Sydney Charity Defamed By Fairfax

 

28 September 2005 Media Release

A NSW Supreme Court jury today ruled that Sydney based charity, the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood (FHA), was defamed in a 1995 article in The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).

 

Directors of the FHA, the acclaimed mountaineer, Tim Macartney-Snape and Australian biologist, Jeremy Griffith, welcomed the jury’s decision as a very important outcome in their ten-year campaign to redress the misrepresentation cast upon the organisation.

 

The SMH feature article, written by Reverend David Millikan, publicised an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV Four Corners program which aired nationally two days later.

 

Both publications were written by Reverend David Millikan. The Four Corners program was also found to be defamatory of Macartney-Snape and Griffith in a 2003 jury hearing.

 

Since the 1995 publications, Macartney-Snape and Griffith have remained committed to generating scientific debate about the subject of the human condition. Griffith’s recent book, A Species In Denial was launched in 2003 and has since become a best-seller in Australia and New Zealand.

 

Despite many attempts to obtain redress, involving garnering support from some of Australasia’s most eminent scientists, and a determination by the Australian Broadcasting Authority that the Four Corners program was ‘inaccurate, unbalanced and partial’, no apology has been offered by either the ABC or Fairfax.

 

Questions of defences and damages will be determined at a later hearing.

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Notes To Editor:

The FHA, of which Macartney-Snape and Griffith are founding directors, is a NSW registered charity and not-for-profit organisation that was established in 1983 with the object of achieving a fundamental improvement in the human situation through rational analysis of the human condition. The FHA’s website is www.humancondition.com.

 

Tim Macartney-Snape BSc AM, the first Australian to climb Mt Everest, is a world renowned mountaineer, twice order of Australia recipient and public speaker of note.

 

Jeremy Griffith BSc is an Australian biologist, philosopher and thinker who presented his powerful insights on the subject of the human condition in his third book A Species In Denial (2003).