Joanna Yeates murder: Daily Mirror and the Sun fined for contempt of court

Articles on victim’s landlord a ‘risk to justice’, judges rule as eight national newspapers pay libel damages The Sun and the Daily Mirror were found guilty of contempt of court for publishing a series of “extreme” articles about a suspect who had been arrested by police investigating the murder of the landscape architect Joanna Yeates. The Daily Mirror was fined £50,000 and the Sun £18,000 after the high court ruled that the papers posed a “substantial risk” to the course of justice in their reporting on the arrest of Christopher Jefferies, Yeates’s landlord, who was later released without charge and was entirely innocent of any involvement. The Daily Mirror fine is the biggest against a British newspaper for contempt since 2004, when the Daily Star was fined £60,000 for revealing the identities of two Premiership footballers at the centre of high-profile gang rape allegations. In a separate legal action eight national newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and Sun, collectively paid six-figure libel damages to Jefferies following allegations made about him in January, when the police hunt for Yeates’s killer was at

Posted by on July 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.