18 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published a bitter editorial methodically swiping at News Corps’ critics (in this order: “our competitors,” “British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics”, the BBC, the Guardian, British and American publications that don’t defend defamation claims in Singapore, the news non-profit ProPublica, the Bancroft family that formerly owned Dow Jones, US Attorney General Eric Holder, US officials prosecuting Haitian and Polish foreign bribery cases, “the liberal press” and, more specifically, the New York Times). And then there is this:
“We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp journalists across the world.”
In casually trying to draw a moral equivalency (or, rather, an immoral equivalency) between illegally hacking a murdered girl’s phone for newspaper scoops — and allegedly bribing public officials to keep the tactic under wraps — and working with WikiLeaks to vet leaked government documents for context relevant to the public’s understanding of the execution of two wars and US foreign diplomacy, the Journal stretches credulity one non sequitur too far.
Never mind that the Journal editorial page has for months been calling for the prosecution of Julian Assange even as its news pages have been covering the stories WikiLeaks helped make possible. Or that this implication suggests the Journal has never knowingly published journalism originating from leaked classified government information. The Journal’s plea to the sensibilities of its readers must also leave them to assume this: If the paper is willing to lash out at News Corp critics in ways that even Rupert Murdoch himself has not, perhaps the Wall Street Journal is not so far removed from the culture of its imploding parent company as the editorial’s subhed — “A tabloid’s excesses don’t tarnish thousands of other journalists” — suggests.
17 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized
When a man of 80 making an apology invokes both his mother, who is 102, and his father, who has been dead for 58 years, he is probably entitled to a hearing. Rupert Murdoch is reported to have done just that, head in hands, in his meeting with the Dowlers. You would need a hard heart to be certain now that he is not sorry.
This has implications for the Commons media committee, which meets him on Tuesday and will have to avoid the appearance of monstering a sorry old man. The public respects penitence. It punished Rebekah Brooks for delaying hers for so long, but I suspect it will think Rupert Murdoch, remarkably, has earned himself the right to at least a little politeness.
It is different for James Murdoch, who has more specific and evidence-based questions to answer, questions based in large measure on material gathered by the committee itself. The key passages are from the committee hearing on 21 July 2009, and the questioning of Colin Myler, then editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, then legal manager for that paper and the Sun.
Crone explained that when lawyers for Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association produced two documents appearing to show that at least one and possibly three of the paper’s journalists knew Taylor’s phone had been hacked, both he (Crone) and the paper’s external lawyers immediately agreed they could no longer contest Taylor’s case against the paper for breach of privacy. Tom Watson MP asked the questions.
Watson: When did you tell Rupert Murdoch?
Crone: I did not tell Rupert Murdoch.
Myler: The sequence of events, Mr Watson, is very simple, and this is very clear: Mr Crone advised me, as the editor, what the legal advice was and it was to settle. Myself and Mr Crone then went to see James Murdoch and told him where we were with the situation. Mr Crone then continued with our outside lawyers the negotiation with Mr Taylor. Eventually a settlement was agreed. That was it.
Watson: So James Murdoch took the ultimate decision?
Myler: James Murdoch was advised of the situation and agreed with our legal advice that we should settle.
In subsequent written evidence the company confirmed that James Murdoch not only agreed they should settle, he also authorised the actual payment, although curiously neither the meeting nor the decision was minuted.
The settlement, it is well known, was for £700,000, which Watson described as “a huge amount of money”, and which is certainly far more than Taylor stood to win in the event of outright victory in court. Some reports have suggested that the damages element of the payment was £400,000 (the rest being costs), but that is still out of proportion. By way of comparison, Max Mosley won £60,000 in his privacy case against the same paper, and recently Sienna Miller extracted a reported £100,000 in her hacking suit.
Why pay several times over the odds? The explanation that comes most readily to mind is that it was to secure Mr Taylor’s silence, an explanation that receives support from Mr Taylor’s total silence on the matter since the day of the settlement.
So the committee will ask James Murdoch whether he paid Gordon Taylor £700,000 in an attempt to ensure that he did not talk about or show to anybody the documents which prompted the lawyers to recommend settling. And if that was not the objective, what could it have been?
Last week, in a televised interview on the day he announced the closure of the News of the World, James Murdoch shed a little more light on this: “The company paid out-of-court settlements approved by me. I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret.”
That is apparently his defence: that he ‘did not have a complete picture’ when he authorised this £700,000 payment. He made his decision, according to the company, “following discussions with Colin Myler and Tom Crone”, but he says he “did not have a complete picture”.
