tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/news-of-the-world-853/articles
News of the World – The Conversation
2023-12-22T12:16:12Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220010
2023-12-22T12:16:12Z
2023-12-22T12:16:12Z
Phone hacking in the British press: three key moments in the scandal – and what happens next
<p>Prince Harry has emerged as the victor in his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67332563">civil case</a> against Mirror Group Newspapers. The judge, Mr Justice Fanning, ruled that on the balance of probabilities a sample of 15 out of 33 articles examined by his court were written as result of phone hacking and other illegal measures. In an exhaustive report <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Duke-of-Sussex-v-MGN-Judgment.pdf">weighing in at 386 pages</a>, Fanning stated that there was evidence of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67332563">“widespread and habitual”</a> use of phone hacking at the Mirror newspapers.</p>
<p>Harry was awarded damages of £140,600 and said in a <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2023-12-15/prince-harry-judge-finds-extensive-phone-hacking-by-mirror-group-newspapers">subsequent statement</a>: “Today is a great day for truth, as well as accountability. This case is not just about hacking – it is about a systemic practice of unlawful and appalling behaviour, followed by cover-ups and destruction of evidence, the shocking scale of which can only be revealed through these proceedings.”</p>
<p>That Harry was in a bullish mood was entirely understandable. But his case is only the latest development in a series of events which has rocked the tabloid press in the UK over the past decade or so.</p>
<h2>1. The closure of the News of the World</h2>
<p>In July 2011, the Guardian claimed that journalists on the News of the World had hacked into the phone messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Not only this, but messages were also removed to make room for more, giving her parents the impression she was still alive and picking up her messages. </p>
<p>The facts of the case have never been satisfactorily concluded, but the reporting on this and other allegations of phone hacking, as well as the strength of the public reaction, were enough to prompt the closure of the News of the World that same month. The paper had been one of the most widely read in the UK. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world">statement at the time</a>, James Murdoch, son of Rupert, said: “The News of the World and News International failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.”</p>
<h2>2. The Leveson Inquiry</h2>
<p>Seemingly moved by the widespread vitriol attracted by the News of the World, David Cameron, the prime minister at the time, commissioned the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry</a> into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press.</p>
<p>The inquiry was asked to make recommendations on how more ethical and professional standards could be achieved. The <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_law/leveson-inquiry-qa-so-why-was-the-inquiry-set-up-in-the-first-place/">aim</a> was to find a “new, more effective policy and regulatory regime for the press”.</p>
<p>When the inquiry’s report <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">was published</a> in 2012, the tabloid press was singled out for criticism. Its conduct over the years, said the report, could “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543133">only be described as outrageous</a>”.</p>
<p>Leveson recommended a new organisation be created to regulate the press. This should be entirely <a href="https://fullfact.org/news/leveson-report-basics/">independent</a> in composition and free from all political and commercial involvement.</p>
<p>The body that did ultimately emerge from the inquiry was the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/what-we-do/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> (Ipso), which has regulated the press ever since but does not fit with the Leveson <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldcomuni/135/13503.htm">vision of independence</a>.</p>
<p>The second part of the Leveson inquiry was meant to consider the relationship between the police and journalists, but never actually took place. It was shelved in 2018. The government’s reasoning for this decision was that it considered the exercise “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/01/leveson-inquiry-part-2-cancellation-condemned-by-labour-as-breach-of-trust">costly and time consuming</a>”.</p>
<h2>3. Journalism in the dock: phone-hacking trials</h2>
<p>In 2014 key journalists who had worked for the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World were charged with <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-in-the-dock-first-month-of-phone-hacking-trial-20737">conspiring to hack voicemails</a>. Among those involved were former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who had subsequently gone on to become David Cameron’s director of communications at Number 10.</p>
<p>In the event, Brooks was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing while Coulson was jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones.</p>
<h2>The trials ahead</h2>
<p>If Harry <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-wins-round-one-of-tabloid-battle-but-hes-far-from-finished-13031024">sounded confident</a> in his victory over the Mirror, it’s maybe because he sees this battle as evidence that he is destined to prevail in a much longer war against the press.</p>
<p>The ruling that there “<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-hacking-case-latest-piers-morgan-breaks-silence-after-judge-in-harry-case-said-it-was-convincing-he-knew-about-phone-hacking-13030737">can be no doubt</a>” that Piers Morgan knew about phone hacking while he was editor at the Mirror (which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2023/dec/15/piers-morgan-denies-knowing-of-phone-hacking-after-judge-rules-he-did-video">Morgan denies</a>) has probably emboldened the Prince for the next two contests against <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/prince-harrys-legal-battles-press-121154671.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADtxV4grVYG7zAuhysCzcNGmpdtwA5ilv1lemzMX6WhFGlNOPnjZ4N-lW-dvCrZ7WE_iZhoQbouiAb8xSenNoAQXf2hB4kIVsIniROmsGeY-o4wdV_W63npVz4eVvRS5Wx0krjA6granIb_wgNQazb1Q2Ngg7V-IyOGwh0g2t1dy">Associated News and News UK</a> for alleged violations of privacy and unlawful information gathering.</p>
<p>Harry stated in an <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2023/01/08/prince-harry-interview-with-tom-bradby-in-full-18061892/">interview</a> earlier this year that campaigning against the injustices of the press had become his <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/prince-harry-press-media-itv-interview/">life’s work</a>. And, as media lawyer <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-hacking-case-latest-duke-of-sussex-to-find-out-if-he-has-won-landmark-case-against-mirror-group-newspapers-13030737">Persephone Bridgman Baker</a> told Sky News: “We certainly haven’t seen the end of phone hacking [in the courts].”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Prince Harry’s victory against the mirror is only the latest episode in an epic saga.
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196358
2022-12-12T19:02:59Z
2022-12-12T19:02:59Z
Is it ever okay for journalists to lie to get a story?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500321/original/file-20221212-97751-s12rbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a time of <a href="https://www.edelman.com.au/trust-barometer-2022-australia#:%7E:text=Trust%20in%20all%20media%20sources%20has%20fallen%2C%20with,media%20by%20only%2024%25%20of%20Australians%20%28-8%20points%29.">falling trust</a> in the news media, it is vital journalists do not engage in news-gathering methods that further harm their credibility. Thanks to the rise of social media, misinformation and disinformation are rampant. Trust in news matters, so we can tell fact from fiction. Without it, democracy suffers.</p>
<p>In our new book, Undercover Reporting, Deception and Betrayal in Journalism, we ask whether deception is ever an acceptable method for journalists to use. In other words, is it ever okay to lie to a target to get a story?</p>
<p>We find it can be ethically justifiable under very specific conditions. We offer a six-point checklist for journalists (and the audience) to test if deception and betrayal are warranted. </p>
<p>Deception is one of the most common ethical problems in journalism. It ranges in seriousness from misrepresentation to the use of undercover reporting. </p>
<p>In fact, it is so common that some argue it is inherent in what journalists do. The late American writer and journalist Janet Malcolm, for instance, in her renowned book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/106480/the-journalist-and-the-murderer-by-janet-malcolm/">The Journalist and the Murderer</a>, said in her opening paragraph:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself [sic] to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust, and betraying them without remorse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While we argue Malcolm pushes her argument too far, we present a range of case studies that show not only the range of deceptive practices in contemporary journalism, but also their seriousness. </p>
<p>Three of the case studies are drawn from high-profile undercover operations or acts of deception. </p>
<p>One concerns the use by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/17/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-changed-the-world-but-it-didnt-change-facebook">Cambridge Analytica</a> of data gathered by Facebook on 87 million of its users worldwide. These data were used to influence elections in several countries, including the United States in 2016.</p>
<p>Another involved the infiltration by <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/al-jazeera-journo-defends-one-nation-sting/ff384357-35be-4247-bd94-078c2ade0572#:%7E:text=Al%20Jazeera%20reporter%20Rodger%20Muller%20posed%20as%20the,talking%20about%20getting%20millions%20in%20donations%20from%20them.">Al Jazeera</a> of the National Rifle Association in the US. It then repeated this with the One Nation party in Australia in 2019.</p>
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<p>The third case is the deception and betrayal inflicted on thousands of innocent people in Britain by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World newspaper in hacking their mobile phones. This is perhaps the most egregious example of journalists failing their ethical duty in Britain in the past century. </p>
<p>From our examination of these cases, including interviews with key journalists, and building on the work of two distinguished American journalists and scholars, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/95291/the-elements-of-journalism-by-bill-kovach-and-tom-rosenstiel/">Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel</a>, we developed our six-point framework for assessing the ethical justification for the use of undercover techniques, including those of masquerade and entrapment.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-trial-verdict-coulson-guilty-and-brooks-cleared-but-end-of-an-era-for-the-red-tops-27753">Hacking trial verdict: Coulson guilty and Brooks cleared, but end of an era for the red tops</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Using this test, we concluded that the operation against Cambridge Analytica was ethically justified. It told the public important truths that we would not otherwise have known. The most notable of these was that Cambridge Analytica was in the business of interfering in sovereign elections – a direct threat to democratic wellbeing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500317/original/file-20221212-90872-3510zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">News of the World hacking the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler is an example of when deception in journalism is completely unjustifiable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But we also find that the operations against the NRA and One Nation were not justifiable; nor in any way could the phone hacking of celebrities and ordinary citizens such as the murdered schoolgirl <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/28/world/europe/milly-dowler-profile/index.html">Milly Dowler</a> ever be justified to produce stories for News of the World. </p>
<p>Our framework consists of these six questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Is the information sufficiently vital to the public interest to justify deception?</p></li>
<li><p>Were other methods considered and was deception the only way to get the story?</p></li>
<li><p>Was the use of deception revealed to the audience and the reasons explained?</p></li>
<li><p>Were there reasonable grounds for suspecting the target of the deception was engaged in activity contrary to the public interest?</p></li>
<li><p>Was the operation carried out with a risk strategy so it would not imperil a formal investigation by competent authorities?</p></li>
<li><p>Did the test of what is “sufficiently vital” to the public interest include an objective assessment of harm or wrongdoing?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>We consider a further case study to look at other aspects of deception and betrayal.</p>
<p>It concerns the deceptive conduct that goes under the general name of “hybrid journalism”. This is where advertising is presented in a way that is difficult to distinguish from news.</p>
<p>It goes under a variety of names such as “branded content”, “sponsored content” or “native advertising”. More recently, another label has come into fashion: “From our partners”. Reputable platforms use typography that distinguishes this from news content, but less reputable ones make it difficult to discern one from the other.</p>
<p>Journalists also engage in a range of more everyday deceptive practices. These include failing to declare oneself as a journalist; attempting to ingratiate oneself with a person by feigning a romantic interest in them; agreeing to publish information known to be untrue in order to serve the interests of a valued source; and ambushing a subject by having a microphone open or a camera rolling when the subject has no reason to think they are being recorded.</p>
<p>As these case studies show, deception and betrayal in journalism take many forms, and the ethical decisions surrounding them are far from straightforward. However, they are not inherent to the practice of journalism. Whether they are justifiable must be closely scrutinised, because the public’s trust in the media is at stake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Carson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new book argues that very rarely it is ethically justifiable to deceive to get a story. But mostly it’s a dangerous and harmful practice that adds to the public’s mistrust of the media.
Andrea Carson, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University
Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98396
2018-06-21T11:44:22Z
2018-06-21T11:44:22Z
Why journalism students (and many who teach it) will be glad to see the back of the Daily Mail’s editor
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224071/original/file-20180620-137717-1dle6wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">h</span> </figcaption></figure><p>I’ve been teaching journalism students for six years now, at three very different universities. What they learn is a far cry from my days at Darlington Technical College, class of 1994, slogging through shorthand classes. There was no internet or social media – in fact I think we were the last cohort to learn our reporting skills on typewriters. </p>
<p>My students have taught me a lot about what it means to be an undergraduate on a media or journalism course in 2018. They may be prize-winning, or pushy, scary or scared, but they are all basically really nice kids. Who would believe journalism, this most hated of trades, would draw its ranks from such polite, witty and engaging young people? </p>
<p>Yet during one recent final-year lecture I asked how many of the 80 students were planning a career in journalism. Not even a dozen raised their hands. The rest were either heading for public relations or didn’t know what they would do with their hard-earned qualification. That varies from university to university, but in a sector filled with unpaid internships, old-boy networks, and widespread bullying, who can blame them? </p>
<p>In his book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/04/hack-attack-nick-davies-review-gripping-account-hacking-affair">Hack Attack</a>, former Guardian journalist Nick Davies argued that the main difference between his own newspaper and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-the-factor-in-its-demise-that-deserves-more-attention-51969">News of the World</a> was “the bully quotient”. Indeed, this is an industry in which old hands wear their tales of ill treatment like badges of honour. </p>
<p>I have been told many of these stories – the chief reporter throwing scrunched up pages of apparently “shit” copy at the back of a trainee’s head. Or the junior reporter being summoned daily across the newsroom to be told by another senior executive: “You’re too too slow and you’re crap, now fuck off.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44391449">Outgoing Dail Mail editor</a> Paul Dacre is/was said to be very much of this particular old school of foul mouthed management, with “cunt” a favoured term in editorial meetings. It is unsurprising then that to many, the contents of the Daily Mail are synonymous with a particularly vitriolic news agenda – because such bullying flows downhill. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1004680774174609408"}"></div></p>
<p>By contrast, the journalism courses in which I’ve been involved place great emphasis on the straight and narrow path of ethics, precision, news judgement and the democratically necessary Fourth Estate. Plus, we really care about our students. </p>
<p>We also teach them about the political economy of the media, propaganda and house styles. The harder truth for them to learn is that opportunities in traditional journalism are decreasing. More and more journalists describe themselves as freelance – and the lines between journalism, content management and media-relations are increasingly blurred. Meanwhile, the PR industry has become a dominant force in our society.</p>
<p>And although it might be too early to write journalism’s obituary, it is true that for the newly qualified, workloads are increasing and career prospects are questionable in the face of shrinking newsrooms, multi-skilling and citizen journalism. </p>
<p>Added to that, journalists are widely despised. Chatting recently with a senior university academic, I told her only a handful of my students wanted to be journalists. “Good!” she replied. “Well done.” </p>
<p>She may have been joking. But who would enter this trade – it’s not a profession – in which the most successful writers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/28/katie-hopkins-migrants-ipso-sun-cockroaches">describe humans as cockroaches</a>, former <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/george-osborne-announced-as-new-evening-standard-editor-a3492361.html">chancellors of the exchequer become editors</a> on an owner’s whim, where facts often seem to play second fiddle to a good story, and where everyone is talking about fake news? </p>
<h2>Detoxifying the brand</h2>
<p>Dacre’s departure from the editor’s chair after 26 years is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/07/new-daily-mail-editor-to-be-geordie-greig">reported to be part of a plan</a> to “detoxify” the Daily Mail brand. As a major employer of journalists, that would be a welcome move for the classes of 2018 and beyond. And maybe at the same time we can detoxify journalism’s image too. </p>
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<p>Lecturing on war reporting, I read to my students from the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Front-Line-Collected-Journalism-Colvin/dp/0007487967">collected works</a> of Marie Colvin, the rakish Sunday Times correspondent <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/10/world/marie-colvin-cat-colvin-amanpour-intl/index.html">who was killed</a> by shell fire while reporting on the war in Syria. </p>
<p>Widely revered and admired, Colvin filed copy from nearly every burning hell hole on the planet during her career. Why? Because she believed that the “need for front-line, objective reporting has never been clearer”. </p>
<p>After sharing some of Colvin’s work, I quipped: “So, who wants to become a journalist?” One of my students raised her hand, and there was fire in her eyes – and I thought: “Good for you.”</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/geordie-greig-what-to-expect-from-the-daily-mails-next-editor-98090">Geordie Greig: what to expect from the Daily Mail's next editor</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Fern does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Journalism is still a popular choice for students, but the harsh realities of the media industry can can crush idealism.
