And now a happy-making Christmas story. “Alan Jones settles defamation lawsuit with SBS.” https://t.co/OhEaHlVea7

“SBS filed a defence of truth to the imputations that Jones was a racist, a misogynist, a liar and a disgraceful high school teacher.”

“SBS also denied the meanings claimed by Jones, pleaded the defence of honest opinion, and asserted that Jones’ reputation was already so bad it could not be damaged by the broadcast.”
This relates to a tribute segment on “the Feed” by Alex Lee which said Jones "made a career out of bullying people", "gleefully used racial slurs" and "spread lies and fake news".
As the story says: Jones claimed in court documents that the broadcast conveyed ten defamatory imputations about him, including that he "achieved his success as a broadcaster by habitually seeking to intimidate vulnerable people".
That SMH story goes on to list a number of other things that Jones claims the story suggested.

Anyway SBS said this was either all trust or honest comment. An agreement was reached to take down the segment, and no apology or compensation to Jones is needed.
I’m happy for SBS and for Alex, of course. But I’m disappointed that we won’t see a court rehash all these things and decide whether it’s fair to call Alan Jones a racist, bully, liar, disgraceful high school teacher, hypocrite, or misogynist.
So anyway that’s a fair report of what happened in a legal case. We’ll have to wait another day to find out the answer to all those questions.
One of my best lessons at the ABC was when one of the lawyers came over to Adelaide to say we were under-budget on our defamation spend, and here’s how to run things much closer to the edge without getting into too much trouble.
From memory the only time one of my programs was done for defo was during local government elections. Some bloke was running again for mayor of somewhere after being savaged over the Ask Wednesday bushfires. Reporter said he “must be a [bit of] a masochist” or some such...
My understanding is that legal just said the lawyer-talk equivalent of “What if we just give you $3000 to go away?” and he took it. No retraction, no apology, no admission. In my view it gives the impression that someone at the pub suggested he should just give it a go for cash.

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I am going to take the context for this thread from this piece by my good brother @mabziz in 2018-3 years ago. One thing I am so perturbed about is the response of our Attorney General's office to issues of state security. I have no personal grouse against @MalamiSan, but


2. I do have a professional grouse against him. I feel he is not alive to his duties. I feel that he is also not empowering his Director of Public Prosecutions or his Solicitor General. There is clearly a lot that befuddles me and this is because I am a seasoned lawyer and can't/

3. understand why law is not being used as the instrument it was designed for-to enforce law and order. Let us take the case of Nnamdi Kanu-this man was arraigned in Nigeria on a charge of treason/treasonable felony-he was on bail & he jumped bail. Why has he not been extradited?

4. Is it that Kanu is somehow bigger than Nigeria? What has happened to his surety who failed to produce him? Who is prosecuting him? Our Federal Ministry of Justice? Should Malami not explain to Nigeria why Nnamdi Kanu is still taunting Nigeria daily & still actively destroying/

5. our unity everyday. He is putting the lives of many people at risk and stoking ethnic dissent easily. The Fulani herdsmen dilemma, the burning of Lagos State and his coordination of same on phone-in radio channels, his videos are all stoking a Yoruba/Igbo carnage. Same with/
Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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