The Supreme Court of Victoria has fined 12 media groups for contempt of court over reporting of the Cardinal George Pell conviction for child sexual abuse.
The media groups, including titles The Age, news.com.au, the Herald Sun, Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review, were ordered to pay more than $1.1 million between them. They had pleaded guilty.
Pell, who always mainatined his innocence, had the conviction overturned by the High Court. A supression order had been made on the conviction while another trial, on separate allegations, went ahead.
Justice John Dixon found the media to have breached a suppression order in December 2018.
“ … 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 ought to lie between Pell’s right to a fair second trial (on separate charges) by an impartial jury, and the public’s right to know what happened in the cathedral trial.”
The judge did not accept the Director of Public Prosecutions’ submission that the reports were published to deliberately pressure the trial judge prior to determining the media’s application to review the suppression order.
However, the judge said the media groups each took a calculated risk by intentionally publishing the reports.
“The content of the reports in most cases demonstrated the media respondents disagreed with the suppression order, and contended — either as direct opinion or as statements of others adopted without criticism — that the media should not be restrained from reporting the outcome of the trial.
“The reporting of News Life Media (the publisher of News.com.au) and The Age Company (the publisher of The Age) in particular constituted a blatant and willful 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 John Dixon accepted that each of the media respondents had offered a sincere and unreserved apology.
However, the timing of the media respondents’ pleas of guilty, which were made at trial, did not demonstrate any significant degree of remorse and contrition, but were entered to protect their individual journalist, presenter and editor employees from conviction on the contempt charges.
As well as the fines the media groups must pay costs of $650,000.
The fines:
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