Defamation or Joke? The Law’s Stance on Social Comedy

In the case of Cornes v The Ten Group Pty Ltd & Ors [2011] SASC 104, the court has ruled that there is a fine line between a joke and an indefensible defamatory comment. The test of the ‘ordinary reasonable person’ is applied by the court to decide whether a comedic jest would be understood as defamatory.

The case has shown that the court is prepared to take a spartan approach to cases of alleged defamation. The background of the case was that during an interview with Stuart Dew on Channel Ten’s Before the Game show, Mick Molloy, a comedian, had unwittingly suggested that Dew had ‘slept’ with Nicole Cornes to justify her flattering article about him. The Defendant had argued that the history of the show and its tendency to jest as a result of its array of comedian hosts should be taken into account to discern the immediate context of the comment. The court ruled that the interview was one that was of an ‘informative’ nature despite its comedic element and the ‘ordinary reasonable person’ would not be likely to construe the comment as simply a joke.

The court’s finding will undoubtedly create uncertainties for publishers and performers of comedic material given comedy’s current tendency to script jokes based around current affairs. Even having a well-known comedian perform a joke may not be enough for in this case, the court effectively found the Plaintiff’s reputation was more well-known than the works and reputation of the comedian Mick Molloy.

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