News Snapshot:
MELBOURNE (NYTIMES) – Australia’s Defence Minister on Wednesday (Nov 24) won a defamation case over a six-word tweet that called him a “rape apologist”. Critics and experts said the court case exemplified the conservative government’s heavy-handed approach toward regulating damaging commentary on social media – what Prime Minister Scott Morrison called “a coward’s palace”. The case also represented a troubling shift as politicians bring more lawsuits against ordinary citizens, they said. The dispute began when Mr Shane Bazzi, an advocate for refugees who has 13,000 Twitter followers, wrote a Twitter post in February about Mr Peter Dutton, then the country’s...
