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| Sunday Mirror journalist given suspended jail sentence after admitting phone hacking | Sunday Mirror journalist given suspended jail sentence after admitting phone hacking |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A journalist who blew the whistle on the alleged hacking of celebrities’ phones at the Sunday Mirror has been spared jail for his own “short and intense” involvement in the crime. | A journalist who blew the whistle on the alleged hacking of celebrities’ phones at the Sunday Mirror has been spared jail for his own “short and intense” involvement in the crime. |
| Graham Johnson, 46, of Greenwich was sentenced to two months in prison, suspended for one year, on Thursday morning. He was also ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work. | Graham Johnson, 46, of Greenwich was sentenced to two months in prison, suspended for one year, on Thursday morning. He was also ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work. |
| Johnson pleaded guilty to phone hacking at a hearing in Westminster on 6 November. Johnson, by his own admission, engaged in hacking over seven days in 2001, listening to 10 to 13 messages a day. | |
| Immediately after the hearing, Johnson said: “I feel OK. I’ll have to reflect upon it and what it means. I didn’t know what to expect because you cannot predict what a judge is going to say.” | |
| Johnson’s supporters outside court said the sentencing was harsh and would discourage whistleblowers from coming forward. | |
| In a statement read to court, Hacked Off, which campaigns for victims of press intrusion, “commended” Johnson for his actions and said it hoped the judge would deal with the case sympathetically “so that others will come forward”. | |
| Handing down the sentence, the judge, Brian Barker, said Johnson had been a professional journalist and had allowed himself to behave this way. He said Johnson “abused his professional position, albeit for a few days”. | |
| Barker said he had no choice but to give him a custodial sentence but in view of the circumstances it would be suspended. | |
| “It is to your credit that you ceased [hacking] fairly quickly and you put that behind you,” Barker said. | |
| “The fact of the matter is that you were directed by others … It was a considerable time ago and it weighed deeply on your conscience, said Barker. | |
| At an earlier hearing, Johnson’s counsel, Avtar Bhatoa, said Johnson’s decision to go to the police was “unique”. | |
| Bhatoa said Johnson had been “shown by a very senior person in a supervisory capacity how to access voicemails” and he was not aware that it was illegal at the time. | Bhatoa said Johnson had been “shown by a very senior person in a supervisory capacity how to access voicemails” and he was not aware that it was illegal at the time. |
| “When, 12 years later, arrests were made, he straight away contacted the police the next day,” said Bhatoa. | |
| The court heard how Johnson hacked the messages of a soap actress over “three to seven days in the autumn of 2001 … He had listened to some 10 to 30 messages a day during that period”. | |
| Bhatoa told the judge Johnson had avoided showbusiness stories and was reluctant to get involved in this story. | |
| He was “concerned about the technique” of the investigation, which “he thought to be a legitimate gangland story”. After a few days “walked off the job”. | |
| A story did appear about the soap actress, but he had the second byline, the court was told | |
| Bhatoa said: “He felt it was wrong and he stopped it.” | |
| Bhatoa said Johnson contacted the Metropolitan police on 15 March last year, the day after officers arrested a number of journalists from the Sunday Mirror on suspicion of interception of voicemails. He told them he was a former journalist on the Sunday Mirror between 1997 and 2006, “and he informed them that he had been involved in telephone hacking”. | |
| Originally from Liverpool, Johnson was investigations editor at the Sunday Mirror for six years. He previously worked at the News of the World, where one if his most notorious scoops was about the fictional Beast of Bodmin, a giant wild cat said to be stalking Cornwall. | Originally from Liverpool, Johnson was investigations editor at the Sunday Mirror for six years. He previously worked at the News of the World, where one if his most notorious scoops was about the fictional Beast of Bodmin, a giant wild cat said to be stalking Cornwall. |
| It involved an elaborate “1,500 words of bollox”, Johnson later wrote in his book about his tabloid experiences, Hack, “stunted up” photos of a puma from Exmoor wildlife park and claw marks scraped into a tree by his photographer who used a jagged key. | It involved an elaborate “1,500 words of bollox”, Johnson later wrote in his book about his tabloid experiences, Hack, “stunted up” photos of a puma from Exmoor wildlife park and claw marks scraped into a tree by his photographer who used a jagged key. |
| The photographer was “terminated” by the then editor Rebekah Brooks and Johnson clung on to his career, saved from oblivion by an offer of a new job at the Sunday Mirror. After two years on the road he discovered the writer Noam Chomsky and started to rethink his career. | |
| Johnson was the second Sunday Mirror journalist to come forward to police. Dan Evans, who also worked at the News of the World, was earlier this year given a 10-month suspended sentence for hacking more than 1,000 voicemails at both titles. |