On 11 December 2018, senior editors at the Age discussed whether to publish an article about the guilty verdict reached earlier that day in the first of Cardinal George Pell’s trials for child sexual abuse.
The then-editor of the Age, Alex Lavelle, was satisfied legal advice he had received allowed him to publish a story that did not name Pell, the Victorian supreme court heard during a long-running contempt case on Thursday.
But he decided against it as suppression orders were still in place and news of the Pell verdict had not been broken by international news outlets or on social media.
Lavelle is the first media witness to give evidence in the contempt trial which relates to accusations that 27 journalists, editors and organisations across Australia committed contempt by breaching the Pell suppression orders.
“I didn’t think the story had any merit, there was no story at that time because there was no social media discussion of the case,” Lavelle told the court on Thursday.
“It was never an intention to write a story about what happened in the Pell trial, the possibility was that because of ... the extent of social media discussion of this story, potentially it could come to the point that I or the Age could consider it was possible to run a story in some form.”
Lavelle said the situation changed by the afternoon of 12 December 2018: international websites had published articles naming the cardinal which could be found with a Google search of “George Pell guilty”, leading to widespread comments on social media, and to several Age readers calling the newsroom asking why they had not reported the verdict, including one that suggested there was a “Catholic conspiracy”.
Suppression orders preventing the naming of Pell because of an outstanding trial remained in force, and the Age was among several outlets planning to contest them in the county court two days later.
It was decided the original story prepared the day before would be substantially reworked, and again sent to lawyers in Melbourne and Sydney, with a view to publishing online later that evening on the Nine newspaper websites and in the print editions of the Age and Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) on 13 December.
Lavelle, who is one of the editors facing contempt charges, communicated in person, on phone and via email to a series of editors, including some who disagreed with the decision to publish.
The discussions culminated in a phone conversation between Lavelle, his SMH counterpart, Lisa Davies, and the media company’s executive editor, James Chessell, about 6.15pm. Lavelle told them the legal advice was that an article could be published without naming Pell despite the suppression orders. The phone conversation was to confirm they all agreed they should.
“The story now was in my belief in a fit state to be published,” Lavelle told the court. “It was a straight news story to inform readers why we were unable ... to report the news.”
The story was published in an identical form across the mastheads in print and online, and the Age also published an editorial about the verdict online on 13 December.
Lavelle said a decision not to publish the editorial at the same time was made because he “wanted to play the situation as safe as possible and it wasn’t about impact”.
“The decision was about informing readers why we couldn’t run a story that was in the news. In my view, maximum impact was not the consideration.”
But by the morning of 13 December, it was clear the county court had taken a dim view of media reporting on the Pell case and believed suppression orders had been breached.
Lavelle read a court transcript of the remarks and then received a letter from Victoria’s director of public prosecutions urging no further reporting on the Pell case.
Lavelle decided to remove the editorial from online. “I took the contents of that transcript extremely seriously,” he said on Thursday. “I wanted to take steps as soon as possible to make sure the court was not further aggravated.”
On 14 December 2018, Lavelle attended a county court hearing before chief judge Peter Kidd regarding lifting the orders. Kidd made clear the court was considering charging multiple outlets and journalists with contempt – and he kept the orders in place.
“I was left in no doubt how angry he was about what had transpired,” Lavelle said.
The Pell verdict was later overturned by the high court and the second trial did not go ahead.
The contempt case, which started in April 2019, continues on Friday. It is set to hear from several other prominent editors in the next fortnight, including Ben English of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
