CPS was wrong to charge Sun journalists for doing their jobs
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Version 0 of 1. “It is time to take stock of the treatment meted out to Sun journalists”. That was the opening sentence to my column in yesterday’s London Evening Standard. Actually, on reflection, it’s beyond time to take stock. The clearing of four Sun staff at the Old Bailey last week showed just how much these Operation Elveden cases stink. I have no wish to prejudice current and future hearings, so I am being extremely careful in what I say. But it would be an inhibition of press freedom if I was unable to record my deep concern about all the cases resulting from the Metropolitan police’s investigation into payments to public officials and the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to charge both journalists and their sources. Operation Elveden was the direct result of information being given to the Met by the Sun’s publisher — Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation — in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. Now let’s get one thing straight. There is no link whatsoever between hacking — the interception of mobile phone voicemail messages — and payments made to public officials in return for information. The former activity was utterly indefensible and confined to a small number of reporters working for two publishers. The latter was a method of obtaining stories routinely employed by every popular newspaper for half a century and more. It was so uncontroversial that the law under which Sun journalists were charged was said by several of them, along with other witnesses, to be unknown to them. It did not feature in the legal textbook they studied while learning their trade. Apparently, it did not form any part of the in-house training at their newspapers. Ignorance of the law is certainly no defence. But whose ignorance is at fault here? The journalists, or the company that employed them and funded the payments they made to their sources? I think the Met and the CPS took the easy option by charging the journalists. And I also wonder whether, once the matter was brought to light by News Corp, prosecuting the journalists was really necessary. One of the staff cleared last Friday was the Sun’s former deputy editor, Geoff Webster. His lawyer issued a statement saying that it was Webster’s hope the CPS would reconsider its decision to pursue outstanding prosecutions against 10 of his colleagues. I have added my voice to that call. Did it not strike the police and the CPS that for so many of the newspaper’s staff to be involved in some way in paying public officials suggested that the journalists were entirely unaware that what they were doing was wrong? Did they not realise that the fault lay with the corporate culture, and that the people it arrested were not responsible for that culture? Did it not further suggest that a more appropriate action would have been the issuing of a public warning to the journalists and, more importantly, their employers (as well as other newspaper owners) that it must cease? That would have been a proportionate response. It would have been in the public interest. It would also have saved the public purse (Elveden has cost at least £11.3m so far, not counting legal costs). Instead, a newspaper’s staff — from deputy editor down to junior reporter — have suffered a prolonged ordeal for doing what journalists on popular papers have been doing for years and years. Quite literally, they have been arrested, charged and put on trial for doing their jobs. |