Tabloid Journalists on the defensive

It is early one Saturday morning, Britain is still held in an icy grip with snow on the ground and the temperature is way below zero - and five senior journalists from Britain's most successful newspaper are woken rudely in their beds. They are subjected to early morning raids by Scotland Yard. Their families look on bemused and shocked as ten police officers are deployed to each address. The men are arrested and led away.

The newspaper in question is Rupert Murdoch's daily tabloid, The Sun. The offence is allegedly the payment of public officials for information. This all comes as the British press is put under scrutiny as never before.

First there is an ongoing investigation led by a learned judge into the way that journalists conduct themselves ethically - this has focused on the practice of hacking the cell phones of those in the public domain. Thousands of actors, footballers, politicians, or simple victims of wicked crimes have found themselves targeted.

The second aspect is a police investigation into illegal practices like phone tapping, but it has now spread to whether journalists paid public officials like policemen, civil servants or soldiers for stories. Last summer it led Murdoch to close his hugely successful Sunday newspaper, the News of the World. With so many Sun journalists arrested, the question was quickly asked: could this newspaper be next for the chop?

But a more interesting question quickly followed. Has the Scotland Yard investigation gone too far? The Sun's associate editor accused the authorities of conducting a 'witch hunt' that was threatening the very foundations of a free press. It has also sown seeds of discontent within the Murdoch organisation - when the scandal first erupted, an internal standards committee was set up to investigate wrongdoing. It seems that members of this committee have been passing their findings directly to the police, which has led to the arrest of so many of their colleagues. Can't be a very comradely atmosphere at Murdoch Towers at the moment.

But it's also emerged that the cops have thrown 169 policemen and women at this investigation. More than were assigned to the Lockerbie bombing inquiry. It is an eyebrow arching statistic. Tabloid journalists are normally on the attack. Today, here in Britain, they are on the defensive. In different times the headline might have been: Heavy Handed Cops In Brutish Crackdown On Free Press. But so far, no-one is holding the front page for that one.

This is Jon Sopel for CBS News in London.

[CharlesNorrie]

Interesting to get a story that includes the Sun and Lockerbie. Remember the Lockerbie investigation failed to nail the real bombers the CIA and the Iranians, who worked together to give Iran its one and only one revenge for the deliberate destruction of IR655, the Iranian Airbus.