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12 Aussie media companies fined for breaking court order
Australian media companies will pay a total of $1.1 million in fines for breaching a suppression order
The ruling found 12 media outlets breached a gag order when reporting the trial and conviction of George Pell for child sexual assault.
The outlets, which are mostly owned by the Nine Network, and News Corp pleaded guilty in February to breaching the order.
Justice John Dixon says the media firms “frustrated the suppression order” because they reported “information contrary to the terms of the order”.
“Each [network] took a deliberate risk by intentionally advancing a collateral attack on the role of suppression orders in Victoria’s criminal justice system,”
Such suppression orders are common in the Australian and British judicial systems.
But the enormous international interest in an Australian criminal trial with global ramifications highlighted the difficulty in enforcing such orders in the digital age.
The media companies pleaded guilty in February to 21 charges of contempt in a plea deal in the Victoria state Supreme Court.
The Age owned by Nine Entertainment was fined AU$450,000 and News Life Media was penalised with a AU$400,000 fine.
Herald and Weekly Times, was fined AU$2,000.
No foreign news organisation has been charged with breaching the suppression order.
The media companies must also pay prosecutors’ legal costs of AU$650,000.