Courier-Mail fined for identifying family involved in custody battle for ‘commercial gain’
News Corp’s Queensland tabloid The Courier-Mail has been fined $120,000 for identifying a family involved in a court custody battle, breaking laws preventing media from identifying people in Family Court proceedings.
The newspaper had published a front-page picture of a mother and her four children involved in an international custody dispute and further identified them throughout the story, a Queensland District Court heard.
Judge Terrence Martin ruled the newspaper had deliberately and blatantly disregarded the law for commercial gain, ABC News reports.
The story about the four sisters who were living on the Sunshine Coast and went into hiding with a relative after they were ordered to return to their father in Italy had been widely reported in 2012, including coverage on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes.
It’s this sort of anti-murdoch coverage I’ve come to expect form Mumbrella and the AbC. – just getting in before the Australian does.