More information comes to hand about the suspended Sun reporter, Jamie Pyatt, who I wrote about last week.He was arrested on 4 November after News International's management and standards committee (MSC) handed over documents to the Scotland Yard team, Operation Elveden, which is investigating payments to police by journalists.
The dockets are believed to have referred in each case simply to "police contact".
It is said that such a description is sometimes used by the paper's reporters when making payments to sources who are connected to stories involving the police, and that the source might, in fact, be a retired police officer, or a friend or relative of an officer. It could be a civilian working at a police station.
Several of Pyatt's reporting colleagues have been trying to raise his case with editorial executives on his behalf.
There is widespread sympathy for Pyatt in the newsroom. And there is plenty of support outside too, including from the former Sun editor, Kelvin MacKenzie.
Reading between the lines of his anecdote about Pyatt and a plumber in his Daily Mail column last week it was clear that he was sending a coded message to his old paper's publishers: I back Pyatt.
There was also a piece in The Independent by former News of the World journalist Tom Latchem that was witheringly critical of News International.
He added: "Pyatt's arrest highlights again the ruthless survival mentality of the Murdoch clan. It is in damage-limitation mode again."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/nov/16/sun-newsinternational
