The mining billionaire and head of Hancock Prospecting Propriety Limited, Gina Rinehart, has indicated that due to her portrayal in the Channel Nine mini-series she is set to sue the network for defamation.
Episode two of House of Hancock aired last night and The Australian's Media Section is reporting that after Rinehart’s legal team viewed the episode on Friday, they requested several changes be made, however Nine disputed a lot of them.
Since the episode aired Rinehart’s team told The Australian that even though a disclaimer was put at the front of the program, it was still highly defamatory.
A statement released by Mark Wilks, solicitor for Mrs Gina Rinehart said that the proceedings against Channel Nine are still on going: "Although Channel 9 inserted a disclaimer into House of Hancock regarding that certain scenes were fictionalised, the House of Hancock miniseries remains devoid of factual accuracy and is almost entirely fiction. What was not entirely fictitious, was twisted so as to be incorrect."
“As a show it has denigrated the memory of Mrs Rinehart’s late parents and husband and wrongly portrayed that it accurately depicted those family members. The show misled that such portrayal was "real " or " true" when it was not. Obviously a portrayal of events that didn't occur, and or didn't occur in that way, cannot form a basis for depicting Mrs Rinehart, her parents or her husband.”
Before the show aired the Nine Network claimed to have resoled the dispute saying in a statement that: “The Nine Network is delighted the matter is resolved with Mrs Rinehart. We're very proud of the piece of drama which will go to air tomorrow night at 8.45pm.
Last night the episode drew in 1.38 million viewers, making it the second highest show of the night in five metro areas according to OzTam.
When contacted this morning Channel Nine had no further comments to make.
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