Richard Fern, PhD Candidate, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81465
2017-07-25T07:52:29Z
2017-07-25T07:52:29Z
Fifty years of gay rights but some in the British media are peddling the same homophobia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179452/original/file-20170724-24368-1ozrm8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/grungy-newspaper-texture-235542745?src=XR-CkJkhJPHcJkHJ4wruXw-1-70">EddieCloud/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 27 2017, it will be 50 years since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597">first major gay rights reform</a> in British history. The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act 1967</a> decreed that, in England and Wales, it would no longer be illegal for two men over the age of 21 to have sex behind closed doors. </p>
<p>The intervening years have seen vast changes in the <a href="https://www.mmu.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/orientation/LGBT-Timeline.pdf">legal rights and cultural visibility</a> of LGBT+ people in the UK. To the point that it might now seem like the British LGBT+ community is on an unstoppable ascent to acceptance and equality. Yet in the last year there has been a rising tide of anti-LGBT sentiment. </p>
<p>History has shown that conservative attitudes towards sexuality and gender tend to flare up during periods of social and political uncertainty. Post-World War II, for example, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hx4EAQAAIAAJ&q=gay+history+of+britain+undermining+post+war&dq=gay+history+of+britain+undermining+post+war&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIlOaL8KHVAhUDDMAKHcKLA4sQ6AEIJDAA">there was a spike in arrests for homosexuality</a>. It is no different now: following the 2016 EU referendum vote, homophobic hate crimes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/08/homophobic-attacks-double-after-brexit-vote">rose by 147%</a>. </p>
<h2>Attitudes</h2>
<p>The media plays a central role in shaping public opinion, offering partial, selective and ideologically-loaded access points to the world beyond our everyday experiences. For many heterosexual people, it is through the media that they encounter LGBT identities. This is why media representation has been, and remains, such an <a href="http://criticalmediaproject.org/cml/topicbackground/lgbt/">important issue in the struggle for LGBT rights</a>. </p>
<p>Whether national treasure or person on the street, in recent years these representations have become increasingly negative. In May this year, the Daily Express put the word “marry” in inverted commas when <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/05/09/tom-daley-and-dustin-lance-black-receive-homophobic-wedding-tweet-from-the-daily-express/">tweeting</a> about the openly-gay, Olympic medal-winning diver Tom Daley. The grammar breathed new life into the old, homophobic idea that “real” marriage can only take place between heterosexuals. This was not an isolated incident, but the tip of a growing iceberg of thinly-veiled homophobia since the EU referendum.</p>
<p>The right-wing press in Britain has a well-deserved reputation for homophobia. In 1986, for example, The Sun “<a href="http://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/06/1983-book-jenny-lives-with-eric-and-martin/">discovered</a>” that a teachers’ resource library in the Labour-held London borough of Islington held a copy of a children’s book called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jan/31/booksforchildrenandteenagers.features11">Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin</a>” about a young girl and her two gay dads. The paper branded the book “vile”, “perverted”, and a direct threat to the children of Britain.</p>
<p>This homophobia did not spring out of nowhere, but was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-poster-girl-gay-rights">part of a joint effort</a>, in the run up to the 1987 election, between the right-wing media and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to paint Labour as the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M1ijULLi2qEC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=loony%20left&f=false">loony left</a>”, who were apparently prioritising the needs of minority groups over “normal” – white, heterosexual – families. Homophobia was central to this strategy, and throughout the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s the press persistently associated gay people with danger, contagion and death. </p>
<h2>Influence</h2>
<p>Amid the current government’s drastic programme of austerity, and under the newer shadow of economic uncertainty posed by Brexit, the right-wing press has begun to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/hiv-stigma-1980s">repackage these old homophobic myths</a>.</p>
<p>Faced with increasing financial cuts, last year the NHS decided that it would not fund the newly developed HIV prevention medication Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). In <a href="http://betablog.org/demand-prep-shows-high-efficacy-ipergay-trial/">clinical trials</a>, PrEP has been shown to dramatically reduce rates of HIV transmission among gay men, and is publicly funded in <a href="http://www.aidsmap.com/France-approves-PrEP/page/3016707/">France</a> and <a href="http://www.itg.be/E/Article/itm-welcomes-reimbursement-preventive-hiv-medication">Belgium</a>. </p>
<p>When the NHS’s decision was contested in the High Court by the National Aids Trust, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720706/What-skewed-sense-values-NHS-told-5-000-year-lifestyle-drug-prevent-HIV-vital-cataract-surgery-rationed.html">Daily Mail, MailOnline</a> and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1547570/nhs-warns-other-care-is-at-risk-because-of-hiv-drug-and-vows-to-appeal-high-court-decision/">The Sun</a> were quick to denounce PrEP as a waste of scarce public resources – ignoring the fact that studies have found it is cheaper to <a href="http://www.aidsmap.com/Provision-of-PrEP-in-the-UK-will-be-cost-effective-for-gay-men-at-high-risk-of-HIV-model-finds/page/2972926/">prevent HIV than to treat</a> it.</p>
<p>On its front page, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720706/What-skewed-sense-values-NHS-told-5-000-year-lifestyle-drug-prevent-HIV-vital-cataract-surgery-rationed.html">Daily Mail</a> called the medication a “promiscuity pill”, the funding of which would represent “a skewed sense of values”. Its take-home message was clear: it’s not government cuts which are decimating the NHS, but feckless, promiscuous gays. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"760586749282226177"}"></div></p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3925792/The-13-NHS-treatments-risk-controversial-HIV-drug-PrEP.html">another article</a>, the Mail claimed that funding PrEP would deprive “toddlers with cystic fibrosis” and “deaf children” of the care they needed. In a seeming resurgence of Aids-era homophobia, gay sex is characterised as a threat to the health of the nation as embodied by its children. </p>
<h2>Pervasive homophobia</h2>
<p>These are not just one-off incidents. The idea that LGBT+ people represent some kind of threat has become a recurrent theme in the right-wing media over the last 12 months. </p>
<p>In September 2016, MailOnline <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3795097/Gay-traffic-lights-stay-No-plans-sex-symbols-three-months-replaced-green-man-celebrate-London-LGBT-Pride.html">branded</a> same-sex traffic lights in Trafalgar Square in London as “dangerous” to pedestrians. </p>
<p>When, in February this year, The Sun published a <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/02/13/nhs-nurse-outed-outed-as-a-former-gay-porn-star-by-the-sun-for-no-reason/">story</a> “revealing” that an NHS nurse used to star in gay porn, it tapped into existing anxieties around the implication of proximity between gay sex and the nation’s health.</p>
<p>When singer George Michael (himself a frequent target of tabloid homophobia) passed away last year, The Sun attempted to <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2601515/george-michaels-lover-fadi-fawaz-seeking-showbiz-career-just-18-days-after-finding-the-pop-legends-body/">implicate George’s partner, Fadi Fawaz</a>, in his death – even after he had been legally cleared of suspicion. </p>
<p>This media assumption of wrongdoing in the high-profile death of a gay partner was also seen in 2009, when <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8301187.stm">Boyzone singer Stephen Gatley passed away</a>. A post-mortem examination ruled that he died of natural causes, and yet Mail columnist Jan Moir was quick to condemn the events of the night that 33-year-old Gately died as being “another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships”.</p>
<p>For this section of the British media, gay relationships will never be anything but <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html">dysfunctional, pathological and destructive</a>.</p>
<p>These representations carry very real consequences: anti-LGBT+ bullying <a href="http://www.stonewall.org.uk/get-involved/education/secondary-schools">remains rife in schools</a>, and LGBT+ people face disproportionate rates of <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/LGBhealth/Pages/Mentalhealth.aspx">mental health issues</a> when compared to heterosexuals. As political and economic uncertainty continues to loom in the UK, these reactionary ideas are in danger of cementing even further into the fabric of society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Lovelock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The media has the power to influence the nation - so why are we letting it promote blatant homophobia?
Michael Lovelock, Lecturer in Media, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67902
2016-11-03T09:42:51Z
2016-11-03T09:42:51Z
Why the latest body of UK press regulation is less than impressive
<p>The British press has suffered from some bad PR in recent years. It has been dragged through the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a>, investigated at length <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35666520">by the police</a>, abandoned by <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sunday-times-ft-guardian-and-observer-were-best-performing-print-titles-in-september/">large numbers of readers</a>, and its future has been debated in parliament. </p>
<p>Throughout all of this, the question of how to regulate a free press continues. The Press Complaints Commission is no more, IPSO (the industry’s own body) is ignored by several major publications, and now we have IMPRESS, the latest organisation to offer to take on the job.</p>
<p>IMPRESS says it is “<a href="http://www.impress.press">the first truly independent press regulator</a> in the UK” and, despite having no national newspapers as members, claims to be legitimised by official recognition from the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). </p>
<p>A government funded quango <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk">created by the Royal Charter on the Press</a>, the PRP operates with the guarantee of £3m of taxpayer’s funding. But never has so much public money been channelled into a public body that has so little to do and is so unpopular with the industry it has been set up to serve. </p>
<p>This is because its operating Royal Charter has nothing to do with agreement or negotiation. It is a medieval constitutional instrument of executive power imposed by politicians upon the press industry without consent. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the industry itself has spent millions of pounds on its own self-regulator, <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk">IPSO</a>, which it argues is just as “Leveson compliant”.</p>
<p>Among the blunt weapons possessed by IMPRESS with which it can batter publishers of news, is the threat of “exemplary” or punitive damages in media law litigation and the burden of paying both sides’ legal costs whatever the outcome of the proceedings. </p>
<p>The risk of exemplary damages <a href="http://www.carter-ruck.com/blog/read/crime-courts-act-exemplary-damages-libel-privacy-in-force">went live from November 2015</a> and has been <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-freedom-groups-warn-un-that-investigatory-powers-bill-threatens-journalistic-sources/">described by freedom of expression bodies as a menacing threat</a> which will make the media wary of upsetting government and parliamentarians. </p>
<p>There is a strong argument that multiple human rights violations will result, including a lack of freedom of expression and right to fair trial. This is not democracy – particularly when these measures apply to any publisher that objects to its content being effectively licensed by a government body. </p>
<p>It is argued that forcing news publishers to comply with IMPRESS regulation is balanced by the alternative of low-cost arbitration. But the IMPRESS regime can still leave the publisher <a href="http://impress.press/regulation/arbitration.html">picking up the claimant’s costs of up to £3,000</a>. When this is combined with its own arbitration fee of up to £3,500, plus its own legal costs, one IMPRESS arbitration could easily mount up to £10,000 – before damages. The arbitrator’s decision is final – and the process takes place in secret.</p>
<p>Is this is a satisfactory method of resolving freedom of expression disputes? </p>
<p>IMPRESS is essentially the manifestation of a political movement determined to control mainstream media publishers that are largely condemned for being dominated by a right-wing capitalist agenda and dismissive of the rights of “media victims”.</p>
<p>They are also criticised for advancing a prurient culture dominated by what titillates the public in terms of prejudice, scandalous gossip, and tabloid “ruining of people’s lives”.</p>
<p>This is the doctrine that motivated and dominated Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry. It is the raison d'être of orgnisations such as <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/press-release-hacked-off-responds-to-anthony-france-appeal-decision/">Hacked Off</a>, the <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org">Media Standards Trust</a>, the <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk">Media Reform Coalition</a> and their cadre of cheer-leading politicians, lawyers, academics and celebrities bruised by popular media intrusion.</p>
<h2>Stop Press</h2>
<p>IMPRESS does not regulate any significant proportion of the press or its associated online websites. Those it does regulate include an eccentric <a href="http://impress.press/complaints/regulated-publishers.html">mishmash of independent online websites</a>, all of which appear to be unlikely to turn over £2m a year or have more than ten employees. Under the Crime and Courts Act 2013 this makes them exempt from regulation anyway and unlikely to be able to subsidise IMPRESS in the future.</p>
<p>Currently IMPRESS exists thanks largely to a series of donations, including from – among others – former F1 tycoon Max Mosley, via a family trust which has <a href="http://impress.press/about-us/funding.html">guaranteed it £3.8m over four years</a>. </p>
<p>Mr Mosley is well known for his views on the tabloid media and has argued for potential privacy victims to be notified before publication of any potential breaches of privacy. But this idea of linking prior notice to prior restraint has been <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/774.html">rejected by the European Court of Human Rights</a> because of its implications for political reporting and serious investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Why should mainstream news publishers be bullied through statutory discrimination in liability for punitive damages and legal costs to submit to state sponsored regulation that is effectively bankrolled by Max Mosley? </p>
<p>Mr Mosley has been campaigning on privacy issues ever since the now-defunct News of the World <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1777.html">wrongly claimed</a> that his private participation in S&M activities had a public interest link to his fascist father, Sir Oswald.</p>
<p>There may well be an element of poetic justice in his family money being used to advance regulation of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. But the effects will be unsettling, and apply to all news publishers, whether they have offended Mr Mosley or not.</p>
<p>What we should all be offended by is the arrival and official recognition of a regulatory body that will have significant and damaging powers of interference in the content of our news media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is Chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.</span></em></p>
News media publishers could face punitive sanctions from state approved regulation.
Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67200
2016-10-21T14:03:32Z
2016-10-21T14:03:32Z
No shortage of media schadenfreude as ‘fake sheikh’ is sent to prison
<p>The machetes of condemnation are out for the investigative journalist and self-styled “king of stings”, Mazher Mahmood. The man who <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3690886.stm">dominated the British tabloid world</a> for decades with his “fake sheikh” operation at the now defunct News of the World has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37727631">jailed for 15 months</a> for tampering with evidence in a high-profile case.</p>
<p>There is something about the modern Greek tragedy in the narrative of the crusading – and to quote media commentator Roy Greenslade, “tawdry and disgusting” – tabloid entrapper, who ended up standing in the dock to face the kind of justice he wished for his many targets.</p>
<p>Such is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37563509">coverage his trial has received</a>, you could be forgiven for thinking Mahmood had committed a crime much worse than the paedophilia, terrorism, class A drug supplying, arms dealing, immigration rackets, and political corruption, dodgy doctors, solicitors, pimps, judges, bent cops and even murderers that his adventures sought to expose. </p>
<p>In fact, he has been found guilty along with his driver, Alan Smith, of one offence: plotting to pervert the course of justice by suppressing evidence in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37429114">drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos</a>. The singer had been accused of arranging for Mahmood to be sold £800 worth of cocaine by one of her contacts. Her case was later dismissed after Mahmood’s evidence was called into question. </p>
<p>This was in the context of one of Mahmood’s elaborate stings for The Sun on Sunday, the paper he joined after <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-closes-a-new-page-for-rupert-murdoch-2240">Rupert Murdoch liquidated</a> News of the World – the most successful ever Sunday newspaper – following the toxic Milly Dowler <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10429135/Phone-hacking-trial-News-of-the-World-told-police-Milly-Dowler-was-hacked.html">phone hacking scandal</a>.</p>
<p>When the trial judge realised Mahmood had given evidence in direct contradiction to what he had said in a pre-trial hearing, Contostavlos was acquitted. The tables then dramatically turned on the journalist who had posed as a film producer and plied Contostavlos with alcohol as they discussed an acting role alongside Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.</p>
<p>The phone hacking victims’ lawyer Mark Lewis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/05/new-corp-20-lawsuits-fake-sheikh-conviction">talked about £800m of claims by Mahmood’s “past victims”</a>. The Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, once enthusiastic and grateful champions of Mahmood’s operations, became <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-rev1.htm">reverse ferrets</a> of criminal justice.</p>
<p>The Crown Prosecution Service has since dropped live cases given to them by Mahmood’s alter ego and has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/04/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-cases-reviewed-cps">reviewing 25 past convictions</a>. Six <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-tulisa-court-cases-reviewed-dropped-a7347396.html">cases of high-profile figures</a> have been taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the grinding of the wheels of justice, within the profession of journalism the methods of the “fake sheikh” have always attracted controversy. Greenslade <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/06/mazher-mahmoods-journalistic-game-has-finally-been-brought-to-book">has been on his case</a> ever since the pair worked together on The Sunday Times. In 2006, Greenslade wrote a piece in The Independent with the headline: “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-6103585.html">Why I am out to nail Mazher Mahmood</a>”. The formidable John Sweeney of the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">turned Mahmood over in 2014</a>; Channel 4 castigated Mahmood’s tactics and reputation in a documentary in 2012 which was made with the help of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/aug/01/mazher-mahmood-newsoftheworld">one of his former assistants who had turned against him</a>.</p>
<p>However, this whole affair has been diminished into a reductionist fable of good and evil with no tolerance for the light and shade, moral ambiguity and rough and tumble of raucous tabloid sensationalism. The past is being judged harshly by the politics and values of the present.</p>
<p>Domonic Ponsford, the editor of Press Gazette, found himself under attack for <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/in-the-race-to-demonise-mazher-mahmood-dont-forget-his-victims-which-rich-people-driven-by-greed-to-do-bad-things/">suggesting that</a> “in the race to demonise Mazher Mahmood, don’t forget his ‘victims’ were often rich people, driven by greed to do bad things”.</p>
<p>Ponsford faced a tsunami of critical onslaught which debunked any credit or merit for Mahmood’s investigative journalism. Nevertheless <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mazher-mahmood-the-baby-for-sale-and-his-use-of-stings-to-target-cocaine-dealing-celebs/">he concluded</a> that “for me, the jury is still out on Mahmood as far as the wider allegations against him go. But I accept that given what we now know about phone-hacking at the News of the World (and elsewhere) it is best to keep an open mind when it comes to historic allegations of tabloid wrongdoing.”</p>
<p>How the mighty has fallen. Mahmood’s 2008 book, Confessions of a Fake Sheik: ‘The King of the Sting’ Reveals All, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Fake-Sheik-Sting-Reveals-ebook/dp/0007288093/">can be bought for a penny on Amazon</a>. The “world’s best-known investigative journalist”, a reporter of the year in 1999, is the source of the profession’s self-loathing – Private Eye mocked his fear of reprisals and his efforts to keep his photograph out of the public eye. The Metropolitan police <a href="http://news.met.police.uk/news/two-guilty-of-perverting-the-course-of-justice-189729">released his full facial image on conviction</a>. And The Sun <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1920483/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-is-found-guilty-in-the-former-x-factor-judge-tulisa-contostavlos-sting-case/">revealed his face</a> complete with anorak hood and glasses that he wore to and from court.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s career is neither typical, nor is it the mainstay of British investigative journalism. The theatrical sting of performance journalism will always be resented by those who are embarrassed, or have something unpleasant to hide – particularly when it is teased out by the somewhat juvenile stunt of exaggerated temptation. But while subjects stung by this method might appear to condemn themselves, problems inevitably arise if this is then relied on by the state for criminal prosecutions. Mahmood and his team were tabloid journalists – not police detectives or intelligence officers.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, Mahmood tampered with evidence – and for that he is now to serve time in jail. But it would be wise for the legal system, politicians and public opinion to be wary of throwing bricks in glass houses. They all once delighted and sniggered when concealing their copies of the News of the World inside The Sunday Times or the Observer and other so-called “respectable broadsheets”. Now that the morality of what went on has been judged and found wanting perhaps they should look to their own consciences and measure their condemnation with some sense of proportion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists. </span></em></p>
The downfall – and tactics – of investigative reporter Mazher Mahmood are not typical of British journalism.
Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/51969
2015-12-15T10:58:39Z
2015-12-15T10:58:39Z
News of the World: the factor in its demise that deserves more attention
<p>The ill-tempered debate over the the downfall of the News of the World has often focused on the crimes committed by some of the newspaper’s staff. The Crown Prosecution Service’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/11/no-further-action-against-mirror-over-phone-hacking-cps-says">recent announcement</a> that it would take no further action against companies and journalists accused of phone hacking again stirred such discussions. Yet the end of the hugely popular and successful Sunday title should also be understood another way. </p>
<p>Once the paper’s wrongdoing was in the public domain, the newspaper was very quickly condemned in the court of public opinion and some of its staff subsequently appeared in the courts of law. The newspaper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733">shut it down</a>. Its final edition appeared on July 10, 2011. </p>
<p>Buying a copy that day at my local newsagent, I heard a neighbour saying it was “good riddance” – and overdue. As more and more of the NOTW’s excesses were exposed, it was a view then quite widely held – widely, but not universally. That final edition contained praise from a reader (Jeanne Hobson, from Lymington in Hampshire) who was quoted as saying she would “always remember the News of the World for the good things you have brought to light. I’m sad to say goodbye to my Sunday favourite”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hardest word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Crotheek</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That edition also contained an extract from George Orwell’s 1946 essay “The decline of the English Murder”, in which he pictured his reader’s perfect Sunday afternoon: “You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World.”</p>
<p>Orwell wrote of how murder had changed. Journalism, in our time, has too. That, I argue in a new essay in <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-news-of-the-world-and-the-british-press-18432011-laurel-brake/?isb=9781137392039">The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011</a> is one of the ways in which we need to understand the NOTW’s demise. </p>
<p>Laurel Brake and Mark W Turner, who, along with Chandrika Kaul, edited the volume, describe the 19th-century News of the World as having:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A high proportion of news, national and global, including financial and monetary news and expansive parliamentary and court reporting; breadth of entertainment copy including early sports coverage; a distinctively unstinting ‘Literature’ page and theatre reviews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was not entirely the kind of content the paper’s 21st-century readers would have expected, although it is interesting to note the NOTW’s pioneering role in sports coverage. Entertainment – in its modern form of celebrity scandal and gossip – endured and came to dominate the paper’s offering. These were the kind of stories where the ability to hack into mobile phones was sometimes to prove just too much of a temptation. </p>
<h2>Digital disruption</h2>
<p>For if the relative ease with which the voicemail of analogue mobile phones could be listened to illicitly was a gift from technology to the tabloids, it came at a time when much was also being taken away. Technological change also brought ever-wider access to the internet. In the case of the News of the World, the kind of celebrity stories which were one of its strengths were increasingly available online, for free. It was competition which Fleet Street had not foreseen. </p>
<p>This is a factor in the News of the World’s decline which has been overlooked in much of the discussion which accompanied its last days and eventual closure. The paper was shut down as a response to its law-breaking, but the era in which that happened is also significant. </p>
<p>In January 2012, during its coverage of the Leveson Inquiry, The Guardian website headlined “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jan/26/leveson-inquiry-facebook-google-popbitch-live">Facebook, Google, Popbitch executives appear</a>” – names which would have sounded like gibberish two decades earlier; and names without which in this decade no full discussion of the news business could take place. </p>
<p>These changes left Fleet Street facing competition to which they were unaccustomed. Proponents of press regulation might argue that the tabloids’ excesses meant tighter controls were necessary. Yet, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9691688/State-regulation-of-press-absolutely-pointless-because-of-internet.html">as their supporters argued</a>, newspapers faced, in the form of online media, competition which was not subject even to the same legal restrictions as they. </p>
<p>So while the demise of the News of the World should on one level be understood as a business decision taken in response to law-breaking, it is important for another reason, too. </p>
<h2>Times they are a-changin’</h2>
<p>Throughout the history of journalism, those who have succeeded have done so because they understood change, and positioned themselves to take advantage of it. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, <a href="http://gdc.gale.com/assets/files/daily_mail/the_story_of_the_daily_mail.pdf">who founded the Daily Mail</a> introduced editorial innovations and, in the form of more efficient presses and railways, harnessed new technology to his purpose. </p>
<p>In the internet age, journalism has often had changed forced upon it. It has responded with varying degrees of success. There have also been failures. Tumbling print circulations and revenues are perhaps the most obvious example.</p>
<p>“Who, what, when, where, why, and how”: any undergraduate journalism student or trainee reporter can list the basic ingredients of a news story. In the case of the News of the World’s decline, the “when” – the moment in journalism history when it happened – deserves more attention than it has so far received.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The famed Sunday tabloid brought about its own sorry demise.
James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42856
2015-06-04T17:07:04Z
2015-06-04T17:07:04Z
Coulson acquittal – beginning of the end game of Leveson?
<p>The acquittal of former News of the World editor and Cameron spin doctor-in-chief Andy Coulson on perjury charges at the high court in Edinburgh appears to have hinged largely on a phrase uttered by the trial judge which will be pored over by legal experts on both sides of the border: “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/andy-coulson-prosecutors-face-questions-after-perjury-charges-against-former-news-of-the-world-editor-dropped-10295563.html?origin=internalSearch">Not every lie amounts to perjury”</a>.</p>
<p>On the direction of judge, Lord Burns, Coulson was cleared of committing perjury in the 2010 trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan. Having been charged with “lying under oath” about his awareness of phone hacking at the NOTW at Sheridan’s own perjury trial, which he denied, Coulson was formally of acquitted of the charges because, the judge said, Coulson’s alleged lies were <a href="https://inforrm.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/news-andy-coulson-acquitted-of-perjury-on-judges-ruling/">“not relevant”</a> to the Sheridan case. </p>
<p>As the Guardian reported, Burns ruled that, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/03/andy-coulson-cleared-of-perjury-in-scottish-court%20">under Scottish law</a>, perjury can only be committed if the alleged lie had a material effect on the outcome of the previous trial. </p>
<p>According to the tireless court reporter James Doleman, who covered the original Sheridan trial and has recently reported on all of the recent phone hacking trials in admirable detail, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. For him this trial looked like an “open-and-shut case” of perjury where many of Coulson’s associates had advised him to plead guilty. However, instead of a process toward expected conviction Coulson had been part of <a href="http://www.byline.com/project/8/article/70">“one of the greatest escapes in legal history”</a> where the jury were not given the chance to consider the evidence.</p>
<p>The evidence heard against Coulson was compelling. Clive Goodman, the former royal editor at the News of the World jailed in January 2007 for intercepting mobile phone messages involving members of the Royal Household told the court that, in terms of phone hacking, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/andy-coulson-clive-goodman-phone-hacking-fall-guy-court%20">Coulson knew</a>: “exactly what I had been doing, telling me I had to take the blame for it and get it out of the way”. </p>
<p>The paper’s former chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, testified that Coulson knew that the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32874224">been accessed</a> while the former news editor James Weatherup said that intercepting voicemails had been part of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11631143/Phone-hacking-was-systematic-at-News-of-the-World-trial-told.html">“day-to-day”</a> life and was discussed at daily editorial conferences.</p>
<h2>Sinking the Rubicon</h2>
<p>That all this this proved to be irrelevant is down to the definition of perjury under Scottish law. As <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32931204%20">Phillip Sim</a> wrote, in terms of this trial, it didn’t matter what Coulson knew and when; it didn’t even matter whether he had really broken his oath to tell “the truth and nothing but the truth”. The prosecution had to successfully prove that Coulson’s original testimony at Sheridan’s trial had been pertinent to the verdict. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"606061825315229696"}"></div></p>
<p>In Sim’s words: “In order to constitute perjury, false testimony has to be relevant to the case at hand; in essence, the lies told have to matter to the jury.” In the event, the prosecution spent much time and energy trying to demonstrate that Coulson knew about phone hacking while the defence, ultimately successfully, argued to the judge that this didn’t matter one iota. That is why the trial collapsed.</p>
<p>And with the acquittal of Coulson comes the probable end of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/02/charges-dropped-two-former-executives-news-world-scotland-bob-bird-doug-wight">Operation Rubicon </a> – the Scottish police’s inquiry into alleged hacking and illegal accessing of confidential data under which he was arrested. </p>
<p>On June 2, the night before Coulson was acquitted of Lord Burns, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/02/charges-dropped-two-former-executives-news-world-scotland-bob-bird-doug-wight">prosecutors announced</a> that they were going to drop charges of perverting the course of justice and perjury against two former executives at the News of the World in Scotland. Bob Bird, formerly editor of the Scottish edition and former news editor, Doug Wight, will now face no charges. <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/not-every-lie-amounts-to-perjury/">According to Doleman</a>, this more than likely signals an end to the official investigation of phone hacking in Scotland.</p>
<h2>Poachers and gamekeepers</h2>
<p>South of the border, though, the prosecutions continue to result in trials and headlines. In May, Trinity-Mirror was ordered to pay £1.2m to eight celebrities whose phones were hacked over a ten-year period. The high court heard that the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/03/phone-hacking-widespread-mirror-titles-court-told%20%C2%A0">“industrial scale”</a> of phone hacking at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People made the News of the World look like a “small cottage industry” by comparison.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What all the fuss was about: Tommy Sheridan in full flight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dominique Natanson CC BY 2.5</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neither is there respite for News UK. Neil “The Wolfman” Wallis, the former deputy editor of the Sun and the News of the World, is due to go on trial at the <a href="https://www.byline.com/project/10">Old Bailey</a> charged, alongside six other journalists at the News of the World and private investigator <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/the-making-of-glenn-mulcaire-a-strong-character-and-an-excellent-organiser-who-commanded-respect-and-was-convicted-of-phone-hacking-9617580.html">Glenn Mulcaire</a>, with conspiring to intercept voicemail messages “of well-known people and those associated with them”.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, now that the tenancy of Number 10 Downing Street is settled for another five years, our thoughts turn to the future of press regulation. According to former Guardian editor, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/17/election-end-leveson-royal-charter-john-whittingdale">Peter Preston</a>, Leveson is over – we must let it go. Writing in the Observer he reasoned that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Press regulation, save for some further egregious error of a phone-hacking variety sometime during the next five years, is not on this government’s agenda. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), chaired by Sir Alan Moses, is, more than ever, the only show in town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not so writes, <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20https:/inforrm.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/why-leveson-is-alive-and-well-despite-the-election-result-steven-barnett/">Steven Barnett</a>, an academic and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hold-the-front-page-uk-might-get-a-press-watchdog-with-teeth-37081">contributor to this website</a>. Barnett believes the Leveson “framework” is in place and IPSO can be challenged. The truly independent <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/word/">Press Regulation Panel (PRP)</a> has been created and will be operational by the Autumn. </p>
<p>It will have the ability to scrutinise IPSO and “any aspiring self-regulator which wants to take advantage of the incentives offered by recognition”. This is important for the <a href="http://impressproject.org/">Independent Monitor for the Press (Impress)</a> which is close to applying for status as regulator with many online, regional and hyperlocal publishers indicating a willingness to join. </p>
<p>Once Impress is functional, argues, Barnett: “things could start to get uncomfortable for the big newspaper companies as they become vulnerable to heavy court costs by staying outside the recognition system”.</p>
<p>All this remains to be seen of course, but Wallis’s trial we can expect to hear further allegations of tabloid malpractice and unlawful deeds. And while we digest what has now become familiar we should, I think, reflect on the scale of the operations that have brought us to this point. According to an <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/april-2011-today-64-uk-journalists-arrested-andor-charged-following-news-world-hacking">excellent report</a> by the Press Gazette, with the process of the investigations into British journalism nearing its end, the Metropolitan police has undertaken, since 2011, the “biggest investigation in criminal history”.</p>
<p>As of August 2014 more than 100 journalists have been questioned by police on suspicion of crimes and 63 have been arrested or charged. There have been 11 different task forces engaged in the investigations, calling on the skills of more than 100 officers at a cost of <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/metropolitan-police-has-spent-%C2%A3335m-excluding-legal-fees-investigating-journalists-new-figures-show">£33.5m</a>. </p>
<p>What is quite clear, irrespective of your views, is that no other area of public or private life has undergone the same level of open scrutiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The acquittal of former News of the World editor and Cameron spin doctor-in-chief Andy Coulson on perjury charges at the high court in Edinburgh appears to have hinged largely on a phrase uttered by the…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35114
2014-12-08T06:00:52Z
2014-12-08T06:00:52Z
Press needs a regulator to protect itself – and the rest of us
<p>When the News of the World newspaper closed in 2011, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, its editor, Colin Myler, said: “I know we produce a paper to be proud of.” To prove the point, the paper’s final edition was covered with front page exclusives, many of them the work of <a href="https://theconversation.com/panorama-and-the-fake-sheikh-trawling-tabloid-excesses-34258">Mazher Mahmood: the Fake Sheik</a>. Mahmood’s undercover work in exposing crime was always offered as evidence that the paper operated “in the public interest”.</p>
<p>Now that last shred of respectability lies in tatters after <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/04/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-cases-reviewed-cps">the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced</a> that 25 convictions based on evidence collected by Mahmood are to be re-examined. Those cases that were yet to come to court have been dropped. </p>
<p>The turning point for Mahmood was the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jul/21/tulisa-contostavlos-trial-collapses-sun-mazher-mahmood">Tulisa Contostavlos story</a>. Caught up in an elaborate tabloid sting, the singer and former X Factor judge found herself in court on drugs charges. The case was dismissed because the judge, Alistair McCreath, said there were “strong grounds for believing Mr Mahmood told me lies”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/21/mazher-mahmood-ukcrime">McCreath went on</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It should not be forgotten that Mr Mahmood is the sole progenitor of this case; the sole investigator; the sole prosecution witness; a man who has exercised his journalistic privilege to create a situation in which the identities of others involved in the investigation are unknown to the defence (or the prosecution or even to me); someone who appears to have gone to considerable lengths to get Ms Contostavlos to agree to involve herself in criminal conduct, certainly to far greater lengths than would have been regarded as appropriate had he been a police investigator.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mazher Mahmood: 25 cases to be re-examined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At this point there is no suggestion that Mahmood will himself be the subject of police attention, though a CPS <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_news/action_on_cases_involving_mazher_mahmood/">press statement warned</a>: “Care should be taken when reporting matters relating to Mr Mahmood to ensure it does not affect the fairness of future proceedings as a police investigation remains ongoing.”</p>
<h2>Pressing need for regulation</h2>
<p>There are, however, <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/april-2011-today-64-uk-journalists-arrested-andor-charged-following-news-world-hacking">63 other UK journalists</a> who have been arrested or charged since the start of the phone-hacking scandal. Three have been imprisoned. Not all of those who came to the attention of the police were employed by the News of the World but the vast majority worked for newspapers that vociferously opposed the establishment of new forms of press regulation recommended by Lord Justice Leveson, after a two-year inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press.</p>
<p>There is a connection here. The most powerful news organisations in the UK (barring the BBC) own the big tabloid newspapers and it is these newspapers that are most often accused of unethical behaviour and subject to the largest number of complaints. They were also the most powerful members of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which until September, was charged with the self-regulation of the press. Paul Dacre, for example, the editor of the Daily Mail, was also the chair of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee of PressBoF, the press standards board of finance which oversaw the funding of the PCC.</p>
<p>It was those who dominated the PCC that also campaigned most vociferously against the implementation of the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson recommendations</a>, which sought to replace the PCC with an independent organisation capable of balancing the needs of a free press, with the protection of individuals from tabloid bullying. </p>
<p>It was these same organisations that then set up their own “regulator” – <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html">IPSO</a> – which is no more independent than its predecessor and refuses to sign up to the Leveson recommendations. Tim Luckhurst, one of the few media academics who lines up with the tabloid proprietors, argued on the <a href="http://freespeechnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/pamphlet_garamond_cmyk-08c.pdf">Free Speech Network</a> website in 2012 that breaches of the law should simply be left to the police.</p>
<h2>Unsafe conduct</h2>
<p>Ironically, we are now discovering just what it looks like when the regulation of the “free press” is left to the police. There is nothing at all edifying about the spectacle of British journalists trying to defend themselves in court, against accusations that they have bribed the police, hacked into phones, listened to private messages and then tried to cover their tracks when they found they had been rumbled. And now the CPS investigations might be throwing the Fake Sheik cases into the mix.</p>
<p>Mark Lewis, the lawyer who represented many of those with phone-hacking claims against journalists, told The Guardian that he was representing 16 possible victims of Mahmood stings. He said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What we are talking about here is, in financial terms, bigger than phone hacking ever was because people have lost their livelihoods, their homes and their incomes over a period of time. It would not be appropriate to comment on the specifics of these cases, but there are a lot of people whose convictions are unsafe and they will be pursuing the appropriate appeals against those convictions, which might have been many years ago.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given the existence of a code of conduct to which they were all signed up, and an ethics organisation that their newspaper purported to support, how did all these journalists get away with behaviour that subsequently landed them in court and in some cases in jail? </p>
<p>Mahmood told the Leveson inquiry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything was discussed with the legal team. I couldn’t go off-piste and do what I wanted. I had to take legal advice and throughout the investigation I remained in constant touch with our lawyers. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So why were none of these journalists stopped?</p>
<p>While the major newspapers were crying out about Leveson breaching their freedoms they arguably were looking in the wrong direction. The press needs a genuinely independent and respected body not only to save it from itself, but also to protect it from a continually growing threat – the police. </p>
<p>One of the few moments in recent years in which editors across the spectrum have stood together was when they discovered that the police <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-attack-on-journalists-sources-undermines-democracy-and-must-be-stopped-32537">were using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act</a> to examine journalists’ phone records. This really was a breach of press freedom and there was no relevant body, independent and yet respected by the public, that could act act on its behalf when the state interfered. </p>
<p>British journalism needs independent regulation to keep the state off its back as well as to define the boundaries of journalistic intrusion. The last thing it needs is to be undefended when the police come to call.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela Phillips is affiliated with Media Reform Coalition. She is the author of Journalism in Context, Routledge, published 2014.</span></em></p>
When the News of the World newspaper closed in 2011, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, its editor, Colin Myler, said: “I know we produce a paper to be proud of.” To prove the point, the paper’s…
Angela Phillips, Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34258
2014-11-14T13:33:30Z
2014-11-14T13:33:30Z
Panorama and the Fake Sheikh: trawling tabloid excesses
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64584/original/cj5mfrp7-1415968748.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The picture Mazher Mahmood's lawyers didn't want you to see.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">Panorama</a> has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for Monday November 10, but – just one and a half hours before it was due to go out – the BBC decided<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/11/bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh-expose-james-harding-mazher-mahmood"> not to air</a>.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s lawyers had wanted to protect his anonymity – seeking to prevent any images of him post 2006 being broadcast, but this was rejected by the High Court and leave to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal. It seemed that it was all systems go until Mahmood’s legal team expressed <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fake-sheikh-bbc-panorama-show-not-shown-after-legal-challenge-1474174">eleventh hour concerns </a>about the content of a section in the documentary involving one of Mahmood’s high-profile stings.</p>
<p>But this was a delaying tactic and on Thursday the BBC went ahead and transmitted what turned out to be a damning indictment of the journalistic practices of the man responsible for, in his own words to the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/leveson-inquiry-fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-exposed-wrongdoing-6275958.html">Leveson enquiry</a>, more than 500 tabloid revelations leading to 260 criminal convictions.</p>
<p>There is some poetic justice, I suppose, in a man who has gained such success from pretending to be someone he is not, being revealed for who he really is. And let’s not forget how Mahmood made his name.</p>
<p>In a vastly successful career, including 20 years at the News of the World where he rose to be investigations editor, Mahmood exposed the follies and greed of the rich, famous and, to be sure, the downright criminal. His investigations led to the imprisonment of actors for the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707306/Former-London-s-Burning-star-reveals-Fake-Sheikh-destroyed-Tulisa-style-cocaine-sting-left-without-job-benefits.html">purchase of cocaine</a>, the exposure of corruption in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15573463">Pakistani cricket</a> and the tricking of then England manager <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/16/pressandpublishing.football">Sven Goran Erikson</a> into saying he would quit his England role if the team won the World Cup and was prepared to become the £5m-a-year manager of Aston Villa.</p>
<p>It was at the News of the World where the “fake sheikh” persona was cultivated. Mahmood would dress as an Arab noble and appeal to the vanities of his targets. In one of his most famous stories, Sophie Wessex was enticed to the Dorchester hotel by the prospect of handling the £20,000 a month PR account for a Saudi Prince. Once there, Prince Edward’s wife described “President Blair” (this was 2001) the “frightening” tax rises and “pap budget” presided over by Gordon Brown. The News of the World of gleefully reported all the details.</p>
