LONDON—A journalist at The Sun tabloid, one of Britain's
best-selling newspapers, on Friday became the first at the paper to
be convicted of bribing public officials for stories as part of the
Metropolitan Police's wide-ranging probe into newsgathering
methods.
The Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, Friday
sentenced 41-year-old crime reporter Anthony France to 18 months in
prison for paying a counterterror officer more than £ 20,000
($30,600) in exchange for confidential information for more than
three years. The conviction comes as The Sun's owner, News Corp,
has faced a flurry of high-profile legal challenges related to
alleged illicit reporting practices at both The Sun and the News of
the World tabloid, which shut in 2011 amid accusations of
widespread phone hacking.
News Corp, which also owns The Wall Street Journal, declined to
comment, citing ongoing legal proceedings. Last year, News Corp
apologized for wrongdoing that occurred and said it has made
changes to the way it does business to ensure wrongdoing doesn't
happen again.
The information leaked to The Sun included personal details of
victims of crimes. The police officer, Timothy Edwards, who was
earlier sentenced to two years in prison for selling confidential
information that he obtain through his job as a counterterror
officer at Heathrow Airport.
Detective Chief Superintendent Gordon Briggs said after the
conviction that corrupt relationships between reporters and police
undermine the public's confidence in the police service.
"Officers found guilty of acting in this way merit criminal
sanction," Mr. Briggs said. "Journalists who encourage or aid and
abet their corrupt actions and do so without reasonable excuse of
justification are equally culpable."
Earlier this year, four senior journalists at The Sun were
cleared by a London jury of bribing public officials in exchange
for stories. Other journalists at The Sun are awaiting trial.
Judge Timothy Pontius said in his concluding remarks that some
of the stories written by Mr. France were published for their
salacious subject matter and sometimes at the unjustified expense
of personal privacy. He said just because bribery was acceptable
within the newspaper at the time "doesn't of course for a moment
make it acceptable as a practice if such payments were knowingly
made to those who had revealed confidential information obtained in
the course, and in flagrant breach, of a public duty."
Police have been investigating phone hacking and bribery at
British newspapers for years, but launched new investigations in
2011 amid allegations that journalists had hacked the cellphone of
a missing teenager, who was later found dead. The allegations
kicked off a high profile trial here, in which Andy Coulson, former
editor of the News of the World tabloid, was found guilty of phone
hacking, but was acquitted of bribery charges. Rebekah Brooks,
former editor of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World
paper, also owned by News Corp, was acquitted of all charges,
including phone hacking, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Write to Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com
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