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Daily Mail takes down The Bachelorette spoiler story after Ten wins court injunction

the bachelorette semi finalNetwork Ten has won a rare court injunction against The Daily Mail Australia with the website ordered to pull down a spoiler story it ran ahead of tonight’s finale of The Bachelorette.

The news site posted exclusive images of Bachelorette Sam Frost kissing one of contestants in a hotel room without taking the usual step of warning fans the article may contain spoilers to the show, leading to criticism from fans.

(This report does not contain any spoilers)

However it has since taken down the article and replaced it with another article based on the hit show, which is one of Ten’s most successful this year.

Daily Mail BacheloretteThe Daily Mail is in a sales alliance with Ten’s fierce rivals Nine.

Ten went to court tonight to get an injunction against the Daily Mail’s story, with a judge in the Supreme Court of NSW ordering the story be taken offline until further notice.

The URL now goes to a page which says “Let’s try again. Sorry, we can’t find the page you are looking for. Would you like to go back to where you were, or search for it?”

The Daily Mail and Ten have been approached for comment.

The images appear to have been taken using a long lens camera. The article says they were taken of the couple “canoodling” in a hotel room at The Darling Hotel in Sydney close to Ten’s Sydney headquarters.

According to News Corp Australia’s national TV writer Shannon Molloy, the hotel room was around ten floors up.

Unless the couple cooperated with the pictures, the use of the image may be a breach of the Press Council’s statement of principles around privacy. The principles state that publishers should “avoid intruding on a person’s reasonable expectations of privacy, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest”.

Daily Mail Australia signed up to the Press Council less than two months ago.

Alex Hayes and Nic Christensen 

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