Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns has received a six-figure payout after settling his legal case with News Corp.
The singer took the media conglomerate to court in 2019 after the publisher’s newspaper The Sunday Telegraph reported that he had been frequenting prominent Sydney brothel The Kastle last August.
Johns denied ever visiting the venue, yet the paper and journalist Amy Harris published images of him “swaggering” out of the venue after a “bender”.
SMH reports that Johns has now received a $170,000 payout from News Corp over the original article, while the company also covered his legal costs of “up to $300,000.”
This false reporting has been very hurtful, humiliating, and damaging to me and my family,” wrote Johns in September of 2019. “It is disappointing that the newspaper has not acknowledged this and apologised despite assertions from both myself, and a representative of the Kastle, that I simply was not, and have never been, there. In fact, I never even knew of its existence.”
The Sunday Telegraph recently published an apology and retraction just over a week ago, admitting that Johns had never visited the venue.
Telegraph accepts he has never been there at any other time. Mr Johns was in the area because he had been visiting a friend who lived in the vicinity of The Kastle,” said the apology.
“We retract the story and we wish to extend a genuine and public apology to Mr Johns and his family for the error and the harm caused.”
The story was always denied by the owner of The Kastle, Mistress Scarlett, who at the time claimed he had never visited the venue.
Following the newspaper’s apology, Johns tweeted succinctly; ‘Now back to the music.”
