Carol Altmann – The Terrier
I wasn’t able to talk about this legal action during the state election campaign, but a correction has since been published online by The Warrnambool Standard. I am publishing it tonight because people still ask me if I was “successfully sued” for writing about potential conflicts of interest at Lyndoch Living. I wasn’t.
My stories relating to this issue remain online. What was removed were Facebook comments that I believed were part of letting people have a say, but unfortunately freedom of speech is a tricky thing – everyone believes in it, until they don’t.
As a publisher of a Facebook page, the responsibility for comments falls to me, not Facebook. That ended up costing my insurer (via the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance) some money to settle, rather than spend even more money fighting it through court.
Such are the difficult times in which journalists work, but I hope it never stops journalists – especially local journalists – from asking the hard questions. See you down the road.