It was during one of the economic crises of the 1970s – probably 1974 – when my boss came in one day with a tale to tell.
A friend of his had had the miserable task of having to ring his wife to tell her that he no longer had a job.
The first thing she did when his call ended was to dial the number of a newspaper on whose switchboard she used to work before becoming a housewife & mother.
They paid her for the tip off that an important company had gone bust.
The point of telling me the story was to invite my admiration for her presence of mind & for doing her bit to ease the family through a financial crisis.
Social media would of course ensure that the news was out faster than the speed of light these days, but it shows that there is absolutely nothing new in newspapers paying for tip-offs from those with inside information.
I have no time at all for those who make a habit of abusing their position to make press pay-offs a regular source of additional income, but I also object to the way ‘past practices’ by Sun journalists amounted to their having a ‘network’ of paid informers across the public services.
The sums of money quoted sound large: the individual who was paid £80,000, albeit over a number of years, must have had particularly juicy bits of salaciousness to retail, but a budget (also over several years) for one journalist’s informers would not stretch very far between the 50,000 employees of the Metropolitan Police Force, not to mention Whitehall civil servants, armed forces & NHS employees.
Of far greater concern is the way those at the top of politics & police schmoozed up to what they saw as the power in the land.
