Any sympathy left for News of the World just got thrown out the door. Turns out News of the World paid rival journalists to give up their paper's scoops, reports The Guardian's James Robinson. "Sue Harris, a secretary at the Sunday People, was sacked in 1995 after it was alleged she had sold stories obtained by the paper to the News of the World," Harris writes. "She is believed to have received £250 a week for passing her paper's best scoops to the News of the World, which was then edited by Piers Morgan." While this doesn't have anything to do with the phone hacking scandal, business law professor Mike Koehler of Butler University says the practice could open up the paper's corporate parent, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to prosecution under the Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act. Harris writes, "Although the act was set up primarily to prevent American companies from bribing foreign officials, it is also an offence under the legislation to fail to keep a record of all payments made by a company listed in the US." As anyone who's familiar with Murdoch's scandal sheets, it's always the cover-up and never the crime.

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