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KARA:

From Schwartz media, I’m Kara Jensen-Mackinnon. This is 7am.

Between his death, two weeks ago, and his burial tomorrow, a furious battle has raged over George Pell’s legacy.

If you happen to read The Australian newspaper, though, you probably wouldn’t be aware there are two sides to the debate.

The Murdoch newspaper has been glowing about Pell’s influence.

But why is the Murdoch media so invested in how the former catholic cardinal is remembered? And what are they willing to ignore to make their case?

Today, The Saturday Paper’s legal affairs editor Richard Ackland, on how Pell built his influence with News Corp journalists, and how he wielded it.

It’s Wednesday, February 1.

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KARA:

Richard, on Thursday, Cardinal George Pell’s body will finally be laid to rest at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. And over the last few weeks there's been a real struggle over what his legacy will be. And a very strong voice in that debate has been News Corp so, how is News Corp trying to shape Pell's legacy?

RICHARD:

They've been doing this shaping job for years and they steadfastly refused to accept the mountain of evidence from royal commissions and other sources that are contrary to the evidence that News Corp or some of News Corp's journalists would like to project, which is of a saintly leader of the church who was dedicated to welfare and the good of the Catholic Church.

Archival tape -- Caleb Bond:

“Well, the story of the day is, of course, the news from the Vatican that George Pell has died. Despite a wrongful conviction, he died an innocent man and maintained his great..”

RICHARD:

So I think on the day he died, you know, in the publication in The Australian, if you just take one paper, the main national paper of News Corp, there were 20 articles extolling his virtue.

Archival tape -- Caleb Bond:

“..Andrew Bolt knew Cardinal Pell and defended him when few others would, and he joins me now. Welcome to the show, Andrew.”

RICHARD:

There were also, I think about 36 or 37 in the following days. I mean, it was a complete avalanche, a massive overstatement, really.

Archival tape -- Andrew Bolt:

“He's an innocent man. An innocent man. And he was the victim of one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice in Australian legal history.”

RICHARD:

It just was a sort of endless torrent of some might say it was grovel, but it was just completely disproportionate that the failure to actually inject any reasonable balance into it was just extraordinary.

Archival tape -- Andrew Bolt:

“I say to his last days, he was a true Christian, trying to live up to the faith of Jesus Christ. I'm not a Christian, but I greatly admire that. And I think a lot of people today should remember him as having followed Christ in one thing. He was unfairly accused, he was crucified and he died for the sins of others.”

Archival tape -- Caleb Bond:

“Andrew Bolt, thank you so much for joining me tonight.”

Archival tape -- Andrew Bolt:

“Thank you.”

KARA:

And so why is it, do you think, that News Corp and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, are so invested in how George Pell should be remembered? Why do you think his newspaper's editors actually care?

RICHARD:

There's probably a few things. I mean, Pell was, you know, a leading figure in the culture wars. He was anti-climate, you know, doing anything about climate. He was very conservative about homosexuality and abortion and things like that. So he was a culture warrior. And that suited the very conservative Murdoch press. Plus, the Murdoch press had a superabundance of quite serious Catholic journalists working there. So there was a natural affinity, a sort of cultural alignment, if you like, and back in 1998, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles gave Rupert Murdoch a papal knighthood and that was after Rupert had given $10 million to the diocese. So it was sort of, you know, maybe paving his way to heaven with coin.

Archival tape -- [Muffled awarding of Papal Knighthood to Murdoch]

Rupert Murdoch himself as a very conservative individual, seemed to like Pell, you know, I mean, he was sending out tweets extolling Pell's virtues at the time that Pell was posted to Rome, saying it's a great loss of Australia, but a mighty step for the Vatican and so on. And I don't think there was any confusion about which side the Murdoch press was going to be on with when it came to George Pell.

KARA:

And can you tell me a little bit more about those relationships between Pell and these high powered journalists? Because priests and journalists aren't exactly the sorts of people you expect to be hanging out, right?

RICHARD:

Well, you know, I mean, if you're Greg Sheridan of the paper, you know, he’s the foreign editor of The Australian, he said he loved Pell. So he feted them and they feted him. So I did speak to quite a number of News Corp journalists about the way the system worked there. I mean, for instance, Chris Mitchell, who was the editor in chief of The Australian for 13 years, said he met Pell on formal occasions. And he did say that Pell's influence on the paper was connected to a Catholic mafia that worked there, which included Greg Sheridan and political editor Dennis Shanahan, editor at large Paul Kelly and columnist Gerard Henderson. I mean, in fact, I was surprised that all the News Corp people I spoke to weren't at all hostile about speaking to The Saturday Paper. They're quite candid and helpful. Neil Breen, for instance, rang back. He was the editor of The Sunday Telegraph for a lot of the time that Pell had his column there and said, well, I was going over to St Mary's Cathedral for chats with Pell, you know, quite frequently. He made The Sunday Telegraph the official paper of World Youth Day, which meant lots of copies could be distributed among the faithful.

Paul Kelly, the editor at large, was given a seat on the plane that carried the Pope to Australia and allowed to ask a question which he did. It wasn’t, needless to say, a question about should the Church apologise for the sexual abuse of its priests. But nonetheless, they all had access, you know.

KARA:

And so, Richard, as you say, Pell was forming very strong relationships with the News Corp press. But what happened when those relationships began to be tested, because things changed for Pell’s public image – and a major test of course was when he came under scrutiny at the royal commission into institutional child abuse. So how did these journalists handle that?

