A court in Australia has sentenced twelve media companies to pay heavy fines.
They were accused of disregarding a ban on reporting the abuse trial against Australian Cardinal George Pell.
In total, the companies have to pay 1.1 million Australian dollars (700,000 euros).
Till Fähnders
Political Correspondent for Southeast Asia.
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Publications convicted include the tabloid Herald Sun, Melbourne newspaper The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review. Contributions to the radio station Radio 2GB and the Today Show were also objected to. The convicted publications and broadcasters are mostly owned by the media groups Nine Entertainment and Rupert Murdochs News Corp.
The fines range from the equivalent of 600 euros to 250,000 euros for a single online or newspaper article. The television and radio reports on the subject were each fined 6,000 euros. Victoria Supreme Court Justice John Dixon accused The Age and News.com.au in particular of “blatant and deliberate disregard for the authority of the court”. Although they did not mention the name of the accused in their articles on the guilty verdict, they did make general reference to coverage in some foreign media and combined this with sharp criticism of the ban on reporting in Australia.
The trial concerned allegations against the then finance secretary of the Vatican that he sexually abused two choirboys as Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. The court had issued a ban on reporting in order not to jeopardize a possible second trial and to allow the accused a fair trial. Pell was eventually found guilty by a jury and sentenced to six years in prison by a judge. However, after a year in prison, the appeals court overturned the sentence.
In his reasoning for the verdict, the judge accused the media of having knowingly violated the ban because they did not consent to it, and of arbitrarily placing the public's right to information above the defendant's right to a fair trial. But he took into account that the media had apologized.