Judge urged to ‘punish’ Nine editors over alleged suppression breach

The Federal Court has been urged to ‘punish’ a group of top journalists from Nine for revealing the names of people who complained to the ABC about its call to hire Antoinette Lattouf.

Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields, centre. Picture: Liam Mendes

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The Federal Court is being urged to “punish” the editors of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – along with two of the mastheads’ key reporters – for revealing the identities of a group of women who complained to the ABC about its decision to hire Antoinette Lattouf.

Little more than half an hour after finding the public broadcaster had unlawfully sacked the fill-in radio host, Federal Court judge Darryl Rangiah was back in court and presiding over an interlocutory hearing over whether the journalists had breached one of his court orders.

He issued a broad suppression at the outset of Lattouf’s successful unlawful dismissal action against ABC on February 3 prohibiting the publication of names and particulars of anyone who had complained to the ABC about her “employment and engagement”.

Sydney barrister Sue Chrysanthou accused the Herald’s editor, Bevan Shields, his counterpart at The Age, Patrick Elligett, and reporters Michael Bachelard and Calum Jaspan of “contumelious conduct” and breaching that order by refusing to take down or amend a series of articles that allegedly breached the order by naming three of her clients – even though the stories were published more than a year before Justice Rangiah even issued the directive.

The women were originally identified in a series of articles written by Bachelard and Jaspan in January last year in the weeks after Lattouf was sacked midway through a week-long stint filling in as the presenter of ABC Radio’s morning show in Sydney.

However, Ms Chrysanthou told the court Jaspan – who was present in court in Sydney when the order was made – had specifically alerted readers to the existence of his previous articles identifying her clients as complainants while reporting on the very order prohibiting the publication of those details on the first day of Lattouf’s trial.

She alleged that when her instructing solicitor, Rebekah Giles, contacted Jaspan to complain, the story was allegedly edited to refer even more explicitly to the original reports before the article was eventually updated later in the day to remove the reference.

The Age editor Patrick Elligett. Picture: Twitter

Ms Chrysanthou said her clients were Zoom linked with the court proceedings on social media as a result of the reports and that one of the women had “since been the subject of online harassment” as a result of the reports.

The court heard the identities of her clients remained on the mastheads’ website for more than a month in the wake of the suppression order before they were finally removed on March 16 “without any admission as to liability or wrongdoing”.

Ms Chrysanthou asked the court “to punish the Nine parties for contempt, in that they knowingly failed to take down or amend the 2024 articles, despite being notified that they disclosed information which was the subject of the suppression order”.

“There is no dispute the order was made – it was present and in force – and the Nine parties have contravened it,” she said.

“This is not a theoretical complaint: the articles were used to disclose names of people protected by the order. We have examples of people referring to the articles to identify complainants.”

Tom Blackburn SC, appearing for Nine, argued the suppression order was confined to the coverage of Lattouf’s court proceedings and that the mastheads did not identify anyone mentioned as a complainant in relation to the civil hearing.

“Those articles had nothing to do with the proceedings – they were written before the proceedings even commenced,” he said. “There is no viable or tenable case for contempt.”

Mr Blackburn was still arguing the papers’ case when the court retired for the day and the matter was adjourned until next month.