The court fined the Australian media

eIn Australia, a court has imposed heavy fines on twelve media outlets. They were charged with obstructing a report on an abuse case against an Australian cardinal George Bell Should have been ignored. In total, companies will have to pay A $ 1.1 million (,000 700,000).

Convicted publications include the Herald Sun, the Melbourne newspaper The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review. Contributions to the radio station Radio 2GB and the Today Show were also objected to. Most of the condemned publications and broadcasters belong to nine entertainment and media groups Rupert Murdoch News Corp.

The fines for an online or newspaper article range from 600 euros to 250,000 euros. TV and radio reports were each fined ,000 6,000 in the case. Victorian Supreme Court Judge John Dixon in particular accused “Age and News.com” of blatantly and deliberately disregarding the court’s authority. Although they did not mention the names of the accused in their articles on convictions, they did make general reference to being broadcast in some foreign media, and this was accompanied by harsh criticism of the ban on reporting in Australia.

The lawsuit alleges that the Vatican’s finance secretary was accused of sexually abusing two singers as archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. The court barred the report from appearing in order not to affect the second trial and to allow a fair trial for the accused. Bell was eventually convicted by an arbitrator and sentenced by a judge to six years in prison. However, after serving a year in prison, the appellate court overturned the sentence.

In his causal statement, the judge accused the media of deliberately violating the ban and arbitrarily violating the defendant’s right to information above the defendant’s right to a fair trial. But he took into account the media’s apology.