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December 10, 2008

British Journalist Cleared on Journalism Charges

It keeps getting scarier in Once-Great Britain. Reporter Sally Murrer tells of her brush with Big Brother:

I hadn't a clue, as I shopped in Laura Ashley, that eight plainclothes police officers were poised to arrest me, lock me in a cell, interrogate me, strip-search me and finally put me in the dock for a multi-million-pound Crown Court trial after which I could technically be sent to prison for life.

I had no understanding of what heinous crime they thought I'd committed.

Officially, I was charged with three counts of the ancient common-law offence of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office — the same charges levelled at Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green last week when he was arrested over claims he had leaked confidential Government documents.

Although she was eventually acquitted, the nightmare dragged on for a year and a half, costing taxpayers over £1 million and forcing her to put her autistic son into a care home.

What did Murrer allegedly do? Not much of anything.

I was being accused of encouraging a police officer to give me information — stories the police authorities do not want in the public domain.

Each of the charges referred to stories I had written or cases I knew about.

None of the stories could be described as being of national importance. One concerned a local footballer involved in a brawl, another about the death of a former drug offender and a third, which was never published, involved an Islamist released early from prison.

Had she been found guilty, any journalist in Britain with off the record police contacts would be subject to life imprisonment. Just to be on the safe side, reporters might want to limit their sources of information to official government press releases.

On a tip from V the K.

Posted by Van Helsing at December 10, 2008 7:30 AM

Comments

Posted by: Anonymous at December 10, 2008 2:57 PM