Tag Archives: phone hacking

Jeremy Hunt considering impact of News of the World closure on BSkyB bid

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In a statement today the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced that culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is currently considering whether the announcement regarding the News of the World’s closure has any impact on the question of media plurality in relation to News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB.

The latest consultation on the bid closed at noon today. At the end of last month Hunt said he plans to give the takeover bid the go ahead, subject to a minor new consultation.

In a statement the DCMS said Hunt had “always been clear that he will take as long as is needed to reach a decision”.

The secretary of state will consider carefully all the responses submitted and take advice from Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading before reaching his decision. Given the volume of responses, we anticipate that this will take some time. He will consider all relevant factors including whether the announcement regarding the News of the World’s closure has any impact on the question of media plurality.

Guardian: Police investigate claims NI executive deleted emails

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Police are investigating allegations that a News International executive deleted millions of emails between News of the World editors from an internal archive, the Guardian claims.

The newspaper, which has uncovered much of the phone-hacking scandal, states the deletion of emails is an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005, revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators. The messages are potentially highly valuable both for the police and for the numerous public figures who are suing News International.

According to legal sources close to the police inquiry, a senior executive is believed to have deleted ‘massive quantities’ of the archive on two separate occasions, leaving only a small fraction to be disclosed. One of the alleged deletions is said to have been made at the end of January this year, just as Scotland Yard was launching Operation Weeting, its new inquiry into the affair.

The Guardian investigation also reveals News International:

• infuriated police by leaking sensitive information in spite of an undertaking to police that it would keep it confidential; and

• risked prosecution for perverting the course of justice by trying to hide the contents of a senior reporter’s desk after he was arrested by Weeting detectives in April.

The article goes on to explain the background to the emails and claims they could not be accessed or had been lost en route to a data centre in India.

The original archive was said to contain half a terabyte of data – equivalent to 500 editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica. But police now believe that there was an effort to substantially destroy the archive before News International handed over their new evidence in January. They believe they have identified the executive responsible by following an electronic audit trail. They have attempted to retrieve the data which they fear was lost. The Crown Prosecution Service is believed to have been asked whether the executive can be charged with perverting the course of justice.

The Guardian’s full article is at this link

Timeline: Phone hacking and the end of the News of the World

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An interactive timeline, starting in March 2003 when Rebekah Brooks (then Wade) speaks about paying police for stories to a committee of MPs.

It features an hour by hour account of events this week and includes the Guardian revealing how Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked, further allegations of cases, the pulling out of advertisers, yesterday’s announcement that the News of the World is to close and today’s arrests.

Click and drag the timeline to see how the phone hacking scandal unravelled and click on the + signs to expand details:

Phone hacking and the end of News of the World on Dipity.

Reaction round-up on News of the World closure

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The morning after the announcement that News International is to scrap the News of the World has predictably spawned a variety of reaction from the blogosphere.

Despite rumours that folding the newspaper in favour of a seven day Sun had been on the cards for a while (TheSunOnSunday.co.uk, TheSunOnSunday.com and SunOnSunday.co.uk were all registered on July 5, albeit by a private individual), a source at News International confirmed today that a Sunday edition of the paper wouldn’t be on the cards for several weeks to come.

This morning Times today led with a story that the collapse in advertising was due to online protest and the final nail in the coffin for the paper.

The withdrawal of advertising appeared to be in response to a public backlash that had been led primarily on the internet. Thousands of people had used Twitter and Facebook to express their outrage at allegations of phone hacking at the paper.

This was after a list of the News of the World’s advertising clients had been published online, encouraging people to send Twitter messages to the companies to express concern at the activities of the paper’s journalists.

You can read the full article here (behind the paywall).

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism and former director of digital content for Guardian News & Media sees the decision as part of a long line of bold and audacious moves from the Murdochs, from the bid to buy the Times, to the launch of Sky News, and recently the proposed takeover of BSkyB.

James’s Wapping moment sees him making a gesture he hopes will be grand enough to soften the focus of any phone-hacking inquiry, bold enough to allow the company to extricate itself from present trouble and, in the process, allow him to reshape News International around the digital television platforms he feels both more comfortable with and which are undoubtedly more profitable.

