Murdoch's "Journalists": "We used to talk to career criminals all the time. They were our sources"

[kpete]

"We used to talk to career criminals all the time. They were our sources," says another former reporter from the paper who also worked for Murdoch's daily tabloid, the Sun. "It was a macho thing: 'My contact is scummier than your contact.' It was a case of: 'Mine's a murderer!' On the plus side, we always had a resident pet nutter around in case anything went wrong."

......................

Four former employees of Britain's best-selling Sunday tabloid have told Reuters that Brooks' denials are simply not credible. They say people on the paper's newsdesk, the hub that directs news coverage, were regularly grilled about the top stories by Brooks and later by her successor Andy Coulson, who resigned over the phone-hacking scandal in 2007 and went on to become Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman.

"They went in and they were cross-examined for two hours every day. And it was all about the genesis of all the stories," the first ex-reporter, who worked at the paper for seven years, told Reuters.

................

"It's simply not conceivable that somebody who was editor wouldn't have known," says the journalist who spent seven years at the paper, covering general news.


LOTS MORE:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/16/us-newscorp-notw-brooks-idUSTRE76F0O420110716

[warrior1]

1. The soon as the world is rid

of the Murdocks and all of its minions the better.

[malaise]

2. The next resignation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/16/paul-stephenson-drinks-neil-wallis
<snip>

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, had social drinks on up to five occasions over the past two years with the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested and then bailed last week.

Stephenson already faces a grilling this week by a parliamentary select committee over his recruitment of Neil Wallis as a public relations consultant last year. The commissioner has been accused of an error of judgment over the £24,000 contract he handed to Wallis, who worked at the NoW between 2003 and 2009, a period when hacking is alleged to have taken place.

Now it has emerged that beyond eight meals between 2006 and 2009 registered as business dinners with Wallis, and a further nine with other News International executives since 2005, the commissioner also socialised in his own time with the journalist at a time when the NoW was under at the centre of the scandal over phone hacking allegations.

The revelation will inevitably concern the home affairs select committee.