News website responds to News Corp’s threat of legal action by removing documents, but not the stories based on them

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Crikey has agreed to remove from its website and destroy all leaked News Corp financial documents after a threat of legal action from Rupert Murdoch’s Australian arm.



The publisher also advised readers to clear their cache if they had viewed the document.

On Wednesday Crikey published the original 270 pages of financial documents from June 2013, which contained more details than the company had ever released to the market.

In a statement on its website on Thursday night Crikey’s parent company, Private Media, said the news stories based on the document would remain and the agreement did not prevent others from publishing stories based on the material.

“Private Media cannot be sued over publication of the confidential documents,” the statement said. “The agreement is not a legal injunction. It does not prevent others from publishing stories based on the documents.”

Private Media CEO Marina Go said Crikey remained proud of “our ‘story behind the story’ brand of independent journalism”.