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Australian defamation law is considered fairly strict as comparing to the other
countries such as the USA or UK.
Each state and territory in Australia has its own defamation laws. But all of
them have some features in common:
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The absence of knowledge of the media defendant is irrelevant to whether
the statement is considered defamatory (i.e. if the media defendant was not
aware that the statement was not true, it does not allow them to avoid the
liability for defamation).
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The media defendant has the burden of proving that the defamatory
material was true (i.e. the plaintiff does not have to prove the defamatory
material was false to sue for defamation).
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The statement is defamatory if it had a potential to hurt the reputation
of the plaintiff; it is not necessary for the plaintiff to prove that
somebody indeed started to think lower about him as the result of the
defamatory statement in the media.
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Whether the statement was defamatory or not is decided upon
the impression the statement produced on a regular viewer (i.e. if some
people could connect, for example, the image on the background with the contents of the
story, displaying of the image will be considered a defamation).
Click
here to read more about the Defamation Law
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