Sun journalists in corruption trial ‘acted in public interest’

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/17/sun-journalists-alleged-payments-officials-jury

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The six Sun journalists on trial for allegedly “bunging” public officials for stories are in the dock because they exposed the truth about some of the country’s most dangerous criminals and high-profile police investigations, a jury has heard.

Martin Hicks QC, counsel for the paper’s former deputy news editor, Ben O’Driscoll, said all stories involving alleged payments to public officials with which he was linked were in the public interest and deserved to be reported.

They included an exposé of a Halloween fancy-dress party for inmates, including serial killers, at Broadmoor high-security hospital.

The party, allowing some of Britain’s most dangerous criminals to dress up in ghoulish costumes, was subsequently banned by the then home secretary, Jack Straw, on the grounds that it was in bad taste, the jury has been told.

Among the other stories linked to O’Driscoll’s case was one headlined “Drug billionaire on run after raid”, about Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing’s now-deceased wife, who had tried to smuggle class-A drugs into an event at the US embassy.

Another told how the murderer of Rachel Nickell was on suicide watch in Broadmoor.

Asking jurors to acquit his client, who now works at the Daily Mail, he said: “Ben O’Driscoll did not have any direct contact with any of the public officials with whom he is said to have been linked. He never met them, he never spoke to them, he never emailed them.”

Subsequently, a lawyer for another defendant, the Sun’s picture editor, John Edwards, said it was inconceivable that the picture editor of the Sun was involved in a plot to commit misconduct in public office, a jury has been told.

Edwards is on trial because of four emails sent to him by the paper’s district reporter, Jamie Pyatt, requesting that the picture desk share the cost of stories, his counsel said.

Sasha Wass QC said Edwards did not answer the first email; to the second he rushed off a reply of “OK, Jamie”; to the third he replied “yes, £500 is fine”; and the fourth was an email asking him to act because the deputy news editor, who would normally approve payments, had quit the company.

Wass said there was no evidence that the second emailed request for payment to sources – linked to a story headlined “Beastlie Boys” about musical equipment going to Broadmoor – referred to a public official. It was the same for the third email, she said.

“Ask yourselves: is [Edwards] steeped in the corruption of public officials? Is that the weight of evidence against him?”

Last week the jury heard that News International was described as a “copper’s nark” that “shopped” Sun journalists in order to save senior staff in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal in 2011.

Counsel for the Sun’s head of news, Chris Pharo – O’Driscoll’s former boss – told jurors that the police and prosecution allowed themselves to be spoonfed evidence “by a mighty multinational desperate to save its own skin”.

Nigel Rumfitt QC told Kingston crown court the company had cynically set up a management standards committee to give the impression it was fully cooperating with the police. But, he told jurors: “The MSC was about as independent as the Isle of Wight”. It had not given all the evidence to the police, he said.

Rumfitt said 3 million emails were deleted and only one document authorising cash payments was found showing the signature of the Sun’s former editor, Rebekah Brooks, despite evidence in court that she would have signed hundreds.

Rumfitt described the MSC as a “front for News International, and it’s plain it engaged in a wholesale cover-up of the roles of the senior members of staff at the expense of the more junior”.

News International, he said, was “a copper’s nark – a grass, and like all grasses gives a mixture of inaccurate and misleading information to the police to save its own skin”.

The prosecution had said journalists on trial over allegations of paying public officials for stories used the “journalistic fig leaf” of public interest to cover their “naked and venal conduct”, a jury has been told.

Edwards and his five co-defendants – O’Driscoll, Pharo, Pyatt, Graham Dudman and John Troup – deny all the charges against them. The trial continues.