RICHARD:

Well, they had to, they either had to ignore or discredit the royal commission into institutional abuses. The part of the royal commission that dealt with this was a 500 page report. And these were very serious, well credentialed royal commissioners that did this. But several journalists at The Australian said oh just dismissed the findings of the royal commission out of hand, saying there were flawed findings, they weren't credible. Well, this is absolutely not a credible response. In fact, it's quite a steadfastly unreasonable response.

The fact of the matter was the royal commission, in any evidence against Pell that could not be verified by another independent party, was not included, as part of the findings against Pell was only in relation to findings that could be verified that was stood up either by other witnesses, by even other priests that knew what was going on in Ballarat, for instance. So to extol the virtues of Pell and gush over him meant that you had to ignore all that and turn a blind eye, which sort of says something about the quality of the reporting and the standard of journalism.

KARA:

We’ll be back after this.

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KARA:

Richard, we've spoken about how some very senior News Corp journalists cultivated this relationship with George Pell and how they stood by him. And they continued to stand by him even as allegations were made directly against Pell himself.

So, Richard, News Corp took a pretty interesting tact to covering that story – they went after the journalists that were reporting it so, can you tell me what happened?

RICHARD:

Louise Milligan at the ABC did a 7:30 story back in June 2016, I think it was, on the young men who complained that they were sexually assaulted by Pell at the Eureka Pool in Ballarat. And the ABC, I think had actually done a survey of the number of times that Gerard Henderson, who’s one of the leading columnists at The Australian and, you know, supporter of Pell’s, and in that survey that the ABC did, he mentioned 446 times over a period of 37 months. So if you printed all this stuff out throughout the News Corp papers, it ran to over a thousand pages of assault on one journalist, which is just extraordinarily obsessive. It's sort of a Catholic fatwa, if you like.

KARA:

So how did the journalists respond and how did their reporting shift when the case proceeded and was eventually overturned by the high court?

RICHARD:

Well, the Pell supporters were overjoyed. It vindicated everything. You know, he was of course, he was not guilty. Right. From day one, he was not guilty, the whole thing was a terrible abuse of the justice system and a fraud on a fair trial and so on. But the linchpin of the argument was that and it's been repeated by several News Corp journalists, including Bolt in Melbourne, that Pell was found innocent by the High Court. He was not found innocent by the High Court, there's a huge distinction between being found not guilty, and him being found innocent, Pell was not given a certificate of innocence. What the High Court found was that basically the prosecution did not meet the required standard, the beyond reasonable doubt standard. There's a very high standard for a conviction. So, the High Court found there was enough doubt, so it couldn't be beyond reasonable doubt. So if there was a little bit of doubt, or a modest amount of doubt that meant the conviction had to be thrown out. But that is very different from finding someone innocent. So I think we can all take that with a big grain of salt that he was found innocent. It just wasn't so.

KARA:

And, Richard, I mean, what you've laid out is a very close relationship between News Corp and Pell and at least reading what has been published since his death, you could say there's still a real sense of loyalty there. So why is that? What do both sides get out of this relationship?

RICHARD:

Pell was, you know, a leading figure in the culture wars. He was certainly a supporter of John Howard.

Archival tape -- advertisement:

“By the time you arrive at work, you’ll have already been hit by the GST 25 times…”

Archival tape -- John Howard:

“Our rate is ten per cent, and it’s staying at ten per cent, let me hasten to add. Absolutely staying at ten per cent.”

RICHARD:

There was a real dispute about the GST, particularly from Catholic charities that felt that the GST was regressive, it was a regressive tax, so it would affect low income people, it would affect them more harshly than high income people.

But Pell, Pell sort of held up his hand and said look, there's more than one view in the Catholic Church, these charities, that's all very well. But you know, we need a GST. So that's it.

And that helped Howard. And, you know, Howard never looked back after that. Extra funding for Catholic institutions and churches and universities and schools.

And of course, this enormous amount of money that he gave to the World Youth Day which is really a big Catholic jamboree, which is organised by Pell. And John Howard chipped in 50 million of taxpayers money to assist in this event, that was that.

KARA:

And thinking about that influence, Richard, I wonder, do you think we will ever see another religious leader who could ever be that influential on Australian politics, and Australian media again? Or is that era over now?

RICHARD:

I think it is a very different scene now after the findings of the royal commission and the damage that Catholic priests have inflicted on their own church, and the leadership of the church now, there's no sort of bold, bluff, charismatic figure. Pell made the news. I mean, Pell sold newspapers. He was a big figure, you know, to the people who liked him he was charismatic. So they're always going to give him a run. But I think that's less so now.

KARA:

Richard, thank you so much for your time.

RICHARD:

Pleasure, Kara. Thank you.

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KARA:

Also in the news today,

Archival tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“A woman shouldn’t have to choose between her job and her safety.”

KARA:

From today, victim-survivors of domestic violence will have access to up to 10 days of paid leave.

The leave will be available to any full-time, part-time or casual workers experiencing violence or abusive behaviour from a relative or partner.

In a press conference, Albanese said the move won’t fix the problem of domestic violence, but will help ease the burden on victims.

Archival tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“What this change is about is making sure a woman fleeing domestic violence can do so whilst maintaining their employment.”

KARA:

And Australia and France will work together to manufacture artillery shells to send to Ukraine.

The announcement follows news the United States will be sending tanks to the war-torn country, and as Australia attempts to mend its defence relationship with France following the AUKUS submarine deal.

The first shipment of shells is expected to arrive in Kyiv in the next two months.

I’m Kara Jensen-Mackinnon. This is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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