Digital Night Editor at The Australian Newspaper and was, prior to July 2018,
the Social Media Editor of Nationwide News.
45
Apart from reference to the use of emoji’s to reflect the reaction of
commentators to either the original article published by The Australian on its
public Facebook page or to comments from a third party user to the original
publication, the evidence of how the public Facebook page operates; its
purpose and the difficulties associated with these suggestions by Mr Shelley
are in or to the same effect as Ms Phan’s evidence. The foregoing comment by
the Court also applies to the lack of knowledge of both Ms Phan and Ms Ryan
(and their team) to the comments about which complaint has been made by the
plaintiff.
46
In the case of The Australian Facebook page, approximately 20 to 30 stories
are posted each day and comments are made up to thousands of times per
day. Evidence was also adduced by Nationwide News in relation to the public
Facebook page of the Centralian Advocate, one of the publications about
which complaint is made in the course of these proceedings.
47
The evidence of Mr Pfeiffer, called in relation to the Centralian Advocate’s
public Facebook page, is to similar effect to the evidence of Ms Phan and
Ms Ryan. Mr Pfeiffer described the process of sharing stories with users of the
Centralian Advocate Facebook page as one which involved the following steps:
the hyperlink to the relevant story is entered into the “write something” section
of the public Facebook page; an image may be added to the hyperlink together
with a description or caption; whereupon the item is posted onto the page by
selecting the option to “publish”.
48
Once published, the commentary appears in the “Posts” section of the
Centralian Advocate Facebook page and third-party users may interact with it
in the same way as described in relation to the other public Facebook pages.
However, the Centralian Advocate is and was a smaller operation.
49
The Centralian Advocate had one photographer; three journalists; a sports
editor; one sub-editor; and Mr Pfeiffer. The Centralian Advocate publishes
twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays).