Brit is busy today, but this is just too newsworthy to miss
Unfortunatelyit's not reaching all the way to the top yet. But another arm of the News international spidersweb in the UK today has had a visit from the police.
BBC News - Operation Elveden: Five held in police payment probe
Four former and current Sun journalists and a police officer have been arrested by detectives investigating payments made to police by journalists.
Scotland Yard said the men, aged 29 to 56, were arrested at addresses in London and Essex earlier.
The 29-year-old, a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Policing Command, was arrested at his work - a central London police station.
The Guardian and Sky news have named the four people as
Sun journalists and police officer arrested in corruption investigation | Media | guardian.co.uk
The four Sun employees arrested are understood to be Mike Sullivan, the Sun's crime editor, the former managing editor Graham Dudman, the executive editor Fergus Shanahan and Chris Pharo, a news desk executive.
police report that the four individuals have had their homes and their work areas searched. and one can only assume that emails etc are also the subject of examination by the servants of the law.
The Guardian also reports that
Sun journalists and police officer arrested in corruption investigation | Media | guardian.co.uk
The arrests came after information was passed to the police by News Corporation's internal investigations unit, the Management and Standards Committee. It was set up in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that erupted last July by Rupert Murdoch and operates independently of News International.
Understandably this has introduced an air of panic into the papers employees. They knew that Rupert had set up an independent ethics and standards investigation group, but they didn't expect it to be either Independent, ethical, or actually do any Investigation, so to find out that it has actually done what the name says on the tin has turned out to be a bit of a shock. Judging by a selection of tweets and comments, at best the Wapping newsroom is feeling betrayed by its own management. at worst they are wondering who's next.
A number of journalists must now come to the conclusion that Rupert is quite happily selling anyone down the river who will let him keep his hands on the company for a while longer. Sooner or later some reporters are going to have to come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to sing now and sing loud for everyone to hear, as an alternative to small rooms with grey barred windows, and then the fun most definitely begins as people race to be the first to sing and not end up being the fall guy when things truly come apart.
You have to now ask, where is the activity on the other side of the Atlantic. Piece of evidence after piece of evidence appears of corporate malfeasance ranging up and down the corporate ladder, and still the DOJ appears to be sitting doing very little.