A former British policeman was jailed for 10 months on Thursday for selling a story to Rupert Murdoch’s top-selling tabloid The Sun and trying to sell other information about headline-grabbing cases.
James Bowes, 30, was sentenced at London’s Old Bailey court after pleading guilty to misconduct in a public office last month.
The court heard that in 2010 Bowes tried to sell a story to Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World about British-Australian pop star Peter Andre and his ex-wife Katie Price, the former topless model also known as Jordan, but the weekly tabloid did not pay Bowes for the story.
However, the former sergeant with Sussex Police in southeast England was paid £500 ($780, 590 euros) for passing information to The Sun about a child who was bitten by a fox.
The child’s father told the court the family had to move from their home until the media frenzy over the story died down.
Bowes offered The Sun a third story about a psychic who contacted police about a murder case, but they did not use the information.
Bowes was arrested under Operation Elveden, a Scotland Yard investigation into the sale of stories by police and other public officials that was sparked by the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.
He was dismissed from the Sussex police force after his arrest.
Australian-born media tycoon Murdoch, 82, was forced to shut down the News of the World in 2011 after revelations that its journalists illegally accessed the voicemail messages of a murdered schoolgirl as well as hundreds of public figures.
Three other ex-police officers and a former prison officer have also been jailed for selling or offering stories to The Sun and News of the World.
Police investigating phone hacking and bribery by journalists have arrested dozens of people since the News of the World was shut down, including Prime Minister David Cameron’s media chief Andy Coulson, a former editor of the paper.
The scandal sparked a judicial inquiry into the ethics of the press and an overhaul of newspaper regulation in Britain.
Ex-policeman jailed for selling story to The Sun
