On 5/5/2022 the Maryborough Sun published an article entitled “The faces of the election.” Prior to this they invited candidates to submit answers to 8 questions. Their invitation included the following;
“There is no word limit, however, we suggest a response of 200 words or less for each answer. We reserve the right to edit answers for legal reasons and space but will endeavour to include your full responses.” That makes a possible 1,600 words.
I sent in my answers and waited until finally the article appeared online. I was very disappointed and wrote this to the Paper 10/5/2022.
“Your article on page 9“The faces of the election.” is defamatory..…..The core of your defamation was that you edited out of my response, any mention of my main proposal:
“The government should issue 100% of our money supply debt free and be prohibited from borrowing money from foreign controlled banks.”
Without mentioning this and then listing the following policies: (1. No need for income tax on workers and Australian owned businesses. 2. Free universal insurance. 3. Free medical and dental. 4. Free education. 5.Infrastructure projects, limited only by the available manpower to do the job.) you have intentionally made it appear that I was a buffoon making grand promises with no way of paying for them. It is more likely that you are the buffoons for exposing your publication, by such an obvious and blatant defamation.
I have been fighting the good fight against the Bankers and their debt based monetary system for almost 20 years. I am not in this for the money. I will settle for publication of a genuine apology together with my profile photo and a copy of the attached article in your next publication on 19/5/22…….
If I do not receive a response to my settlement proposal in the affirmative within 48 hours of the date and time of this email, I will proceed to expose your defamation by whatever means I deem fit……”
In addition, the whole tone of the article was defamatory by way of certain material edited out and other material left in.
The first response I received was from the journalist I was dealing with as follows 10/5/2022:
“Hi John. Sorry about this. I did not edit your response, the editor did. He is overseas however I will forward your email to him immediately.”
I responded 10/5/2022:
Regardless of the fact that your editor is overseas, I have been defamed. My position as stated in my last email remains unchanged. I look forward to your publication’s response.
On 12/5/2022 I received this response:
Hi John,
Sorry to hear your views regarding your statement published in the last edition and I understand your concern.
Significant cuts needed to be made to all of the candidate’s statements, and all were informed that no more than 200 words were asked for, and that they were all subject to editing as required to fit.……….”
Regards,
Craig Winter
EDITOR
I note that the Maryborough Sun header includes “Locally owned…..PUBLISHED FORTNIGHTLY BY THE WINTER GROUP.”
I responded by quoting from the original email from the journalist which is quoted above and asked for a possible 1,600 words.
The last I had from Craig was:
“I will no longer enter into any correspondence with you in regard to this matter. Have your lawyers contact me direct for all future dealings.”
Of cause the printed responses from all candidates were way over 200 words. I estimate at least 1,300 for Lew O’Brien LNP and at least 1,000 for Craig Armstrong Greens. The word count for the answers submitted by me is 1,188, with no editing.
