Gotcha!

December 14th, 2008 § 0 comments

It looks like the Sun is trying to take the crown from the News of the World with regard to paying to get video footage of fitted up celebrities.

The Sun Lies:

A highly curious but also insightful story into how “gotcha!” journalism works on the Sun has emerged:

“A man who plotted to covertly film a “hit list” of stars, including Amy Winehouse, taking drugs so he could sell the footage to newspapers was jailed for two years yesterday.

Johnny Blagrove, 34, and his girlfriend Cara Burton, 22, sold footage of the singer apparently smoking a crack pipe to The Sun for £50,000, but the video was later passed to police.

In the final scene of the tape, which was viewed by a judge at Snaresbrook crown court, east London, Blagrove laughs to himself after telling his reflection in a bathroom mirror: “You have succeeded. You have done it. You are going places. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally got what I want.””

What the Guardian article doesn’t mention is that it seems to have been the Sun itself that turned in its source, having previously paid him £50,000, or far more than the average Sun hack will earn in a year. Having provided the police with the footage secretly shot by Blagrove of Winehouse, apparently smoking a crack pipe, they went on to raid Blagrove’s home, where they apparently found additional footage of Peaches Geldof. Rather than keep this evidence for any potential trial, the police, having had their back scratched, seem to have given the video straight back to the Sun

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