News Corp inquiry team defends policy over police disclosures | Media | guardian.co.uk

A source close to the News Corp's management and standards committee (MSC) said it will not be disclosing the names of police officers or any other public servants simply because they appear on expense claims for lunches or any other "socialising", amid fears that journalists' relationships with sources are becoming criminalised.

"The information handed to police is [relating to] unlawful material. The information is redacted to ensure that lawful journalistic inquiries are not threatened," the source added.

Information supplied by the MSC to the Metropolitan police has led to the arrest of nine current and former Sun journalists, two police officers, an MoD employee and a member of the armed forces in relation to alleged illegal payments to public officials in the past three weeks.

The source said: "The work of the MSC is focused on payments that look unlawful on the advice of lawyers who are expert in these matters, where there is evidence which looks to be payments to public officials, policemen or others, that is deemed to be relevant to the Elveden inquiry. It is not about lunches or drinks. That is a complete red herring.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

News of the World's Thurlbeck Named Hackers to Save His Job - Businessweek

Neville Thurlbeck, the former chief reporter at News Corp.'s News of the World, said he was minutes away from being fired in July 2009 when his name was linked to the phone-hacking scandal that would lead to the closure of the U.K. tabloid two years later.

He'd been summoned to editor Colin Myler's office where he was told he would be offered a severance package in return for his resignation. Instead, Thurlbeck turned in the names of the guilty parties in the news room.

"I was three minutes away from the sack," Thurlbeck said in an interview with Bloomberg TV at his home yesterday. "When I provided the evidence, I wasn't sacked, I was kept on." He was dismissed and arrested in 2011.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Opinion: "The Sun has eroded British justice, fairness and freedom: now it is feeling the effects" - Julian Petley « Inforrm's Blog

So, Trevor Kavanagh is complaining that Sun journalists have been `treated like members of an organised crime gang', having been `needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked'.  Presumably, then it was a photographer from a different Sun who was conveniently on hand when around 30 officers raided the home of Harry Redknapp at 6 am on 29 November 2007, as reported by the Guardian last week

Anyway, whilst it's nice to welcome Kavanagh to the ranks of those who have long criticised the inappropriate use of this deliberately intimidating, not to say terrifying, tactic on the part of the police, it would be very interesting to know on how many other such occasions journalists and photographers from the Sun have been taken along in tow. It would also be good to hear whether he thinks the ensuing gung-ho reporting of police derring-do in the paper has actually helped to legitimise, not to say encourage, these macho shows of strength which are now such a regular feature of law enforcement.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Kavanagh has always been a sneering little englander tory lickspittle, a mini Limbaugh all of Murdoch's own.
 What is depressing is that this hypocrisy is so immense that it almost collapses into a singularity of lies, yet nobody challenged him when he went on Radio5. All of the blogs are filled with the extent of his dishonesty, yet when the opportunity was there to reveal him to himself, nobody dared face him and say it.

keep to the Fen Causeway