Facebook page, some of the postings derive from articles in stablemates of the
Centralian Advocate. In deciding whether to place an article on the Facebook
page, the Centralian Advocate staff have in mind the purposes of expanding
the readership of the newspaper or its digital counterpart; the attraction of the
interests of Facebook users; motivating Facebook users to click on the full
material and engage with the digital article in full; motivating users to share it
with other people in their Facebook group; and motivating users to comment on
the article. This is the same as, or so similar to, the other operations that no
distinction may properly be made.
81
The operation of the public Facebook page is exactly the same as every other
public Facebook page, at least those about which evidence was given in these
proceedings. This includes the capacity to block comments; the capacity to
hide comments; the existence of a Facebook list of “banned” words, the effect
of which was to delete the whole comment, containing it; and the capacity to
have a list of other words that resulted in comments being hidden, which list
was compiled by the owner of the Facebook page.
82
The staff that had been engaged as journalists would monitor the social media
sites of the Centralian Advocate. The editor, Mr Pfeiffer, was also involved in
that process.
83
In the case of the Centralian Advocate, the public Facebook page was used as
a link not only to the Centralian Advocate but to the Northern Territory News.
The Centralian Advocate considered the effect of the posting, which it placed
on the Facebook page, might have on a person featured in the article. In that
regard, the media outlet gave its posts a similar assessment to that done for
published articles, namely, how people are portrayed; making sure that the
story was fair and balanced; and seeking to portray both sides of an argument,
if it were an emotive issue.
84
Mr Pfeiffer agreed that the story relating to Mr Voller was an emotive issue that
could and did trigger very strong positions on both sides, including quite
unreasonable positions.
85
Earlier in these reasons, I have summarised the evidence of Mr Pfeiffer to the
effect that there were about 2 to 5 hyperlinks posted each day; each hyperlink