Australian media fined for gag order breach in Pell case

Dozens of Australian media firms were fined a total of AU $1.1 million (€700,000, $840,000) on Friday for breaching a gag order on reporting the now-overturned conviction of former Vatican treasurer George Pell for child sexual assault.

The court found 12 media outlets, mostly owned by Nine Entertainment group and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, guilty of 12 counts of contempt of court.

The news organizations had pleaded guilty in February in a deal that led the state to drop all charges against individual journalists and editors who would have faced jail time if they were also convicted.

The defendant's guilty plea, however, had "not demonstrated a significant degree of remorse and contrition" but was contrived to protect their employees from conviction as individuals, Justice John Dixon of the Supreme Court of Victoria state said in the ruling.

He called the reporting "blatant and willful defiance of the court's authority."

"They each took a deliberate risk by intentionally advancing a collateral attack on the role of suppression orders and Victoria's justice system," Dixon said.

Who is George Pell?

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Melbourne, was Pope Francis' top financial adviser and the third most senior cleric in the Vatican.

In December 2018, he was convicted for abusing two choirboys in the 1990s and received a six-year prison term.

He became the most senior Catholic church official to have gone to jail for child sex offences.

In July 2020, the Australian High Court overturned the conviction against Pell, who had always maintained his innocence.

How did Australian media defy the gag order?

The County Court of Victoria issued a suppression order to try to ensure he received a fair trial on further charges he was due to face.

While some foreign media published details of the trial and verdict despite the order, Australian outlets in protest published reports saying they were unable to cover major news about an unidentified high-profile person. Some of them even pointed out that the news could be found online.

Herald Sun, a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, published a front page that was entirely blacked out, with the headline: "Censored." The tabloid's parent company, Herald and Weekly Times, was fined AU$2,000.

The heaviest fine has been imposed on Nine Entertainment's The Age newspaper: AU $450,000 for two articles and an editorial, while News Corp's news.com.au has received the heaviest single fine for a website, AU $400,000 for an online article.

adi/msh (Reuters, AFP)