Rebekah Brooks has denied paying a serving police officer for a story while she was editor of the Sun or "inventing" rules governing payments as part of her defence strategy for the phone-hacking trial.
The former News International chief executive told the Old Bailey on Monday that she never knowingly paid, or sanctioned payment to, a police officer for information they obtained on duty.
On her 12th day in the witness box, Brooks said the paper may have paid officers for information, such as gossip about a neighbour, that he or she may have picked up off duty.
"I do not think the Sun, to my knowledge, made any corrupt payments to police officers during my editorship," she told jurors.
Under cross-examination by prosecutors, she was shown an email from a Sun journalist requesting cash for stories that came from "a contact" who was described "as a serving police officer", for a story about the mayor of Tetbury involved in "wife swapping".
Brooks told the court she couldn't remember the email but reading it now, it could be an example of a payment made for a story that had nothing to do with the officer's work.
Andrew Edis QC, for the prosecution, questioned whether there was a written rule about this distinction handed down to reporters at the Sun.
Edis suggested to her that the special arrangements for paying police officers for off duty material was "an invented hypothesis" created to justify a series of emails now before the court between Sun reporters and her and other senior staff regarding alleged corrupt payments.
"Is your evidence about this just invented around emails?" Edis asked.
Brooks responded: "It is not invented around emails."
She added: "I just wanted to make sure that I was absolutely accurate and said that occasionally it might have happened that a serving police officer might have given the Sun some information."
Interrupting Brooks, Edis put it to her: "Anything might have happened. We are concerned with what did happen."
He repeatedly asked her to specify where the rule was written down distinguishing between payments to police for stories off duty from on duty.
"Where did you get it from?" Edis asked.
"Maybe the lawyers told me, I can't remember, maybe a law was passed," Brooks replied. "It was just accepted," she said, adding "I never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer."
Edis asked: "Do you know there was no written rule to your journalists which said we do not pay police officers for information they have learned in their duties?"
Brooks replied: "There isn't one journalist in Fleet Street who does not know you don't pay police officers."
Brooks was shown a series of emails from Sun reporters and picture desk staff requesting payments to people who either appeared to be police officers or public officials.
One email in April 2006 referred to a "serving police officer" who had supplied tips in the past. It also stated that the news and picture desk had already agreed to pay the source £1,000.
Another email to Brooks in April 2006 asked her to authorise a cash payment for £1,000 "for first pic of cop killer Steven Graham". The journalist said "the guy who got us the picture works at Sandhurst", the military academy, and he didn't want it "traced back to him".
Brooks said she did not remember responding to the email and had to check whether the sender, Alex Dobisz, was a male or female when she was shown the email during preparation for the trial.
She said in this kind of instance she would have had to assess whether there was a public interest defence for paying a public official.
The jury was shown another email, sent three months later, from another Sun journalist seeking £4,000 "for a picture of Prince William at a James Bond party dressed as a Bond girl". The journalist told Brooks his source was an instructor at Sandhurst where Prince William trained, and the picture came from a "fellow instructor" who happened to be the prince's platoon commander.
Brooks says she would never "in a million years" have thought a platoon commander would have been selling information or had a "side deal" with the Sun and believed that the money went to "the other chap, the unspecified chap" who the journalist said was his source.
Brooks has already been acquitted on a fifth charge in relation to the picture of Prince William after the jury was directed to find her not guilty of the charge by the judge.
The jury was shown a further email about Prince Harry in Afghanistan relaying information that, the reporter, says came from "my guy serving alongside him". Edis asked Brooks if she ever asked the reporter who this source was, giving the rules around paying public officials. Brooks said she could not remember but said that the paper had a lot of sources in the army including journalists embedded with regiments in Afghanistan.
Edis put it to her that public interest was not, in fact, a consideration when it came to paying for stories from police or public officials.
"None of these people who write these emails ever said anything about the public interest, ever said: 'Listen boss, it would be in the public interest to make these payments because of A, B, C, D or E?" Edis said. "It's almost as if they don't know the public interest is the basis for which you make your decisions," he added.
Brooks said the department heads at the newsdesk or picture desk made such assessments all the time and the editor would have been involved when there was a "risk of prosecution" such as the time when the Sun paid a public official for a story revealing that Saddam Hussein was threatening to swamp the country with anthrax
Brooks denies four charges including one charge that she unlawfully conspired to pay public officials for stories.
The trial continues.
