Pro-Israel lobbyists fail in contempt bid against Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age

A group of pro-Israel lobbyists who campaigned for Antoinette Lattouf’s dismissal from the ABC have failed in their bid to have the Nine newspapers prosecuted for contempt of court.

Journalist Antoinette Lattouf leaves the Supreme Court after winning her case against the ABC in June. Picture: Nikki Short/NewsWire

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A group of pro-Israel lobbyists who successfully campaigned for Antoinette Lattouf’s dismissal from the ABC have failed in their bid to have the Nine newspapers prosecuted for contempt of court for allegedly identifying them in breach of court orders.

Federal Court judge Darryl Rangiah on Friday dismissed an application by the lobby group to have Nine referred to the registrar for a contempt prosecution in the wake of Lattouf’s successful case against the ABC.

The application was brought by a group of nine lobbyists, referred to in the proceedings as the intervening parties, who had engaged in a letter-writing campaign against Lattouf and whose identities were subject to a court-imposed 10-year suppression and non-publication order.

Justice Rangiah made the order on the ground that it was “necessary to protect the safety of persons”.

The articles were published before the suppression order was made but remained accessible online afterwards despite correspondence from the lobbyists’ lawyers – which often went unanswered – urging their removal.

Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields, his counterpart at The Age, Patrick Elligett, reporters Michael Bachelard and Calum Jaspan, and lawyers from Nine’s in-house counsel at MinterEllison were personally cited in the application for criminal proceedings.

The Sydney Morning Herald editor Bevan Shields. Picture: Alex Ellinghausen

The Age editor Patrick Elligett. Picture: Twitter

High-profile barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC argued on behalf of the lobbyists that Nine had been non-compliant since the orders were made and had breached them even in reporting on it.

Nine’s barrister Tom Blackburn SC said it had not amended its reporting because it had not been given clear indication of how it had been in contempt of the order, which sections of the offending articles breached the order, or how each party had played a part in publishing the articles.

He said his clients did not know the identities of the lobbyists themselves and could not be contemptuous of any order they were ignorant of.

In handing down his judgment, Justice Rangiah said he was satisfied that the lobbyists had established “a reasonably arguable case of contempt” against the newspapers and journalists but not against the in-house lawyers, who did not, on the evidence, have any control over the publication of the articles.

However, Justice Rangiah said he was also satisfied that the newspapers, editors and journalists had established a reasonably arguable case that the order only protected the intervening parties and only protected information derived from material on the court file or from the proceedings.

“They have a reasonably arguable case, that in the absence of being notified of the identities of the relevant nine intervening parties, they could not know what information they were prohibited from disclosing,” he said.

Journalist Antoinette Lattouf arriving at court in June. Picture: Nikki Short/NewsWire

“It is relevant to the exercise of the discretion that all the names referred to in the articles published by The Age and The SMH have now been removed,” he said.

“There would be considerable resources expended by the registrar and exposure to an order for costs in prosecuting a proceeding of uncertain strength.”

Justice Rangiah said it was still open to the lobbyists themselves to bring proceedings for contempt and did not appear to have “any lack of financial capacity to prosecute such a proceeding”.

The judge said “the abject failure” of the newspapers to respond to the correspondence from the lobbyists’ lawyers was “discourteous and unhelpful”.

He ordered that the lobbyists pay half the newspapers’ costs.

Last month Justice Rangiah ordered the ABC to pay Lattouf $70,000 in compensation after finding the broadcaster contravened the Fair Work Act by terminating her temporary contract over her opposition to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

He rejected her claims she was sacked because of her race or national extraction.

Justice Rangiah said Lattouf was hired during a “maelstrom” of protests, doxxing, cancellation, and vilification in Australia following the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023.

Pro-Israel lobbyists formed an “orchestrated campaign” against her, he said, complaining to the broadcaster that she had “expressed anti-Semitic views, lacked impartiality and was unsuitable to present any program for the ABC”.