Crone left News International last week and Myler ceased to be editor of the News of the World with its closure. Both men, we can be sure, will testify under oath in due course before Lord Justice Leveson’s public inquiry about the picture they gave to the younger Murdoch. It is possible that Gordon Taylor and his lawyers will also do so. In short, James Murdoch (who will also face Leveson) knows that what he says about this to the select committee this week will ultimately be tested pretty rigorously against the evidence of others.
The committee will want to know a lot about that incomplete picture. It will ask how the picture could have been incomplete and yet still unpleasant enough to lead James Murdoch to authorise a payment toTaylorseveral times over the odds for a privacy case. What was missing?
Did Crone and Myler not tell him about the documents (which any normal reader would conclude demonstrated that, at the very least, knowledge of criminal phone hacking was spread more widely at the News of the World than the company was at that time admitting)? That would be an incomplete picture, but it begs the question: if they didn’t tell him, why did he think such a large payment was justified?
Did they tell him thatTaylor’s lawyers had got the documents from the police and did he reason that, if the police had taken no action over them the documents could not be evidence of criminality? That begs the same question: if that was the case, why would he have felt the need to authorise a payment of £700,000?
We could go on like this but it does not get any less suspicious. And then there is the murky business of the settlement with Max Clifford. Perhaps it is better to wait and hear what happens on Tuesday.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism atKingstonUniversityand tweets at @BrianCathcart
15 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized
Just two weeks ago I was emailing all the leading journalists I know, recruiting support for a campaign which I feared would struggle to attract public attention, let alone result in action. We were supposed to launch on the Wednesday (6 July). On the Monday, however, the Guardian published Nick Davies’s report of the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone and everything changed.
It has been a breathless fortnight, not least for Hacked Off, whose objective was to secure a public inquiry into the scandal. By the time of the formal launch our website (www.hackinginquiry.org) was online, our petition already had something like 5,000 signatures and the government had actually announced an inquiry. We were still concerned, however, that it should have teeth, that it should address all the issues and that it should not fall victim to any political sleight of hand.
Because Hacked Off existed as a group, because we had been thinking about a public inquiry and because we had connections with hacking victims, we were in a position to help a little in shaping the inquiry — though it’s worth remembering that the terms of reference will not be fixed until next Tuesday (or so we are told).
We saw all three of the main party leaders and three of the Commons select committee chairmen. I think they were still gathering their own thoughts as they spoke to us; certainly they seemed open-minded and receptive. That the inquiry would be led by a judge was already decided, but little else. We pressed the politicians to ensure that it was established promptly and with clear terms of reference (so there could be no “long grass” shenanigans). We made the case for the inquiry to start work immediately, on the grounds that there is plenty to do before criminal proceedings have run their course. We urged that the inquiry should range over the whole of the press and not just News International. And we argued for wording that would enable the judge to call politicians to give evidence at any stage. (These are, roughly, the points that we set out in our manifesto document at the beginning of the campaign and we were conscious that we had no remit to go further. We have never, for example, had a Hacked Off view about the BSkyB purchase.)
We need to remain vigilant until Tuesday, but on the face of it the leaders — David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband — appeared to agree to pretty well everything we suggested, including some detailed drafting. It is possible, I suppose, that they might have reached the same conclusions without our prompting. I can’t say that the latest draft terms-of-reference document is a simple one — for example, the inquiry will have different characters at different times — and no one could ever claim it was perfect, but assuming there are no last-minute changes it seems to me that it has the capacity to put before the public, over time, a lot of the truths that need to be told, and certainly many more of them than seemed likely to emerge only a couple of weeks ago.
A couple of questions now. First. who do I mean when I talk about “we”? Hacked Off began in conversations I had with Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust and the campaign idea gained momentum from exchanges with some of the victims’ lawyers. We joined forces then with some of the prominent politicians who were most active on hacking — though they have since largely gone their own way, concentrating on parliamentary activities.
Hacked Off has thousands of online supporters, as well as its dozens of distinguished early endorsers (named on the website) and the lawyers and victims. At its core, however, are the people who met the party leaders: Martin Moore, Evan Harris (the former LibDem MP and a campaigning genius), Mark Lewis (solicitor to a number of hacking victims) and me. With us were Brian Paddick, a hacking victim who knows about policing, Thais Portilho-Shrimpton, a journalist (and Kingston journalism graduate) who has been coordinator and press officer, Rachit Buch and Vanessa Furey, who work with Evan Harris, and also Horatio Mortimer, who works for Sovereign Strategy, of which more in a moment.
