Papers fined #150,000 for Spycatcher contempt

while injunctions obtained by the Government were in force against two

other papers.

Fines of #50,000 each were imposed by Mr Justice Morritt on The

Independent, The Sunday Times and the defunct News on Sunday.

They were also ordered to pay the costs -- estimated at more than

#150,000 -- of the contempt action brought against them by the Attorney

General, Sir Patrick Mayhew.

Cases against three other papers, the London Evening Standard, The

Sunday Telegraph and the defunct London Daily News, were dismissed, but

each of them must pay its own legal costs.

The editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Neil, and Independent editor

Andreas Whittam Smith said they would appeal against the ''worrying''

judgment.

After the Judge's contempt finding, all three editors -- who had

denied deliberately flouting the law -- had expressed unreserved

apologies to the court.

After the hearing, Mr Whittam Smith said: ''I am obviously

disappointed by the court's ruling. The worrying consequence of the

adverse finding against The Independent is that injunctions can now be

manipulated as a sort of blanket gag on the Press. I think it's a very

unfortunate result and for that reason we are bound to appeal.''

The costs bill for The Independent alone was likely to be ''heading

for the #100,000 mark,'' he said.

Mr Neil said: ''It's depressing. There is no question we will appeal

and this case, I would expect, will go all the way to the House of Lords

and beyond, if necessary.

''It seems that now, to get a proper value put on freedom of the

Press, you have to go outside this country. I think we will have to go

to Strasbourg as The Sunday Times did in the Thalidomide case.'' Mr Neil

said he had no figure for The Sunday Times's costs, but they were high.

''The money is not the important thing. It is the principle. There was

not one word in this judgment today about the freedom of the Press or

about the importance of a newspaper publishing things that powerful

people don't want published,'' he said.

Mr Brian Whittaker, former editor of the News on Sunday and now

employed by The Guardian, said: ''This shows that following legal advice

appears now to be no protection against prosecution for contempt.''

The Judge said the contempt proceedings against the six newspapers and

their editors began in 1987 when the Attorney-General alleged that their

conduct in publishing articles containing allegations from Spycatcher --

the memoirs of former MI5 officer Peter Wright -- was intended or likely

to thwart the publication ban obtained by the Government in July 1986 in

its court action against The Guardian and The Observer.

All six papers denied contempt. But by the time the case came to court

for a full hearing last month, the Attorney-General had decided to seek

no penalty against The Standard, the London Daily News and The Sunday

Telegraph and their editors.

Fining the three papers, the Judge said it was not a case where he

could impose any ''meaningful'' difference between the three papers and

there would be little point in fining the individual editors rather than

the newspaper publishers.