The chairman and CEO of Australian publisher Crikey can be dragged into a high profile defamation suit by Lachlan Murdoch because of their high level of interference with journalists, a court has heard.

On Monday, the Fox Corporation CEO made a bid to expand his case against Crikey publisher Private Media in the Federal Court, arguing he could also sue chairman Eric Beecher and CEO Will Hayward.

Mr Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC argued that the case could be amended to include Beecher and Hayward as the “guiding minds” of Crikey.

When the lawsuit was initially filed in August last year, Mr Murdoch did not even contemplate that the two Crikey heads would interfere as much as they did in the editorial process, Ms Chrysanthou said.

“It did not enter our minds that the suits, the businessmen, the non-journalists, would have been part of that editorial decision-making. And in this case, we now allege not just part of it, but the people who were behind it,” she told Justice Michael Wigney.

The son of Rupert Murdoch has sued the organisation behind the Crikey masthead over an allegedly defamatory June 29 opinion piece by political editor Bernard Keane, that was taken down and then posted back online on August 15.

Lachlan Murdoch alleges the article titled “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator” conveyed a meaning that he illegally conspired with former president Donald Trump to “incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol” in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

Crikey denies this and has raised a public interest defence.

Originally suing over the August 15 reposting merely for damages claimed from Private Media, the media heir wishes to now consider this a separate publication in a campaign planned by Hayward and Beecher.

“Beecher and Hayward, we have alleged, are the guiding mind of Private Media when it came to the reposting. That’s what we allege,” Ms Chrysanthou said.

The reposting of the article was not in response to media speculation about the spat with Mr Murdoch but was instead a commercial decision that boosted Crikey’s subscribers by 5000 people or 25 per cent, the court heard.

Through these added subscriptions, the publisher gained around $500,000 with a further $500,000 brought in through donations, Justice Wigney was told.

Mr Murdoch is also seeking to amend other parts of his case over the Crikey article, including that he is owed aggravated damages over an allegedly disingenuous offer to make amends given weeks before the republication.

“The offer to make amends was drafted and designed to escalate and aggravate the dispute, not to settle the dispute, by deliberate design,” Ms Chrysanthou told the court.

“If my client had accepted that offer to make amends, we will say Your Honour should infer that they still intended to harass and further defame him in this way.”

The hearing continues.

– AAP