But what about the wider implications? Many are agreed that the decision is brutal and the loss of 200 journalists terrible, but Andrew Gilligan, London editor for the Sunday Telegraph, argues that it could also give way to a muzzled British press in the future. As talk turns to how press regulation should be managed, Gilligan says:

For be in no doubt: hateful as the behaviour of some journalists has been, we may now face something even worse. For many in power, or previously in power, the News of the World’s crimes are a God-given opening to diminish one of the greatest checks on that power: the media.

Regulation was also on Alan Rusbridger‘s mind yesterday, when he took part in a live Q & A regarding phone hacking (before NI announced the News of the World’s closure). Rusbridger drew attention to alleged weaknesses of the PCC (the code committee of which Rusbridger quit in November 2009) and the quandary of state v self-regulation. Today the Press Complaints Commission sought to defend its work following calls for it to be scrapped by both Labour leader Ed Miliband and prime minister David Cameron.

This hasn’t been a wonderful advertisement for self-regulation. The short answer is that, no, the PCC can’t go on as it is. Its credibility is hanging by a thread.

We did say this back in November 2009 when the PCC came out with its laughable report into phone-hacking. We said in an editorial that this was a dangerous day for press regulation – and so it’s turned out.

The PCC has this week withdrawn that report and has a team looking at the issues and at the mistakes it’s made in the past.

I don’t know how Ofcom could do the job without falling into the category of statutory regulation. Does anyone else?

On her blog former Channel 4 presenter Samira Ahmed also draws some comparisons with the past, saying that the affair is “only my second major moral outcry against the news media” during her twenty years in journalism, the first being the death of Princess Diana. Hugh Grant has won public approval over the last week or so because of his overt opposition to phonehacking, but Ahmed is wary of putting people like Grant on a pedestal.

Many celebrities understand the privacy trade-off with press coverage, or get their lawyers to settle a payoff. Incidentally we should be wary of deifying celebrities, such as Hugh Grant, who have publicly defended the principle of rich people taking out superinjunctions to cover up their bad behaviour, when there might be a legitimate public interest. But I’ve met ordinary people over the years whose suffering has been deeply compounded by salacious press intrusion.

Phone hacking: Rusbridger answers questions on the ‘dark arts’ of Fleet Street

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This afternoon Alan Rusbridger has been answering questions from readers in the form of a live Q & A on the Guardian website.

The post quickly gathered a heap of comments – more than pages worth, below are Rusbridger’s replies to questions about whether hacking has been going on at other newspapers, media regulation and politicians’ reactions.

Question: Oborne goes on to allege you also warned Nick Clegg about Coulson’s activities. Is this true? If so, what were Cameron and Clegg told that is now in the public domain? What have they known all along?

Rusbridger: Peter Oborne is right. Before the election it was common knowledge in Fleet Street that an investigator used by the NotW during Andy Coulson’s editorship was on remand for conspiracy to murder. We couldn’t report that due to contempt of court restrictions, but I thought it right that Cameron should know before he took any decisions about taking Andy Coulson into Number 10. So I sent word via an intermediary close to Cameron. And I also told Clegg personally.

Question: Does the Guardian have any evidence of phone hacking happening at other British newspapers? If so, once the dust settles over NotW, will the Guardian widen its continuing investigation to these papers, too?

Rusbridger: I think the bulk of Nick Davies’s evidence relates to the NotW. He did write a more general chapter on the so-called dark arts of Fleet Street in his book, Flat Earth News

To be frank, it’s taken him all this time to land this one, so he’s hardly had time to look elsewhere so far.

Question: The past few days have had me genuinely wondering about what, if any, licensing requirements there are on running a newspaper.

If a broadcaster had been up to what the NotW were doing it would quite rightly have been pulled off the air. So what exactly does a newspaper have to do to lose its right to publish in the UK?

Rusbridger: I’m anxious about the notion of state licensing for the press. We got rid of that more than 150 years ago (date, someone?) and I wouldn’t want to see it back. In an age when anyone can call themselves a journalist I see difficulties of definition. Would Huffington Post have to get a licence? So, I think it’s probably unworkable as well as undesirable. But I’d be interested to hear other views.

Read the full thread of comments and questions here.

Rebekah Brooks ‘won’t resign’ over Milly Dowler phone-hacking claims

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Rebekah Brooks “is not planning to resign” as chief executive of News International, according to BBC business editor Robert Peston.

Writing on his blog today, Peston cites a News International executive as having told him that Rupert Murdoch is backing Brooks “100%” over alleged interceptions of Milly Dowler’s voicemail by the News of the World.

