At some stage, I hope to write the intimate story of a Sun reporter who has been cleared by a jury on charges following Operation Elveden. It might change the perception of those who confuse hacking with the paying of public officials. There is an enormous difference.
But I am glad to see that Press Gazette’s editor, Dominic Ponsford, has now interviewed another Sun reporter, John Troup, who was similarly found not guilty by a jury of a charge that, to be frank, would be regarded as laughable if its consequences were not so serious.
It also happens to be an indictment of Rupert Murdoch’s flawed Management and Standards Committee (MSC), which supplied the flimsy information on which Troup was arrested and charged.
Troup was a district reporter, covering East Anglia for the Sun, until he was made redundant in July 2009. He then worked as Southend council’s media relations officer until doing a similar job closer to his home in Saffron Walden, Essex.
He had been there for four months when, in May 2013, he received a phone call from the Metropolitan police demanding that he come in for questioning.
Troup was astonished to be asked about his authorship of a four-paragraph story, about the suicide of a prisoner, published by the Sun in November 2007.
That suicide had been concealed from the public by the prison authorities. In other words, the revelation had a public interest justification.
He could barely remember the story, but the police produced an email written by Troup to a Sun colleague apparently explaining why it was necessary to pay a tip fee of £300 to a prison officer.
It became clear, as Troup told Ponsford, that the police had no other evidence and no idea about the identity of the tipster. So he was “gobsmascked” when told, in August 2013, that he was to be charged.
And here comes the rub. Once he told his employers he was asked to resign and then fired for “bringing the council into disrepute”.
From September 2013 to the start of the trial just over a year later, he ended up doing a variety of low-paid jobs – from working as a labourer to washing beer kegs and slicing bacon.
How did the police get that email? From the MSC, of course, and just one of many it handed over to police following the crisis over phone hacking (but, of course, the payment for stories had nothing to do with hacking).
Troup, naturally bitter about his treatment by Murdoch’s company, doesn’t hold back. He is quoted by Ponsford as saying:
“It was the double betrayal of being made redundant from a job I loved by News International in 2009 and then losing a career I’d worked really hard to build for myself four years later through the worst kind of betrayal imaginable”.
But he does praise the current Sun editor, David Dinsmore, for ensuring that he and other defendants no longer employed by the Sun had their legal fees paid by News UK.
You should read all of Ponsford’s article. The iniquity is obvious. I’m pleased to say that Troup was cleared after a three-month trial at Kingston crown court.
Note also these statistics. Of the 34 journalists arrested and/or charged under Operation Elveden there have been only two convictions thus far - a former News of the World journalist who can’t yet be named and a former News of the World and Sunday Mirror journalist, Dan Evans, who pleaded guilty.
Six journalists have been found not guilty by juries and seven face retrials after juries failed to reach verdicts.
I wish journalists didn’t pay for stories. But popular paper journalism is a commercial activity. It was custom and practice across Fleet Street at popular papers (and still is) to pay for content.
Moreover, journalists like Troup did not set the policy of payment. They worked within a system that was created many, many years before.
Source: Press Gazette
Full disclosure: I gave evidence on behalf of Clodagh Hartley (who was found not guilty of Elveden charges by a jury).