Australian
Screen

Clip description

Max has been found guilty and sentenced to death. His appeal to the High Court has also been rejected, on the grounds that the court cannot entertain new evidence. At a city watering hole, David O’Sullivan (Robert Carlyle) and Helen Devaney (Kerry Fox) are approached by Rupert Murdoch (Ben Mendelsohn), owner of the Adelaide News. He introduces his editor, Rohan Rivett (John Gregg), who says the News is on a 'crusade’ to drag Adelaide into the 20th century. Murdoch says his newspaper intends to save Max’s life and fight the use of capital punishment. O’Sullivan decides to appeal to the Privy Council, the highest court in the British Commonwealth. Devaney is sceptical, given that the case has already bankrupted their law firm.

Curator’s notes

The film was criticised by David Bowman, one of the reporters on the News who covered the Stuart case, for overemphasising the role of the then 28-year-old Rupert Murdoch in the campaign. Bowman contended that the campaign was more the work of the editor, Rohan Rivett, a renowned figure in Australian journalism. 'He was a born crusader and he used the News like a trumpet’, Bowman wrote in the Adelaide Review. 'He [Rivett] was not backing Stuart’s innocence, but seeking information that would settle the doubts one way or another, a position which some people found easy to distort’. Bowman wrote that Rivett 'was to pay dearly for the Stuart connection’. He and the paper were charged with seditious libel and malicious libel, although all charges were dismissed by a jury, or withdrawn. 'Five weeks later Rivett received a very brief letter from Murdoch, who had shifted his headquarters to Sydney. It told Rivett he was dismissed. No explanation was given.’