Journalist’s lawyer: Prank doesn’t merit prison

Federal officials declined to comment on whether Sabu assisted in the investigation of Keys.

The day after it was announced that Sabu was an FBI informant, Keys wrote a story for Reuters about “infiltrating” the hackers’ chat room.

Reuters had hired Keys in 2012 as a deputy editor for social media. David Girardin, a spokesman for the news agency, told AP in an email Friday that Keys was suspended Thursday with pay. He did not elaborate.

A spokesman for the Chicago-based Tribune Co. declined to comment.

According to Keys‘ Facebook profile, he is single, lives in New York City and works at Reuters‘ New York office, where “I get paid to use Twitter and Facebook at work.”

Reuters, a unit of New York-based Thomson Reuters Corp., has been expanding its business in the United States. This year, six of the Tribune’s seven newspapers dropped The Associated Press for Reuters, citing cost savings. The Los Angeles Times stayed with AP.

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Follow Garance Burke and Paul Elias at http://twitter.com/garanceburke and http://twitter.com/paulelias1.

AP National Writer Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz also contributed to this report.

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