Another Trinity Mirror journalist has been arrested for phone hacking, the Guardian reported.
“All I can confirm is that an employee was arrested” on July 15, the Trinity Mirror’s head of communications Elizabeth Holloway told iMediaEthics by e-mail.
Trinity Mirror couldn’t name or confirm the identity of the employee, but the Guardian reported the journalist was Lee Harpin, the agenda editor for Trinity Mirror. Also reporting this was Reuters, which credited the identity to a “person familiar with the situation.”
iMediaEthics has reached out to Harpin via Twitter for comment.
According to the Guardian, this is the fifth Mirror journalist arrested for phone hacking; ironically, this journalist may even have been hacked himself by the News of the World.
“The four journalists who were arrested two years ago have yet to be formally charged and are free on bail,” the New York Post‘s Keith Kelly reported.
In a statement on its website, the Metropolitan Police said an unnamed “47-year-old male journalist” was arrested “on a suspicion on conspiracy to unlawfully intercept communications” but was out on bail “to return on a date mid-September pending further enquiries.”
In February, the Mirror issued a public apology “to all its victims of phone hacking,” which was published in print and online for the Mirror and The People. The Mirror acknowledged its journalists had hacked but said it had stopped.
“Some years ago voice-mails left on certain people’s phones were unlawfully accessed. And in many cases the information obtained was used in stories in our national newspapers,” the apology read. “Such behaviour represented an unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into people’s private lives. It was unlawful and should never have happened, and fell far below the standards our readers expect and deserve.”
Earlier this month, the Mirror Group settled lawsuits for phone hacking with Jude Law’s assistant Ben Jackson, actress Emma Noble and stuntman Bobby Holland Harton.
In May, the Mirror Group was ordered to pay about $2 million U.S. to eight phone-hacking victims. The same month, lawyer for phone-hacking victims, David Sherborne, said there were about 70 more lawsuits against the Mirror pending.