TV & VIDEO - Oct. 28, 1988

Kill a fish, pay a fine. That’s the no-nonsense message from a judge in Basel, Switzerland, who ordered two Swiss television journalists to pay fines of $65 each for killing a fish during a re-creation for TV of a chemical accident two years ago. The Basel court ruled Wednesday that the journalists violated animal protection laws when they put a fish in a container of water that they said was polluted in the same way the Rhine had been after the accident and filmed the fish in its death throes. The sequence was never broadcast and, in a statement, the unidentified Swiss journalists said they might appeal the ruling.