Andrew Bolt: Brazen trials by media need to stop

When it comes to high-profile court cases in today’s society, there seems to be a major issue in stopping trials by media.

Brittany Higgins proved last Thursday judges can’t just ask people nicely not to make a fair trial impossible. It’s time for the stick.

ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum had told everyone, particularly journalists, to shut up as she dismissed the jury in this high-profile rape case and ordered a new trial.

As she said: “I would expect after reporting the outcome of today, that reporting of the matter should fall silent”, so the retrial wouldn’t be “impaired”.

McCallum has repeatedly made such appeals, as Higgins, journalists and activists turned this case into a political football, potentially influencing a future jury.

Forget innocent until proven guilty.

Yet moments after McCallum’s latest warning, Higgins was outside the court attacking Bruce Lehrmann, the former Liberal colleague she accuses of raping her in Parliament House after a drunken night out. (Lehrmann denies there was even sex.)

An upset Brittany Higgins reads a statement outside court. Picture: Gary Ramage

I won’t repeat what Higgins said, but many media outlets did, and Lehrmann’s barrister has asked the judge and police to investigate.

Nor will I comment on evidence in this case, which a second jury must now consider. The first was dismissed because one juror ignored the judge’s warnings not to do their own internet sleuthing.

For now, the issue is stopping such trials by media, which today seem more brazen.

The pre-trial media pack attack on the innocent Cardinal George Pell, vilified as a paedophile, was bad enough.

As Judge Peter Kidd noted when a jury initially convicted Pell, to Kidd’s apparent surprise: “We have witnessed … examples of a witch-hunt”, and “courts stand as a bulwark against such irresponsible behaviour”.

Yet the Higgins case confirmed that bulwark is under siege.

Higgins gave two media interviews claiming she was raped, before she lodged a complaint with police.

Before the trial, she was the main speaker at a March for Justice rally at Parliament House. The National Press Club had her speak, along with Grace Tame, victim of a paedophile.

In May, McCallum warned such media coverage could prevent a fair trial, but in June, days before the trial, Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson won a Logie for interviewing Higgins, and defiantly gave a speech on television suggesting Higgins was telling the truth.

McCallum, furious, delayed the trial for three months, saying: “The distinction between an allegation and a finding of guilt has been completely obliterated.”

But Wilkinson was not punished, and now McCallum has been defied again, it seems to me.

Pleas haven’t worked.

Time for action.