How hard it was to expose George Pell’s crimes worldwide

The US media site that first broke news of George Pell went to extreme lengths to report his guilty verdict — and they’ve vowed they’d do it again.

The American news agency that broke the Cardinal George Pell story worldwide after orders gagged Australian media said despite “extreme” time and expense it would do it again in the name of the public’s right to know.

America’s leading news website Daily Beast was the first in the world to break the Pell story, with the group having spent several weeks with lawyers in both hemispheres to prepare to tell the tale.

Former Melbourne journalist now senior New York-based Beast journalist Lachlan Cartwright broke the story in every country except Australia through a carefully hatched plan to geo-block the country and dodge suppression orders.

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America’s leading news website Daily Beast was the first in the world to break the story of George Pell’s guilty verdict.

Mr Cartwright said when the ruling was handed down on December 11 last year, they immediately broke the story internationally having employed “extreme measures” with legal teams in Australia and New York and IT experts to ensure the story could not be read here.

The project was costly, both in time and expense particularly for a story on the other side of the world, but the US agency deemed it worthwhile.

Senior Daily Beast journalist Lachlan Cartwright broke the story in every country — except Australia.

“It was the first time the Daily Beast ever had to implement a geo-block so the story could not be accessed in Australia, we also had to ensure the story could not be seen in any search engines as well. We spent a lot of time and money with lawyers and our tech guys implementing and testing this geo-block and then when we broke it, the traffic was huge.”

The project was expensive and in litigious US took several weeks to ensure laws were not breached but it paid off.

A usual Daily Beast story attracts 40,000 browsers but within 24hrs the Pell story smashed through the 300,000 reads mark.

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“There was huge international interest, he was the third most powerful man in the Vatican, a figure of prominence and he was convicted of abusing boys,” he said from his home in NY.

“Fundamentally this was a story in the public interest. He was a big story here since the days of the events in Boston and Spotlight and the fact he was convicted and couldn’t be reported there struck us as farcical and bizarre circumstances.”

Pope Francis takes part in a liturgical prayer along with cardinals within the third day of a landmark Vatican summit on tackling paedophilia in the clergy.

The 2015 biographical drama film Spotlight which won that year’s best picture Academy Award followed a Boston Globe investigative team uncovering systemic Catholic priest child abuse.

The Beast was one of the few media outlets that did not receive legal threats of jailing despite the dozens of other groups sent letters from the DPP in Melbourne threatening fines and jailing.

“We were one of the few outlets which didn’t get one of these letters because we didn’t break the suppression and we went about it in a strategic manner to ensure we did not cross that line here,” he added.

Mr Cartwright said The Beast would again consider geo-blocked stories if the public’s right to know was impinged particularly on a story involving such a senior global figure.