A dozen of Australia’s largest media organisations have been fined more than $1m for contempt of court over their coverage of Cardinal George Pell’s sexual abuse conviction.On Friday the Victorian supreme court justice John Dixon ruled the 12 organisations had “usurped” the role of the court by breaching a suppression order on Pell’s now-quashed conviction for child sexual abuse.Melbourne newspaper the Age was handed the biggest penalty of $450,000, followed by News Corp outlet news.com.au, which must pay $400,000. Other Nine newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review, were fined $162,000 while the Today show was fined $30,000.The media, Dixon found, “took it upon themselves” to decide “where the balance ought to lie” between Pell’s right to a fair trial and the public’s right to know.Media outlets guilty of contempt in George Pell trial didn't read suppression order or seek legal adviceRead moreDixon rejected the media companies’ submission that the breaches of the suppression order was due to “an honest but mistaken belief that their reporting would not contravene the order”.Instead he found that in most cases the reporting demonstrated that the companies “disagreed with the suppression order, and contended – either as direct opinion or as statements of others adopted without criticism – that the media should not be restrained from reporting the outcome of the trial”.Dixon reserved his harshest judgment for the Age and news.com.au, whose articles, he said, “constituted a blatant and wilful defiance of the court’s authority”.“Each took a deliberate risk by intentionally advancing a collateral attack on the role of suppression orders in Victoria’s criminal justice system,” he said in his judgment.The 12 media companies had already pleaded guilty to contempt for breaching the suppression over Pell’s now-quashed conviction, agreeing to pay $650,000 to cover the prosecution’s legal fees. It will see the total paid out by the media climb to $1.7m.Pell was found guilty of child sexual abuse charges in December 2018. Although that verdict was ultimately overturned by the high court in April last year, at the time it could not be reported on because the high-ranking Catholic official faced a second trial over a different set of allegations.The cardinal was still awaiting the second trial – which did not proceed after those charges were dropped in February 2019 – when the companies published or broadcast reports that did not name him but referred to the verdict. The suppression order was lifted once the second trial was aborted.In his full judgment, Dixon took aim at the Age over its publication of a front-page story on 13 December 2018 under the headline “Why media can’t report on a high-profile case”, which referred both to the existence of the suppression order and the widespread publication of Pell’s name in relation to the case online. The newspaper also published two other articles and an editorial that scrutinised the use of suppression orders in Victorian courts, which was later taken down.During the case, the court heard evidence from the paper’s then editor, Alex Lavelle, that he was satisfied legal advice he had received allowed him to publish a story that did not name Pell.“My major concern was whether we were able to produce a form of words that … could convey to those readers this is the reason why we can’t report on a story you may be aware of,” Lavelle said during the trial.But Dixon disagreed. The paper’s actions, he said, were “planned, deliberate, and well-considered”, as well as “contumacious” – meaning to be stubbornly or wilfully disobedient to authority. Dixon said he did not accept Lavelle’s evidence that he did not want to breach the suppression order, and “categorically” rejected the submission made by the paper that the articles were measured.Instead, he found the publications “amounted to a contempt of the most grave kind”, and “challenged, and carried the potential to diminish, the court’s authority and standing”.“Publication of the three articles and the editorial was egregious journalism, constituting a serious and deliberate breach of the suppression order, and requiring significant weight to be given to the objectives of general and specific deterrence,” Dixon found.Other publications received smaller fines. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph received a $21,000 fine for its front-page article that declared “It’s the Nation’s Biggest Story”, while Brisbane’s Courier-Mail was fined $1,000 over its article that used the headline “Secret Scandal”.In some cases articles linked to overseas publications that named Pell, while the court has heard that Chris Smith, a radio host at Sydney’s 2GB, encouraged listeners to “get on Google” to seek out Pell’s identity. The radio station, which the court heard had not read the suppression order nor sought legal advice before preparing Smith’s script, was fined $10,000.
SWM Price at posting:
44.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)