17 Jan 2011 | Uncategorized
The phone hacking scandal has entered a new phase and a number of very powerful people, up to and including David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch, should now be very worried. Glenn Mulcaire’s reported confirmation that a senior News of the World news editor, Ian Edmonson, commissioned him to hack phones elevates a nagging problem into a national political crisis.
The problem is most acute at the Murdoch press, which must now defend itself against the charge that its staff hacked phones with the blessing of management. It also has to explain why it has insisted for four years that the management didn’t even know. The senior executives who need to justify positions which they have previously adopted in public but which now look very dubious indeed include Les Hinton, now the CEO of Murdoch’s US press empire, Rebekah Brookes, chief executive of News International, Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, News International’s legal affairs boss.
Of course Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s press adviser, is also in what we might call a delicate position, which means the David Cameron himself is tainted. Why did Cameron appoint this man, trust him and stand by him? It now looks like a gross and stubborn misjudgement by a man who is supposed to get things right.
Rupert and James Murdoch are in the same position. What did they know? Did they tolerate this? Are they responsible for creating the conditions in which it happened? Why were they not more energetic in pursuing the problem to its source, once it was exposed? Remember that James Murdoch is currently pressing to buy the big slice of BSkyB he doesn’t own. Is he fit to do that?
The Metropolitan Police Service, the largest and most important police force in the country, is dreadfully compromised. They said that this stopped with one man at the News of the World and refused to follow any further leads. For reasons unknown, they tiptoed around the paper’s newsroom. Senior detectives should now have to account for that. The Director of Public Prosecutions, too, has failed to cover himself in glory, having repeatedly endorsed the Met’s stance.
The mobile phone industry also needs to be challenged. How was Mulcaire able to get phone numbers and PINs so systematically? It beggars belief that he picked them up one at a time. Who helped him?
And finally, the rest of the national press is on the brink of disgrace. With few exceptions they have deliberately ignored and belittled a scandal which, if they cared about honest journalism, they would have investigated with passionate vigour. Why, for example, did the Daily Mail not report this story properly? Paul Dacre should have to answer that.
Forget the idea of a paltry evidence review by the Director of Public Prosecutions. As the New York Times implied months ago, this affair makes Britain look like Berlusconi’s Italy. Let’s demand a full public inquiry or a Royal Commission to open the doors and let the stink out.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. Follown him on Twitter @BrianCathcart
10 Dec 2010 | Uncategorized
So the CPS will not press new charges in the News of the World phone hacking case. We shouldn’t be surprised. They won’t be surprised at News International either.
The Metropolitan Police was never the right body to reinvestigate a case it has already made a mess of once. What motivation did it have? Had the CPS found grounds for a prosecution, after all, it would have been the same as saying that the Met got it all wrong first time.
For the sake of credibility alone, the Independent Police Complaints Commission or HM Inspector of Constabulary should have managed the reinvestigation. We know, in fact, that the Inspectorate wanted to, but the pass was sold. So establishing why no one stepped in is just another in the pile of seriously worrying questions associated with this affair.
Of course the scandal of tabloid phone hacking is not over. The 23 legal actions that are either current or in the pipeline will see to that. And it is instructive, if you are in any doubt about the moral questions involved, that many of these cases are being held up because convicted hacker and former News of the World employee Glen Mulcaire is challenging a High Court order telling him he must reveal the names of the people at the paper who gave him his orders.
Think that through: the issue is not whether he was given the orders but whether he has to say who gave them. His argument, to cap it all, is that by revealing the names he might incriminate himself. The News of the World and its former employee are that far from the moral high ground.
We will have to wait until the new year, I understand, to hear the result.
So far it has been worth at least £2m to News International to settle cases in this affair and prevent the facts coming out. That includes a settlement with Gordon Taylor and two of his associates. It also includes Max Clifford, who landed a seven-figure deal with News International at the just the moment he dropped his case against them. It includes, too, the pay-offs made to convicted hackers Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire.
Most of those now engaged in legal proceedings know, or have strong grounds to believe, that they were hacked. They have the indignation of crime victims and of people whose privacy has been violated. Nor, in most cases, are they nobodies — Andy Gray, Steve Coogan, Chris Tarrant…
They also know that News International is paying these large sums in the effort to hush up the affair. It is a perfect legal storm.
And beyond the pending cases, dozens and even hundreds more could follow. The Met is under very strong legal pressure — from Lord Prescott among others — to reveal the identities of more of those named in the papers it seized from Mulcaire’s office and home. For some reason it has been very reluctant indeed to do so — potential victims of crime they may be, but they don’t seem to have a right to know it, in the Met’s eyes. Again, the courts will be the judge of that.
No, it’s not over, by a long shot.
Read more Brian Cathcart on Metgate here and here
3 Dec 2010 | Uncategorized
If it sometimes seems that the News of the World phone-hacking scandal is running out of steam, it’s not. The affair may not always be present in the headlines (most papers avoid reporting it) but it is most certainly present in the courts.
Merely counting the cases is a challenge — because they take different forms, because of court orders, because claimants are coy — but legal sources suggest that the total is now a remarkable 23, of which 20 involve people who believe they were or may have been hacking victims. The list looks like this.
