NEWS CORP SCANDAL SPREADS TO SECOND NEWSPAPER

Bringing to mind Watergate figure John Dean’s warning to Richard Nixon that the political scandal represented a “cancer on the presidency,” Scotland Yard has arrested a veteran editor of the London Sun on “suspicion of corruption.” It was the 17th arrest made in connection with the growing scandal that continues to threaten Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and the first one not involving a person associated with the now defunct News of the World tabloid. Newspaper reports indicated that the man, Jamie Pyat, who has worked at the Sun since 1987, may have bribed police officers for information about cases they were investigating. News International, the News Corp unit that oversees the company’s news operations in the U.K., said only that it is “cooperating fully with the Metropolitan Police Service in its various investigations.” Meanwhile, it was disclosed on Saturday that Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of NoW, who resigned from the newspaper at the height of disclosures about its illegal telephone-hacking activities, was given a $2.6-million payout, a chauffeur-driven car, and a London office as part of her severance package. Furthermore, the London Independent said that James Murdoch, the executive chairman of News International, had assured Brooks that she would be able to return to the company in as little as two years and that he had urged her to “travel the world” until the scandal blew over.