Private Media CEO Will Hayward confirmed to this masthead the company’s intention to donate the money to the AJF, commenting they are “delighted” with the outcome.

“It’s a very big day for us,” Hayward added.

Federal Court defamation proceedings were filed against Crikey last August, the action taken over a June 29, 2022, article by politics editor Bernard Keane, which referred to Murdoch’s family as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the US Capitol riots in January 2021.

The article did not name Lachlan Murdoch but referred to “the Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators”.

Speaking to this masthead in June, Hayward declined to comment on Churchill’s allegations Private Media used the legal case as a subscriber campaign, though he said a figure in the region of 5000 new sign-ups since the publication of the article sounded “about right”.

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At its standard yearly price point, 5000 retained subscribers amounts to annual revenue of $995,000.

An internal source at Crikey told this masthead that the increased subscriber numbers took its total figure to the “high 20[thousand]s”, that figure tripling in the past three years.

The news, revealed by Crikey on Tuesday, comes on the same day it has launched a new editorial series called The Murdoch Century, authored by Keane, examining the legacy of Rupert Murdoch, father of Lachlan and executive chairman of News Corp.