A Sun reporter has been given an 18-month suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of paying for tip-offs from an anti-terrorism officer.
Anthony France, 41, from Watford, was found guilty of aiding and abetting PC Timothy Edwards to commit misconduct.
France had followed an "accepted procedure" at the Sun of paying for stories, Judge Timothy Pontius said.
He is the only journalist who stands convicted by a jury under a probe into alleged illegal payments to officials.
During the trial, a jury at London's Old Bailey heard how France had a "corrupt relationship" with the PC Edwards - a Heathrow Airport officer - for more than three years.
PC Edwards sold 38 stories and tip-offs to France between March 2008 and July 2011 in exchange for more than £22,000.
Judge Pontius sentenced the reporter to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, and to 200 hours of community service.
He described him as a journalist of "hitherto unblemished character" who was "essentially a decent man of solid integrity".
Judge Pontius said some of the articles that resulted from payments were "very much in the public interest", including stories about drunken airline pilots and drug smuggling.
However, others were "plainly chosen and published for their obviously salacious subject matter", he added.
Newspaper 'culture'
Payments by France had followed "an accepted procedure that doubtless had existed for some time" at the Sun, the judge said.
Transactions went through an established procedure, he added, saying it was not a case of France handing over a "grubby envelope" in a dark corner of a pub.
"If there was a wrong culture, as clearly the jury found, it is not one of Mr France's making. It was inevitably created by others for their benefit and sustained by others for their benefit," Judge Pontius said.
France - who denied the charge - told jurors he had never been advised by anyone at the Sun that speaking to a police officer or a public official might be against the law.
PC Edwards - who pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office - was jailed for two years in 2014.
BBC home affairs correspondent June Kelly said a number of journalists from the Sun had been in court to support France during the hearing.
France, a crime reporter, had been prosecuted under Operation Elveden - the Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged inappropriate payments to police and public officials.
His conviction comes after charges against nine journalists accused of making illegal payments to officials were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service last month.
However, when it announced the decision, the CPS said it was continuing the prosecutions of France, and two other Sun journalists in a separate case.
- Published22 May 2015
