Journalists from Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun have contacted a trade union to discuss suing the British tabloid’s owners, the union said, after five staff members were arrested in a police bribery probe.
The news comes as Murdoch is due to visit London on Thursday or Friday to meet with journalists at The Sun, after promising to continue publishing Britain’s top-selling daily despite the corruption row. The Australian-born tycoon shut down The Sun’s weekly stablemate, the News of the World, in July after it became embroiled in a phone-hacking scandal. Police arrested five Sun journalists last weekend on suspicion of bribing public officials, after receiving information from a committee set up at Murdoch’s News Corp. to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. The arrests caused outrage in the newsroom and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said it was now looking at how to defend staff “against a management that seems prepared to throw them to the wolves”.