The Sun staff 'ready human rights challenge to News Corp body'

Some senior journalists at The Sun are considering a legal challenge to the News Corporation body set up to clean up the mess after the phone hacking scandal, it has been reported.

According to The Guardian, journalists at the News International paper are ready to take the action after the arrest of various current and former The Sun employees.

Around a dozen journalists are understood to have contacted the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) with the idea of asking Geoffrey Robertson, the UK's leading human rights lawyer, to question the legal basis of actions by News Corp's Management and Standards Committee (MSC).

The Sun employees are also thought to be concerned over the protection of their sources in the wake of the hacking affair at the News of the World.

This latest development comes as News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch is due to fly to London to deal with the growing crisis at The Sun.

Robertson said in a column in The Sun's News International broadsheet sister, The Times, today that journalists should use the Human Rights Act to protect their sources.

He said that News Corp's MSC should "be required to learn by heart" a passage in the act that covers the importance of the protection of journalistic sources.

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet is due to meet with lawyers today to discuss a potential challenge to the MSC.

In a strongly worded statement issued on Monday, she condemned the "heavy-handed" action of police, including dawn raids on the homes of journalists.

Discussing the arrest of five The Sun journalists at the weekend, Stanistreet added: "Journalists are reeling after seeing five more of their colleagues thrown to the wolves.

"There is a real sense of a witch-hunt being carried out right now. Journalists at the title are furious at what they see as a monumental betrayal on the part of News International.

"As my evidence to the Leveson Inquiry showed, journalists are often bullied by management to get stories at any cost. Now they are finding they are being shopped by the management that gave them their orders.

"The reputation of these journalists - and let's remember they have not been convicted of anything - will inevitably be damaged."

The term "witch-hunt" was also used in an editorial in The Sun on Monday by the paper's associate editor Trevor Kavanagh, who said that journalists were being treated like a "criminal gang".