Then there were the Dowlers, Bob, Sally and Gemma. Their contribution has been tremendous. I can see that it would have been difficult for a party leader to decline to meet them, but they were far more than just a means of opening doors. They were never bullies and they were rarely emotional; they were engaged, constructive, clear-sighted and a real part of the Hacked Off group. And there was also Hugh Grant, whom you may have seen and heard. (I swear that if you dropped him in the middle of the Sahara a crowd would form in seconds.) He has been a powerful asset, often ready to appear at short notice, active in the strategy discussions and very shrewd about how to be most useful to the campaign.
As I say, it is not over. At the very least we need to keep up the pressure until Tuesday and we are keen to help ensure that the interests of the victims are well represented when the inquiry itself begins. Beyond that it is clear already that we will not simply wind up Hacked Off. We are just at the beginning of a great storm of debate about the press, police and politics and we see value in Hacked Off being around to take part in that debate, though obviously we will need to consult our supporters about that.
And how have we paid for the campaign? So far we have had only minor costs — mainly the website, taxis, a few meals and central London meeting rooms for briefing and debriefing on our big meeting days. We have lived hand to mouth. Sovereign, which is a lobbying and PR company run by former Labour MEP Alan Donnelly, helped us pro bono with one room and some admin and taxis. I paid for one room in a Whitehall hotel (not cheap, I have to say). The Media Standards Trust has paid for the website. Things became a bit tight on Wednesday and I turned for help to the nearest rich person I could find, Hugh Grant, who was gracious and generous. We are afloat, but assuming we carry on in some form we will need to get the campaign a more regular footing.
There have been moments in the past ten days when I asked myself, or expected someone to ask me, “Who the hell are you to be roving around Westminster lecturing elected representatives?” In those moments I have recalled those people — victims, journalists, academics, lawyers — who have watched the scandal unfold over the years and who feared, like me, that the truth would never come out. I also recalled the dozens of prominent people who agreed to support us before the Milly Dowler story broke, and I recalled the many thousands who have signed our petition and other petitions, demanding an effective inquiry. Some of them, I know, are readers of this blog. I hope they, or rather you, have been content with the contribution that Hacked Off has been able to make so far.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London and tweets at @BrianCathcart
4 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized
If anyone still believed that the phone hacking scandal was “just” about
celebrities, the allegation that the News of the World
hacked Milly Dowler’s voicemails must lay the idea to rest.
No matter how ordinary and vulnerable you were, no matter how tragic your circumstances — in this case it was a missing, murdered Surrey schoolgirl — on this evidence you were a potential target for the Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday tabloid.
And if anyone besides News International and its friends and allies had any doubt that we needed a public inquiry to get to the bottom of this affair, surely this will have convinced them. In this instance alone we not only need to know the facts of what happened — of who did it, who ordered it and who knew about it — but we must also find out why it has taken until now for this to become public.
For the Guardian is saying that the key evidence was in the bin bags of material seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006. In other words, the police have had this material for five whole years. Either they knew about it and ignored it — which would suggest either stupidity or corruption of a kind that is hard even to contemplate — or they have only just found it. That would be less astonishing, but not much less worrying.
And if the police conduct is a matter for public concern, what of the company, which covered up this scandal for years, telling us that only one reporter was involved and that it had investigated itself thoroughly — and which is even now as grudging as it can be with information and evidence?
But the case for a public inquiry has become urgent for other reasons than these, because in recent weeks there has been every sign that without one the scandal will be killed off by the year’s end. The civil litigants — the victims of hacking who have sued — are settling, one by one. Often they have no choice because the courts would punish them for holding out. And the criminal prosecutions — if they come — may well be much more peremptory affairs than many expected.
Lawyers following these cases warn that every person charged may plead guilty, just as Mulcaire and royal reporter Clive Goodman did back in 2007. That would mean there would be no trials, just short agreed narratives and brief sentencing hearings. Nothing about the wider issues would come out.
So if you have any interest in knowing the truth about the hacking scandal — and the Dowler allegations demonstrate vividly that we all have such an interest, no matter how innocent and ordinary we may be — then your only hope is a public inquiry.
Here I will declare an interest of my own. For the past few weeks I have been working with others, notably the Media Standards Trust, to set up a public campaign, called Hacked Off, to demand an inquiry.
We are not quite ready, I confess — it will be launched on Wednesday and until then the website http://hackinginquiry.org is only a holding page. We will have a manifesto, a petition, dozens of distinguished supporters and soon a programme of public events, but what we will need most of all is your support. Please go to the site on Wednesday or soon afterwards.
The vested interests here are tremendously powerful and winning this inquiry, even after these latest allegations, is not like to be easy.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