First, there are eight people who have initiated legal proceedings against the News of the World.
1. Nicola Phillips, former assistant to Max Clifford.
2. Sky Andrew, football agent.
3. Steve Coogan, actor and comedian.
4. Andy Gray, football commentator.
5. George Galloway, politician.
6. Mick McGuire, former official of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
7. “High-profile individual” number 1
8. “High-profile individual” number 2
Next is a group of at least eight people who have prepared or are preparing cases against the News of the World. All have established that their names or numbers were in documents seized by police from convicted hacker Glen Mulcaire. The television personality Chris Tarrant is one, another is described as a leading sportsman, and four of the others, though unnamed, are said to be high-profile individuals.
In addition, four people who know or believe that they were victims have joined forces to seek a judicial review of alleged failures by the Metropolitan Police (a) to warn individuals they had been hacked and (b) to investigate the affair properly. These four are:
1. Lord Prescott, politician.
2. Chris Bryant MP.
3. Brian Paddick, former senior police officer.
4. Brendan Montague, journalist.
And besides all these, three further legal cases relate to the scandal in different ways.
1. At the current trial of Tommy and Gail Sheridan in Glasgow on charges of perjury — which they deny — Sheridan has alleged that his phone was hacked by the News of the World. Sheridan has documents which show that Mulcaire had his mobile phone details and PIN codes.
2. A solicitor, Mark Lewis, is suing the Metropolitan Police for libel in a case relating to statements about the total number of hacking victims. In a linked action brought by Lewis, the Press Complaints Commission has apologised and settled.
3. Proceedings of some kind are apparently under way in a case of alleged hacking by a News of the World journalist first reported in the New York Times in September. The Press Complaints Commission has said the case is sub judice.
Finally, though this one may never reach the stage of legal proceedings, the Crown Prosecution Service is considering a new file of material on hacking gathered in a recent re-investigation by the Metropolitan Police.
This formidable catalogue wave of legal activity represents many months if not years of litigation, particularly for the News of the World. It also threatens considerable embarrassment for the paper, for the Metropolitan Police and for Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s media adviser. And for the newspaper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which have already had to settle several cases, there is also the potential for costs running into millions of pounds.
Follow @BrianCathcart
13 Oct 2010 | Uncategorized
Andy Coulson must be scared. Not of the Guardian, which to date has failed to root him out of his job in Downing Street. And not of David Cameron, who shows no inclination to sack him. No, Coulson must be scared that his old boss Rupert Murdoch will pull the rug out from underneath him.
Murdoch wants, very much, to buy the whole of BSkyB so that he can move a big step closer to monopoly control of the British media market, and Coulson, almost accidentally, is getting in the way.
Any day now, Murdoch could pick up the phone in New York and ask Cameron (instruct him?) to ditch his most senior media adviser. No doubt News Corp would offer the former News of the World editor a nice job in compensation, but it would be the end of Coulson’s promising career as the smarter, slicker version of Alastair Campbell.
He is an embarrassment to the old man because the never-ending scandal of phone hacking keeps reminding us just how depraved and sinister the Murdoch empire can be. And this is happening at a moment when Murdoch wants us all to think of him as an inspiring business genius, a victim of Establishment snobbery and the man who just gives viewers what they want.
Murdoch employees illegally hacked the voicemails of the future king of this country, as well as dozens or more likely hundreds of other people very prominent in our public life. Reported targets include Cabinet ministers, a celebrity agent, a top sports official, a supermodel and at least one senior police officer — not to mention, perhaps most chillingly, ordinary members of the public who are victims of crime.
And as the revelations tumble out and the lawsuits against Murdoch’s company stack up, something even more significant is happening. People are talking more and more about his extraordinary power, and the fear he can spread.
That was the most potent message to come out of Peter Oborne’s Dispatches programme on the scandal last week. There were complaints afterwards that the key new witness casting doubt on Coulson’s I-knew-nothing defence was anonymous, but they missed the point: as Oborne made clear, the systematic need for anonymity provided eloquent proof of how frightened people are. Grassing on the Murdoch empire looks uncomfortably similar to grassing on the IRA.
Tom Watson MP, in a remarkable speech about phone-hacking to the Commons last month, sent the same message: “The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators; they are untouchable. They laugh at the law; they sneer at parliament. They have the power to hurt us, and they do, with gusto and precision, with joy and criminality. Prime ministers quail before them, and that is how they like it.”
And have a look at the story of Michael Wolff, who had the nerve to write a critical biography of Murdoch. We probably wouldn’t have read that if it were not for phone-hacking.
Right now, when Murdoch has all his other ducks in a row for the total takeover of BSkyB — the Tories owe him for his papers’ election support; Ofcom is being neutered; the BBC is being kicked from pillar to post — he emphatically does not want to be making headlines as the monstrous bogey man of British public life.
So one day soon he may decide that Coulson, in principle a terrific Murdoch asset at the heart of British government, is in fact a liability. He may calculate that if Coulson went, the heat would go out of the phone-hacking scandal and those nasty headlines about ruthless, bully-boy News International would fade away.
And if that day comes, does anyone doubt that one phone call to Number 10 would settle the matter?
