re going to REALLY know if it was her is if she shows us her belly button. The minx in the picture has an outy. If Pauline has an inny it’s definitely not her.
Leave her alone press bullies! Pick on somebody your own size.
I was talking to complete strangers at a cafe this weekend who, I am pretty sure, don’t vote for Pauline and they were totally disgusted at this crap! Where is the fair go! Creeps!
This episode is disgusting and whilst it may have sold papers in the short term in the long term it will help reduce sales.
Pauline may be public property but this is not relevant to her statements now. Whilst her policies in the past have been abhorrent I don’t believe she has commented on moral issues and it is only in this context it would have been relevant. There would not have been a need to publish them either.
This is gutter journalism which is likely to help Pauline’s cause because of a sympathy vote.
Pauline will unwittingly get her own back on the policital system that let her down because its influenced by the major parties in cohort with politically-aligned media outlets. News Limited stuffed the PH story with its avid bent to dump Hanson via a downsized, ill-resourced media workforce. This rabid supporter of the Liberals and their HR policies is now seeing the chickens come home to roost. News Limited’s outlets run on the smell of an oily rag which is why the Hanson story was polluted. Its not just the Murray Darling battling a drought.
Ohh la la !. I’m afraid Venise, these pics didn’t have quite the same effect on me as Mrs Sarkozy’s nude snap !. You make valid points though. Aussies just appear at times to be cringingly childish about normal adult behaviour. Witness the sad attempt by News Ltd to paint Kevin Dull as a laptop dancer fancier and it back-fired. Are we seeing something similar here ?. I ‘m pleased though someone took the Sunday Tele for 15 grand-hope he and his girlfriend in the pics enjoy their cash.
I’m almost inclined to think Ms Hanson deserves everything she is getting. God alone knows what misery was inflicted on non-conservative people during the heydays of her witch-hunting years.
To me, the salient point is, the great discredit it brings to the much vaunted Aussie Battlers Crap with which this nation is besotted.
I seem to remember when the President of France, Sarkozy, was about to be sworn into office when the English press published a beautiful shot of his wife, who was completely naked. The French didn’t go into a moralistic frenzy about this. Nor should they have. But here in good old Oz, the arbiter of everything squalid, the Sun Herald, publishes shots of a woman who may, or may not be Ms Hanson. In black knickers and provocative black leather strap across her nipples. There is nothing beautiful about these shots and I would be more than happy to Rupert Murdoch nailed to the nearest crucifix.
Whether it was a political Party who put the HS up to it, or another one of Ms Hanson’s enemies, is impossible to say. However, the people responsible knew exactly how salacious the HS readers are.
Failing the ability to be mature about such an issue, the Australian people should at least see to it that the HS gets every stinking piece of sh-t which is thrown at it.
The same news organisation attempted to profit off illicit child sex in the UK with their ‘Alfie’ tale and then boasted of the web hits the story received. They have no morals.Sue the pants of them Pauline !. Hate her politics but Hanson has been the subject of some vicious campaigns.
Shes does keep us amused though !.
Her politics aside, this woman has taken hits in places most of us don’t even have places!!!ya have to admire her spirit to survive.
She just keeps on getting up again, and this time thanks to those D/Heads at the HS, she is a “shoe in” at the next election ha ha ha