Sun deputy editor spent 'a split second authorising payment to military source'
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Version 0 of 1. The deputy editor of The Sun has told the Old Bailey that he would have spent no more than “a split second” on a request from the paper’s chief reporter asking for cash for a military source. Geoff Webster, who is on trial over alleged payments to public officials for stories, replied to John Kay’s request for £1,500 cash payment with a single word: “sure”. Kay wanted to pay his source £750 each for two stories in 2010. The jury had previously heard his source was a ministry of defence official, Bettina Jordan-Barber. He referred to her in his email as his “number one military contact”. Jurors heard that Webster was preoccupied with a breaking news story on 5 July 2010, the day the email had been sent, because of the ongoing manhunt for the killer Raoul Moat. Asked what his state of mind was at the time he replied to the email, he responded: “It does not register at all.” Asked if he considered whether Kay’s source was a public official, he replied: “Not for one second.” Asked how long he would have spent on the email, he said: “A split second, I would have thought as long as it takes for you to read two figures of £750, which wasn’t very much.” Earlier jurors heard how Kay would exaggerate the importance of his stories and his sources when pitching to get them into the paper. Kay would dramatically approach the news editors to sell his stories, pushing his chest out and tugging his belt to signify he had “a belter” of a story, Webster said. To chuckles in the court room, he explained that this led to a good Kay story being known as a “triple tug”. A triple tug was a belter, a “double tug was a good story, one tug was good and no tug was ‘why are you wasting my time’,” Webster said. He said he knew nothing about Kay’s sources, but told jurors he invariably referred to them as “top notch, brilliant, well-placed”. “He would never refer to an ‘pretty average source’,” and would flag them up with “big lights”, he said. “John was a man that would do that and let you know that his source was the best ever when sometimes that didn’t live up to the billing,” Webster said. He explained that on one occasion a freelance journalist who specialised in military stories had approached him with a story because he couldn’t get hold of Kay. An hour and a bit later Kay pitched up with the same story, declaring it had come from his “ace military contact”. Webster said he did not have the heart to challenge him: “John, he liked a bit of show,” he told jurors. Webster has been charged with two counts of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. The first count, which is linked to alleged payments to Jordan-Barber, covers an eight-year period between 2004 and 2012. The second refers to alleged payments to an unknown soldier in 2010. He denies the charges. The trial continues. |