She remains in charge of the process of assisting the police in their enquiries, known as Operation Weeting, to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against those journalists implicated in hacking mobile phones and other invasions of individuals’ right to privacy.

“She is committed to find out the truth of what happened here and leading the company through this difficult time” said one of her colleagues.

“Her job is to see this through”.

An update on the post at 9:24 elaborates on the Prime Minister’s reaction to the news:

There is of course an uncomfortable feedback loop from the latest disclosures of alleged hacking to the prime minister – in that the deputy editor of the News of the World in 2002 was Andy Coulson, who became editor of the News of the World in 2003, and who also served as Mr Cameron’s communications director until he resigned in January.

 

New arrest in phone hacking investigation

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A woman has been arrested in West Yorkshire by police investigating allegations of phone hacking, Scotland Yard confirmed this morning.

The arrest was made by the Metropolitan police’s Operation Weeting team, which was set up when Scotland Yard relaunched its inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World in January.

This latest arrest follows three others made this year as part of the new investigation, the first two at the beginning of April and the third later in the month.

According to a statement from Scotland Yard the woman, 39, was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept mobile phone voicemail messages and was taken to a West Yorkshire police station for questioning.

The BBC reports that owner of the News of the World, News International, had issued a statement saying the arrest “did not relate to a current employee or a former full-time staff member”.

We have been co-operating fully with the police inquiry since our voluntary disclosure of evidence reopened the police investigation. Since then we have been determined to deal with these issues both on the criminal and civil side. In April we admitted liability in several civil cases and we are attempting to bring these to a fair resolution.”

Related content:

Phone hacking: Andy Gray accepts £20,000 settlement

Norman Fowler calls for government inquiry into phone hacking

Phone hacking: News of the World apologises to Sienna Miller in court

Guardian: Police have more than 100 phone-hacking recordings

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It has been claimed in court that the Metropolitan police have more than 100 recordings understood to have been made by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, the Guardian reported today.

The Guardian’s article states that lawyers representing public figures suing News of the World publisher, News Group Newspapers, claim that “a substantial number of the tapes and MiniDiscs seized by Scotland Yard five years ago are likely to contain voicemail messages”.

They were in court this morning to seek an order which would force the Met to hand over all the material it seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire’s home as part of an investigation which lead [sic] to his arrest and imprisonment. That material also includes 11,000 pages of detailed notes which are likely to list the people Mulcaire targeted.

The Guardian said Mr Justice Vos is expected to decide whether to grant this order later today or Tuesday.

Related content:
Norman Fowler calls for government inquiry into phone hacking

Phone hacking: News of the World apologises to Sienna Miller in court

Journalist wins bid to challenge Met on phone hacking despite ‘threadbare’ claim

Guardian: Ryan Giggs launches legal action over NOTW phone hacking

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Ryan Giggs is the latest celebrity to take legal action over News of the World phone hacking, according to this article in the Guardian. The article states the footballer is suing NOTW parent company News Group Newspapers and private detective Glenn Mulcaire for breach privacy, claiming his mobile phone messages were intercepted by journalists.

It is understood that Giggs was visited by officers from the Metropolitan police in Manchester several weeks ago, before he was named as the footballer who took out an injunction against News Group Newspapers.

Separately, the Guardian can also reveal that Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News Group’s parent company News International, was shown evidence for the first time last week by the Metropolitan police which suggests she was also targeted by Mulcaire.

Earlier today former Conservative cabinet minister Norman Fowler called upon the government to hold an inquiry into the phone hacking scandal during questions in the House of Lords.

Financial Times: PCC chief demands meetings with national newspaper publishers

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The Financial Times reports this morning that the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lady Buscombe, has demanded individual meetings with every publisher of national newspapers in the UK, including the Financial Times itself.

The face-to-face meetings are in an attempt to seek reassurance “that ethical scandals which have afflicted the industry will not be repeated”, according to the FT.

In an interview to coincide with publication of the PCC’s annual review, Lady Buscombe told the FT that “trust in the system was of paramount importance” after it had been undermined by scandals involving phone-hacking and other illegal journalistic methods. Trust was “one of the most important principles” of self-regulation, she said, adding: “If we are going to have trust in the system, I need [the publishers’] assurance that, whether it’s phone-hacking or any activities like that, it will never happen again.”

See the full FT report here… (may require registration)