News of the World editor resigns after reporter and investigator are jailed for royal household scam

[Newsjock]

Another one of Rupert Murdoch's media holdings.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1999923,00.html

The editor of the News of the World resigned last night after the paper's royal reporter was jailed for four months after one of the biggest privacy and newspaper scandals of recent years.

Andy Coulson stepped down after Clive Goodman admitted colluding with a freelance investigator to intercept more than 600 mobile phone messages left for three senior officials in the royal household. Mr Coulson said he accepted "ultimate responsibility" for his reporter's actions.

The ruse, which ended in Goodman's "humiliation and disgrace", involved the casual breach of security arrangements put in place by the main mobile phone companies, yielding information that was then used to produce exclusive stories for the News of The World.

His lawyers told the court he became desperate for information because he was sidelined on the paper and felt his stellar career was on the wane. He paid the investigator Glenn Mulcaire £12,000 cash for his role in the eavesdropping - money that was then reclaimed from News International. But it also emerged that Mulcaire had a formal relationship with the newspaper and a lucrative contract worth more than £100,000 a year to provide "information and research". Mulcaire was jailed for a total of six months.