It turns out that journalists working for Rupert Murdoch routinely gave cash to police officers for inside info to use as the basis of their articles. It is broadly agreed it is a gross dereliction of duty, borderline corruption etc. for a police officer to accept such payments.
Which reminds me of the Gillian Taylforth saga: the only really hard (sic) fact to emerge from her libel action against The Sun (the weekday edition of The News Of The World - both of them are Rupert Murdoch newspapers) was this:
Here was one of the best-known stars of EastEnders [a British television series] suing over allegations that she and her lover, a wealthy businessman with a criminal record, had been having oral sex in their Range Rover when they were spotted by a policeman... The couple's case was not helped by the fact that Mr Knights signed a caution admitting the offence of indecency after being taken to the police station.
It struck me at the time that the only way The Sun could have found out about this was if a police officer told them, no doubt in return for cash in a brown envelope - there were no other witnesses. Unlike criminal convictions in an open court, the details of cautions (= an admission of the alleged offence in exchange for charges being dropped) are not made public.
So while Ms T lost her libel action (the court appears to have decided that, as a matter of fact, she did give Mr K a blow job, and telling the truth is absolute defence against a defamation case), isn't there a police officer somewhere who ought to be locked up and/or have his pension rights taken away etc?
Twat
4 hours ago
17 comments:
Aint no such thing as "borderline" corruption, can you be bordrline pregnant? can you borderline murder some one?
Nah - Corruption fits the bill (no pun intended)perfectly.
Borderline corruption? It's f^cking disgraceful and anyone who has been involved should lose their jobs AT THE VERY LEAST.
"have his pension rights taken away"
How can you be so harsh?
Police don't get locked up or have their pension rights removed, they get suspended on full pay pending an investigation then dismissed with pension rights intact.
You could have used a better example than the Gillian Taylforth case, because her sister is a copper and the info could have easily have come from her.
Relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1AJjnl2y8U
Anon BE, I'll go with the majority view and agree that it IS corruption.
B, sadly yes.
Anon, do you have any evidence for that, even by the flimsy standards of the internet?
Den, nice one.
"Taylforth" is a pretty fine name for a floozy.
The reason this story is big (last night the BBC 10 O'clock news was almost entirely about this, the questions selsected for Question Time were about it except for 3 mina at the end & all of the Andrew neil show 0 2.5 hours solid)and why only Murdock is being dropped into itis because the BBC are scared that if Murdock buys all of Sky their broadcasting monopoly will face a little competition.
PS I have passed on to the Attorney General a Guardian article in which they quote a stolen email back in 2000.
The law applying equally yo all we may expect arrests momentarily. Or not as the case may be.
According to Wikipedia Kim Taylforth was in the Met at the right time.
neil craig,
The reason this story is big (last night the BBC 10 O'clock news was almost entirely about this, the questions selsected for Question Time were about it except for 3 mina at the end & all of the Andrew neil show 0 2.5 hours solid)and why only Murdock is being dropped into itis because the BBC are scared that if Murdock buys all of Sky their broadcasting monopoly will face a little competition.
Despite having a pretty well-rounded view of how the BBC ticks, I still think this was a huge story that deserved the coverage it got.
It's about the only news story that our office is talking about.
I wish people like Prezza wouldn't bang on about Sky as that's disgusting opportunism, trying to make political capital out of a terrible thing.
I don't even know why anyone gives such a fuck about him owning Sky. Sky's going to start facing serious competition from the likes of Netflix soon, so Murdoch's probably wasting his money.
Yes, selling confidential information to journalists is corruption.
The question is, how institutionalised is it? Let's face it, there are lots of dodgy people around in all walks of life.
The other interesting one is the relationship between serving coppers and their friends that have become private detectives.
There's a lot of people in the right of centre blogosphere that are concerned about the government snooping on you. But big companies pay good money for their own police officers. These people are not regulated by government snooping laws either.
D, why?
NC, best of luck with that.
DBC, come off it, the officer who shopped her must have been one in the nick where Mr K signed the caution which is nowhere near London. It seems highly unlikely that they would ring up WPC T and then she'd shop her own sister to The Sun.
JT, why shouldn't P make political capital out of it? Seems fair enough to me.
SL, yes, I'm overruled on that, it is corruption, but I don't think it's a collective thing, it's just some individual officers doing it. It's not like the superintendent runs a tronc and dishes it out at the end of each month.
JT, why shouldn't P make political capital out of it? Seems fair enough to me.
For me, because it's a story about the family and friends of a girl who was murdered, and to use that to score points against someone who is considered as the Guardian's Great Satan is to cheapen what was done (incidentally, all credit to Nick Davies who's one of those rare people at the Graun that does proper journalism).
MW, it's a funny one. I do trade marks and copyright now and am constantly lobbied by representitives of the big brand owners to prioritise counterfeiting of their brand.
It's the big US and German companies that lobby the most via private detectives, the Nike, Ralph Lauren, Adidas and Puma of this world.
They work globally and the fact that people might get shot in some producer nations doesn't bat an eyelid on them.
@MW
Calm down,calm down! You were challenging one of the numerous Anons with his claim that GT's sister was a cop. I was just pointing out that Kim, (the better actress in my opinion), was in the Met at the time.
Put on it what construction you like.Its possible to think of other ways the information might have got out.
"It's about the only news story that our office is talking about."
Yes Hoseph but wpuld they gave if the BBC gadn't promoted it? To be fair to them it does have what most planted stories don't - some ongoing activity so that we don't know exactly how it will turn out.
However I suggest that if the media had reported a number of stories (specifically NATO police's dissection of living people) they would have been talked about too.
Ibdeed Mark - I don;t actually expect our legal authorities to behave uncorruptly.
Someone I know in the Met says they always contact the Press when somebody famous is brought in,not for any pay-off, but because they don't like the miscreant involved.
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