{"id":2002,"date":"2025-07-18T02:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/2002\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T02:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:49:09","slug":"court-throws-out-pro-israel-groups-bid-to-refer-journalists-and-editors-for-contempt-over-antoinette-lattouf-case-australian-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/2002\/","title":{"rendered":"Court throws out pro-Israel group\u2019s bid to refer journalists and editors for contempt over Antoinette Lattouf case | Australian media"},"content":{"rendered":"

An application by a pro-Israel group to refer editors, reporters and lawyers from Nine Entertainment for contempt proceedings has been dismissed by the federal court.<\/p>\n

The editor of the Age, Patrick Elligett, and the Sydney Morning Herald, Bevan Shields, and two Age reporters, Michael Bachelard and Calum Jaspan, were among the eight individuals named in the application<\/a> that alleged the newspapers had breached a suppression order made by the judge in the Antoinette Lattouf unlawful termination case.<\/p>\n

Justice Darryl Rangiah ruled on Friday the interlocutory application filed on 26 February seeking an order to make an application for punishment of the newspapers be dismissed.<\/p>\n

\"WhyWhy the federal court ruled the ABC unlawfully terminated Antoinette Lattouf \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Rangiah granted a suppression order<\/a> during the unlawful termination case in February to protect the identities and contact details of pro-Israel individuals who had contacted the ABC with complaints about Lattouf\u2019s employment.<\/p>\n

Sign up to get Guardian Australia\u2019s weekly media diary as a free newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

The articles published on 16 January 2024 disclosed the name of a WhatsApp group said to have organised a letter-writing campaign demanding that Lattouf be sacked, including four of the names.<\/p>\n

In his published reasons, Rangiah said he granted the suppression order during the trial to protect the safety of the individuals \u201cbecause of a substantial risk they would face, at least, vilification and harassment if their identities and contact details were available to the public\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added there was evidence<\/a> members of the public \u201cwho were motivated to discover the identities of the persons protected by the order\u201d identified someone on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n

Rangiah said while the group had established a \u201creasonably arguable case of contempt\u201d against the newspapers and Shields, Elligett, Bachelard and Jaspan, there was no evidence the company\u2019s lawyers had any control over publication.<\/p>\n

However, he found that Nine had established a reasonably arguable basis for defending the allegations of contempt and \u201cconsiderable resources\u201d would be expended \u201cin prosecuting a proceeding of uncertain strength\u201d.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Amanda Meade’s weekly diary on the latest in Australian media, free every Friday<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Lattouf was taken off air three days into a five-day casual contract in December 2023 after she posted on social media about the Israel-Gaza war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month, the federal court found the ABC breached the Fair Work Act <\/a>when it terminated Lattouf for reasons including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Rangiah ordered the pro-Israel group pay half of the legal costs of the newspapers and not all the costs because of Nine\u2019s \u201cabject failure\u201d to respond to their correspondence earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have not provided any explanation for their conduct,\u201d he said. \u201cMoreover, it is possible that a response explaining why they did not consider the order to have been breached might have avoided the present application being made.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An application by a pro-Israel group to refer editors, reporters and lawyers from Nine Entertainment for contempt proceedings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}