AdAsia publisher apologises to Marketing

The editor and publisher of AdAsia magazine, Allein Moore, has apologised to Lighthouse Independent Media, publisher of Marketing, over the content of an article which appeared in AdAsia back in 2006.

According to publicly available court documents, Lighthouse sued Moore and his company, BluePrint Media, alleging that the article contained defamatory and untrue statements which damaged the reputations of the company, its management and staff. Lighthouse also sued Greg Coops, the managing director of research firm Asian Strategies, who had gained some notoriety in the Tatler v Prestige court case and was extensively quoted in the article.

While Coops retracted his statements, apologised and settled with Lighthouse early in proceedings, Moore and BluePrint contested the case but ended up settling the day the trial was due to begin.

“We happily accept valid criticism, but when a competitor slurs our reputation by printing assertions that are factually incorrect with no attempt to check the facts with us or to give us a chance to comment, we had no choice but to act,” said Justin Randles group managing director of Lighthouse. “We are never in favour of legal action but now that it’s all over, we are very happy with the outcome.”

In his affidavit tendered for the purposes of the trial, Moore denied the article could be seen to be referring to Lighthouse and Marketing and denied the article cast aspersions on Lighthouse. However, after the settlement was reached between Lighthouse, Blueprint and Moore, in a clarification published in a recent issue of AdAsia, Moore admitted the article was about Lighthouse and the content of the article could in fact be understood by some readers to mean that Lighthouse deceives its advertisers and are untrustworthy. Moore also admitted the article contained factual errors and he had no reason to cast aspersions on Lighthouse, its management and staff or to doubt their integrity.

After Coops settled with Lighthouse, Moore and BluePrint took out a third party action against Coops, alleging that Coops was responsible for the offending words. In his affidavit tendered for the latter action, Coops denied the allegation, claiming that as he was only interviewed for the article and that he was not involved in its final production, there was no way he could be held responsible.

The article that sparked the legal wrangle began as a report on the Tatler v Prestige case before editorialising on Lighthouse’s readership surveys.

Neither Coops nor Moore was prepared to further comment when approached by Marketing. The terms of the court settlement can not be disclosed.

To read the full apology click here.