A former Sun reporter was sacked from a council PR job after he was charged on unproven allegations by police that he paid an unknown prison officer for a story, a jury has heard.
John Troup told Kingston crown court on Tuesday that he lost his job in January last year and is currently supporting his family by working “slicing bacon at the weekends” in a butcher’s shop.
The 49-year-old PR man worked at the Sun from 1990 to July 2009 when he was made redundant as part of a cost-cutting drive.
After a period of unemployment, he got a job in media relations in Southend-on-Sea borough council and spent four years there.
In January last year he was taken on by Uttlesford district council in Saffron Walden, Essex, as communications media manager but was dumped when he told them he had been charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office in autumn last year. He denies the charge.
“When I informed my employers, I was immediately suspended and walked from the building,” he told jurors. “I was then summoned to a disciplinary hearing two weeks later and I was dismissed,” he added.
The father of two has since found employment “in various jobs including labouring on building sites” and as an “assistant” in a structural engineering firm.
Unable to work during the trial which started at the beginning of October, he is now “slicing bacon at the weekends” to make ends met.
Troup is on trial with five other current or former Sun journalists.
In the witness box for the start of his defence, Troup told jurors he had never made a “dishonest” expense claim in his entire career.
The jury has previously heard there was “a culture” of falsifying expense claims across all titles in Fleet Street, with the money seen as an “allowance” in lieu of overtime. He also told jurors that he was not aware of a culture of paying cash to public officials at the Sun.
Troup said he started his career at his local paper in the Wirral and came to the attention of the nationals when working at the Mercury news agency.
For Mercury he covered the Lockerbie and Hillsborough disasters, knocking on doors of the families of the deceased as part of a pooled arrangement for national newspapers, some of whom, he said “had not got on the right side” of people on Merseyside.
When he started working at the Sun, he was involved in “less than a handful” of cash payments for stories in a typical year. He said it was an “inconvenient” way of paying for stories because it involved time-wasting collection of the cash and then travel to meet the tipster.
Asked why some members of the public insisted on being paid in cash instead of a cheque, he said some “didn’t have a bank account”, some were on benefits and thought a cheque might compromise their social welfare payments, and some were “sensitive that they were the source of the story”.
Earlier, the trial heard from Catherine Feast, the head of communications at the Police Federation for England and Wales. She had known Troup when she worked at the press office at Cambridgeshire constabulary.
“There were very, very few journalists we trusted implicitly and John was top of the list,” she said.
Troup moved from Manchester to the Sun in 1994 and went on to become number three on the newsdesk before moving again in 1998 back to a reporting job as the paper’s East Anglia correspondent.
He denied all knowledge of payments to public officials when at the Sun.
“Were you aware of any culture of paying public officials for stories?” asked his counsel William Clegg.
“Absolutely not,” Troup replied.
“Did you ever do it?”
“Most certainly not.”
In cross examination, Troup said he had no recollection of the email exchange with Dudman or of the story.
“I remember a lot of things when I worked at the Sun, I don’t remember everything and I don’t remember this,” he said under persistent questioning from Peter Wright QC, for the prosecution.
He told the jury it didn’t matter if the source was a prison officer “because what he was passing on wasn’t confidential. This was a death in a cateogry A prison,” he said. “I can’t see how a death in category A prison could ever be something that could be confidential.
“The whole point of newspapers is to make sure you get stories other people don’t have,” said Troup.
He was accused by Peter Wright, QC, of having “tailored the facts” throughout the proceedings as he would have spent “days and weeks” thinking about the incident since he was charged.
“I haven’t tailored anything,” said Troup.
The trial continues.
