In September 2019 Daniel Johns initiated legal action against News Corp Australia over an item was published in The Sunday Telegraph. The newspaper claimed a photo it published showed the former silverchair singer and guitarist leaving a Sydney brothel.
It took a while, but Johns got his apology from the publisher this weekend.
There was no mention from News Corp Australia if it also paid Johns a financial settlement.
Johns’ statement last September said:
Today, I commenced defamation proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria against The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, its editor and a journalist.
On 11 August 2019, a photograph of me was splashed across the front page under the headline “King of the Kastle”. According to the newspaper, it was a photograph of me leaving a brothel called The Kastle, which the article described as specialising in bondage, S&M, “brown showers” and “adult babies”. The article stated that I am there so frequently that it has become my second home, spending up to 18 hours a day there for the previous two weeks. Additionally, it was stated that staff and patrons were “fed up” with me, and I was full of venom and anger.
The article was simply untrue.
No contact was made with me or my representatives to check the facts before the article was published.
I have asked the newspaper for an apology and retraction. Neither has been provided.
I have now issued legal proceedings in order to publicly correct the facts and vindicate my reputation.
This false reporting has been very hurtful, humiliating, and damaging to me and my family. 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.
In a prominent page 3 apology in The Sunday Telegraph, and published in other News Corp Sunday newspaper that also carried the report last year, News Corp said sorry and highlighted Johns’ musical achievements:
Apology to musician Daniel Johns
On August 11, 2019, the Sunday Telegraph’s front page contained a photograph of musician Daniel Johns and alleged that he was swaggering out of notorious Sydney brothel, The Kastle.
The story was wrong. Mr Johns was not leaving the brothel and The Sunday 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.
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.
Johns is a highly decorated ARIA award winner with a total haul of 21 awards, including producer of the year ARIA for silverchair’s album Diorama along with being a three-time winner of Songwriter of the Year at the APRA awards. He has created multiple number one albums as well as scores of chart-topping singles.
Johns shows no signs of slowing down with numerous collaborations over the past few years including co-writing “Say It” by Flume feat. Tove Lo on the Grammy Award winning “Skin” album.
He also became the first act to play the much renowned Coachella Festival in 2018 without having released a single piece of music with his collaboration project DREAMS with Luke Steele of The Sleepy Jackson and Empire of the Sun.
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Photo: Jordan Munns