Stop press: three-month suspended sentence for the charge on which he was convicted ....
Nick Parker is one of the reporters I remember with most affection and admiration from my time "on the road".
That he worked for The Sun, whereas I nominally had the status of a broadsheet journalist, mattered not. As Jeremy Deedes, the son of the late, revered Lord (Bill) Deedes, once said to me when he was managing editor of the Telegraph: "We all muddy our feet in much the same water."
In other words, all sections of the media - including the often sanctimonious broadcasters - covered similar events. Never forget that in seeking to trash reporters and photographers doorstepping Diana, Princess of Wales at the gym and elsewhere, TV crews doorstepped her too.
Nick was good fun and a tireless and clever, determined discoverer of truth. He also, during the Hoolie Watch (covering football hooligans for the news pages) of Euro 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands, had the most envied ring tone on his mobile, the theme from The Great Escape.
So I am thrilled he was acquitted of the dredged-up offence, the dredging up rather than the offence designed to trap journalist, of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office (the payment of public officials). But I was dismayed to see the jury did convict him of handling the Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh's stolen mobile (as I understand the evidence, he accepted that he trawled through its memory but instructed the person who took the phone to The Sun to hand it in to police).
I have ethical issues with both the payments and the conduct for which Parker has been deemed criminally culpable. But I refuse to see him as a criminal. As I have said more than once, launch a corporate prosecution against News International or its successor by all means but - my plea is too late - halt this squalid pursuit of mere employees.
And while I am on, let me mention that the internet trolls who post partisan comments even while trials are in process seem to me to be committing offences as any any tabloid phone-hacker or payment-maker. When, passing judgement on evidence then being given, one such oaf wrote at the Hacked Off site, "I suspect 'We hoped/believed it was a whistleblower' will become the tabloids’ new cri-de-coeur and default defence", I posted a mild rebuke. Two weeks later, it remains "awaiting moderation".
Whatever now happens to Parker (see my updated introduction: a suspended sentence), it is the absolute duty of Rupert Murdoch to assure Nick Parker that his job with the company is safe.
Murdoch might even care to reflect on these words I wrote but did not publish as State vs Press intensified its pursuit of the foot soldiers:
One of the defence witnesses in every one of these cases should be the former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald. Murdoch says his lordship, who briefly worked as an adviser for News Corp, had told him 'he knew that on Fleet Street there were payments made, and he decided not to go after it because it was all too petty – and too complicated'.
All too petty, indeed.
What we have seen in a variety of cases, some held simultaneously in circumstances I find deeply prejudicial*, is the logical consequence of an odious process of journalists being thrust forward as sacrificial lambs by self-seeking employers embarked on not only an affront to natural justice but a power charge of coach and horses through every journalistic principle of protecting sources.
Some defendants will get a Ponting jury, others - such as the NoW reporter awaiting sentence after this absurd lottery went the wrong way - won't.
* I put this question to the Crown Prosecution Service:
Does CPS recognise the potential prejudice of holding trials of journalists, whether for hacking or payments of officials, not only at the same time - as now - but also in quick succession? If the risk was acknowledged, was there not some other way the timetable might have been organised to avoid such prejudice?
And this was the response:
It is important that a trial is not delayed unless it is considered absolutely necessary to do so, and any questions relating to the fairness of a trial can and are raised with the courts as required. The court is currently satisfied with the arrangements involving the current trials involving journalists.
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