By Adam Cooper
Some of Australia’s biggest media companies have been fined a combined $1.1 million for breaching contempt of court laws over the way they first reported George Pell’s conviction on sex abuse charges.
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are among the news outlets to have pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaching a suppression order over news reports they published in December 2018, in the days after a County Court jury found Cardinal Pell guilty.
George Pell leaves the County Court in February 2019.Credit: Justin McManus
The Age was fined $450,000 after pleading guilty to three breaches, related to an online article, a front-page story in the newspaper and an online editorial.
None of the media reports named Cardinal Pell or detailed his charges but referred to a high-profile person being found guilty of serious crimes, when the cardinal was still awaiting another trial. That second trial was later aborted by prosecutors.
Cardinal Pell had his convictions quashed and was released from prison last year following a successful appeal to the High Court.
Supreme Court Justice John Dixon said on Friday some media companies took a “calculated risk” in publishing reports they ought to have known breached the suppression order, and that their breaches diminished the order’s “purpose and efficacy”.
“In doing so, the media respondents usurped the function of the court in protecting the proper administration of justice and took it upon themselves to determine where the balance lay between Pell’s right to a fair second trial ... and the public’s right to know what happened in the [first] trial,” Justice Dixon said.
Cardinal George Pell.Credit: AP
The media companies, which also include Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, Channel Nine’s Today program and radio station 2GB, pleaded guilty in February to a combined 21 charges as part of a plea deal that brought to an end a trial that began last year. Both Nine Radio, which owns 2GB, and Channel Nine are owned by Nine Entertainment Co, which also owns this masthead.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors withdrew other charges against the news outlets and against 15 individual journalists, which included the editors of some of the nation’s biggest newspapers.
Following the jury’s guilty verdict at 3.44pm on December 11, 2018, The Age was the first news outlet to publish an article later deemed to have breached the suppression order. It published an online story about 27 hours later, on the evening of December 12, 2018.
The following morning, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail all ran front-page stories about the case that were found to have breached the suppression order because they included information derived from the cardinal’s trial.
County Court chief judge Peter Kidd had imposed the suppression order over Cardinal Pell’s case to ensure nothing was published about the first trial which would have prejudiced his right to a fair second trial.
Judge Kidd revoked the suppression order in February 2019, when prosecutors dropped the second trial against Cardinal Pell, and that revocation allowed the media to report the guilty verdict made three months earlier, and details about the case.
On top of fines totalling $1.108 million, Justice Dixon ordered the media pay the $650,000 that the Office of Public Prosecutions spent prosecuting the contempt case.
The judge did not accept prosecutors’ submission the news reports aimed to put pressure on Judge Kidd to revoke his order.
But he rejected the media’s claims the breaches were an honest mistake, as he found the media contended they should not be restricted from reporting the trial.
“The reporting of News Life Media (the publisher of news.com.au) and The Age ... in particular constituted a blatant and wilful defiance of the court’s authority, as each took a deliberate risk by intentionally advancing a collateral attack on the role of suppression orders in Victoria’s criminal justice system,” Justice Dixon said.
The large fines imposed on The Age and News Life Media ($400,000) surpass the $300,000 sanction on Yahoo7 in 2017 for a report about a murder trial that included details not before the jury and resulted in the trial being aborted.
The Age’s editor Gay Alcorn said the fine imposed on the masthead was extraordinary and disappointing.
“The finding that the media generally took a calculated risk to breach the suppression order and to defy the trial judge was not supported by the evidence,” she said. “It was speculation from the prosecutor which should not have been accepted.
“The large fine on The Age is disproportionate compared to the trivial fines given to other media in this case and when compared to previous contempt cases. The fact that numerous media outlets, all with independent legal advice, published and broadcast these carefully worded stories and believed they complied with the suppression order demonstrates a problem with the order itself.”
Prosecutors had called for substantial fines in the Pell contempt case and argued the offending was serious, the reports had the potential to deny the cardinal a fair second criminal trial and encouraged people to search for information about the case such as in overseas news reports that named the cardinal.
Justice Dixon on Friday acknowledged the media apologised but found the companies didn’t demonstate any remorse or contrition, as the collective plea of guilty was entered during the trial and aimed at protecting individual employees.
The Sydney Morning Herald was fined $2000 for its breach over its front-page article.
The Australian Financial Review was fined a combined $160,000 for publishing two online articles and one in the newspaper.
Channel Nine was fined $30,000 for three short segments on Today, in which a reporter referred to the newspaper stories. 2GB was fined $10,000 for a similar reference on its breakfast program.
The other media penalised were the Herald and Weekly Times (a $1000 fine for each of the online articles in the Herald Sun and The Weekly Times), The Courier Mail ($1000 for a front-page article), the Geelong Advertiser ($1000 for an online article) The Daily Telegraph ($21,000 for a front-page story and an online article), The Advertiser in Adelaide ($1000 for an online article), Mamamia ($20,000 for an online article) and Business Insider ($10,000 for an online article).
Justice Dixon imposed convictions on all media.
The case against the media began in 2019 with 205 contempt charges against a combined 36 media companies and journalists but those numbers were whittled down during the proceedings.
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