Journalist Lisa Wilkinson has appeared in federal court in her battle to force network ten to pay her legal fees in the defamation case brought by former liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann. Ms. Wilkinson told the court she alone had been blamed for de-railing Mr. Lehrmann's trial after a Logies speech which had been checked and approved by the network. The trial over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins was abandoned with no findings against Bruce Lehrmann.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Well, I guess basically that it wasn't good.
00:05 And more and more of it has been laid bare this afternoon as the lawyer from Network
00:12 10 has been answering questions in a fairly gruelling session which has only just wrapped
00:18 up.
00:19 Lisa Wilkinson said she had begged the network to correct the record when there were a series
00:24 of headlines accusing her of wrecking the trial and causing it to be delayed.
00:34 And the network decided not to.
00:38 The lawyer for the network says that was because they were concerned if they said anything
00:43 they could run the risk of a further or a further risk of contempt of court and interrupt
00:49 sub judice.
00:50 So they wanted to stay quiet even though Lisa Wilkinson was taking a battering and being
00:59 blamed for what had happened.
01:01 And there was a second string as well which was that she had always said that she was
01:08 not warned by the prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, not to give the speech.
01:15 And Mr Drumgold had indicated to the court that she had been warned and that formed the
01:20 basis of the ruling on the stay application at the time.
01:25 He later recounted, Mr Drumgold later conceded that he hadn't warned her.
01:31 And so Ms Wilkinson says she was given no help by the network to drag any of that out
01:37 and she's had to employ her own lawyers.
01:42 And who was this YouTube identity mentioned today?
01:46 Well this YouTuber, Glenn Logan, has a site called Feminism Debunked and he was rebroadcasting
01:57 Bruce Lehman's defamation case late last year.
02:00 He was warned not to do it.
02:02 In fact there was a warning at the start of every day not to rebroadcast the YouTube version
02:08 of the case.
02:11 And many people were warned for reposting and most of them took it down.
02:16 But he didn't.
02:17 His lawyer told the court today that he didn't know what was being said.
02:22 He wasn't listening to it.
02:23 He was just recording and rebroadcasting it and thought he was doing a public service
02:29 and didn't realise he was in trouble till he got a summons.
02:32 Whether that gets believed we'll have to see later.
02:37 But the court has now moved to begin contempt proceedings against him.
02:43 Ok so now this is all a result of this original defamation case.
02:48 What's happened with that and where's that at?
02:52 Well the defamation case wrapped up just before Christmas and through the Christmas holidays
02:58 in fact there were more and more documents landing in the court's open file.
03:04 The judge said he's been working every day since the hearings wrapped up except for Christmas
03:11 Day and he says that he thinks he'll be in a position to deliver his judgement sometime
03:18 in March.
03:20 So I'm looking forward to that Joe.
03:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]