<p>No expense was spared on creating the façade, as the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-fake-sheikh-and-his-greatest-hits-310570.html">Independent</a>reported in 2005:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sheikh routine is well rehearsed. The white jalabia is accompanied by a flowing robe and the agal, or headdress. Then there is a special black and gold robe, only worn by members of the 25,000-strong House of Saud. Expensive shoes and a Rolex watch complete the routine, along with a Ferrari or a helicopter. He also likes to puff away on a hubble-bubble pipe as he coaxes the story out of his victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is these techniques that led to previous accusations that Mahmood is an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">agent provocateur</a> who preys on the foibles of the otherwise innocent, tempting them to commit acts in any other circumstances they would not. In 2006, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-474264.htm">Roy Greenslade</a>, who was once boss of Mahmood at The Sunday Times, wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to put an end to his regular use of subterfuge, the most controversial weapon in journalism’s armoury. I want him to mothball the fake sheikh’s robes. And I want his paper, the News of the World, to take a long, hard look at its journalistic ethics and to reconsider its editorial agenda.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mahmood told Panorama that he had spent his career investigating crime and wrongdoing and had used legitimate methods that brought individuals to justice. He said any criticism of him usually came from those with “an axe to grind”.</p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>Panorama certainly examined journalistic ethics – that and much more. John Sweeney’s 30-minute programme heard from many of Mahmood’s alleged victims and his former colleague, Steve Grayson, who candidly admitted to setting up model Emma Morgan as a cocaine dealer. Grayson <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">told Sweeney</a>: “He [Mahmood] is a drug dealer, we’re drug dealers, we have paid this guy to supply the drugs to give to her.”</p>
<p>More importantly, perhaps, the programme referred to the alleged relationship between Mahmood and the Metropolitan police. It was stated that he had links with corrupt police officers and a private detective firm called Southern Investigations. One document highlighted by Panorama said: “Source met Maz, a News of the World reporter … on this occasion Maz was with a plainclothes officer … The officer was selling a story to Maz.”</p>
<h2>Perjury investigation</h2>
<p>All this is complicated by the fact that Mahmood is now under investigation by the Met for perjury and suspended from the Sun on Sunday following the collapse of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">Tulisa Contostavlos trial in July</a>. X Factor star Tulisa, who also appeared on the Panorama programme, faced charges of intent to supply cocaine after being filmed by Mahmood who was posing as a Hollywood movie executive. Appearing as a prosecution witness the judge threw the case out saying that the trial could not go any further because, said Justice Alistair McCreath, there were “strong grounds to believe” that Mahmood had “lied” at a hearing before the trial started.</p>
<p>For former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith this means that convictions which occurred as a result of Mahmood’s evidence in previous cases now need examination. He told Panorama:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact that somebody who has been accused by a judge of apparently of not telling the truth may be instrumental in those convictions would certainly be a reason to look at those convictions again and to examine them to see whether they are safe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>John Alford, an actor jailed following a Mahmood sting in 1997, would certainly welcome any investigation at all. He appeared at the end of Panorama, on the verge of tears, to exclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one can give me the 18 years I’ve lost, no one can give me that back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.superlawyers.com/london/article/One-Rogue-Solicitor/2320f264-f989-4888-9cbb-bd3d43703ba9.html%20i">Mark Lewis</a>, a media law, libel and privacy lawyer who filed the first phone-hacking civil case against News of the World is in no doubt about the severity of Mahmood’s alleged actions he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The damage that’s caused, the damage for people’s livelihoods, the amount of people sent to prison, it’s a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, the phone hacking scandal hasn’t gone away, either. On November 7 the former editor of the News of the World, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/07/ian-edmondson-jailed-eight-months-phone-hacking-news-of-the-world">Ian Edmondson</a> was sentenced to 8 months in prison whilst Operation Elveden, the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into alleged payments to public officials for information by journalists, currently has three trials in the criminal courts. </p>
<p>On trial in in Kingston Crown Court are journalists and senior newspaper executives comprising the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trial-six-sun-journalists-accused-paying-public-officials-set-start-kingston-crown-court">“Sun Six”</a>. These are still dark days for tabloid news journalism and there’s more to come. With more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/13/mazher-mahmood-potential-victims-bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh">potential victims</a> of Mahmood’s set to come forward in the wake of Panorama, it may be a long time before we see the light.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but Panorama has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/30491
2014-08-14T13:34:00Z
2014-08-14T13:34:00Z
Hack Attack: brickbats and bouquets for reporter who broke hacking scandal
<p>Nick Davies is a hero for my generation of journalists and <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-gazettes-top-ten-investigative-journalists-brave-and-unstoppable-nick-davies-tops-list">many generations of younger reporters</a>. He can be fairly characterised as <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/woodstein/">a Woodward or Bernstein</a> of British “quality” journalism. </p>
<p>Davies decided to turn on his own tribe in recent years and has taken a lot of flak for it. Fortunately the vitriol has been metaphorical sticks and stones. Perhaps the worst he’s had to deal with is a sense that <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/nick-davies-bad-guys-hate-me-most-journalists-are-decent-people-and-are-glad-i-exposed-phone-hacking">the “bad guys” hate him</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.flatearthnews.net/">Flat Earth News</a>, and now <a href="http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/hack-attack/9781448114344">Hack Attack</a> are blockbuster 400-page-plus denunciations of journalistic corruption, abuse of power, criminality and immorality.</p>
<p>Sources for Hack Attack include a large number of former News of the World journalists willing to help because of their shame and anger at what was going on.</p>
<p>It is written with novelistic characterisation and the language of a potential screenplay. He says of former managing editor Stuart Kuttner: “He had served half a dozen editors in a role like that of the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction – he cleaned up the mess.” </p>
<p>He talks of another senior editorial figure as somebody known as the “the rasping fuckwit” who was, he writes, “the kind of cynic who gives cynics a bad name”.</p>
<p>The News of the World is depicted as a cauldron of tabloid raptors. Davies unpacks the legend of this story with Vladimir Propp’s grasp of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Morphology-Folktale-Publications-American-Folklore/dp/0292783760">Morphology of the Folk Tale</a> and <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/">Aristotle’s Poetics</a>. </p>
<h2>Opening Pandora’s box</h2>
<p>The story has all the elements of an unfolding Greek tragedy. He casts as his Watergate Deep Throat equivalent a man called “Mr Apollo”. This is code for the source holding the key to Pandora’s box. Open the box and the true extent of Glenn Mulcaire’s phone hacking targeting thousands over many years would burst open.</p>
<p>The person or persons leaking here could well have been breaking the law. Davies received documents at the heart of a confidentially settled breach of privacy action brought against News International by the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking">Gordon Taylor</a>. </p>
<p>The damages and legal costs deal of nearly £750,000 have been described as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8705902/Phone-hacking-James-Murdoch-admits-hush-money-payout.html">News of the World hush money</a>.</p>
<p>Hack Attack is also a narrative of struggle. The Guardian’s assertion that News of the World phone hacking was rife was trashed and ignored by rival papers, the Metropolitan Police and <a href="http://pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAyOA==">Press Complaints Commission.</a></p>
<p>Davies says the Guardian’s editor since 1995, Alan Rusbridger, is a man of backbone who stood by him in the eye of a storm of derision and castigation. </p>
<p>Rusbridger’s befuddled Erik Satie of Hampstead appearance is beguiling. He has been mocked as <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1199570.ece">an aging Harry Potter adult look-alike and lapsed amateur pianist</a>. But his appearances <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/nov/16/alan-rusbridger-statement-leveson-inquiry">before Leveson</a> and House of Commons <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/03/keith-vaz-alan-rusbridger-love-country-nsa">select committees</a> have been steely. </p>
<p>The book and its associated promotion do provide some clues as to why Davies and the Guardian may indeed be “hated” not necessarily by just “the bad guys” of tabloid land. </p>
<p>The book seeks to rationalise the wretched damage, destruction and mess ignited by the scandal. Davies is defensive and sanitising about <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2650205/News-World-journalists-did-not-delete-Milly-Dowlers-voicemails-parents-false-hope-alive-hacking-trial-told.html">the blood libel</a> that News of the World hacks had deleted Milly Dowler’s messages giving false hope to her parents that she was still alive. </p>
<p>It is argued this was “an honest mistake” and that any examination of media coverage at the time shows it is the phone hacking of a murdered teenager’s phone that focused public outrage. </p>
<p>Davies says he and the Guardian were not responsible for the loss of hundreds of jobs through the News of the World’s closure. This was a cynical move by Murdoch to bring forward a plan for the Sunday Sun and offer up a sacrificial lamb to save the bid for BSkyB. </p>
<h2>Political agenda</h2>
<p>I suspect the ambiguity and paradox of deserved admiration and undeserved loathing derive from his political agenda. </p>
<p>There is a very strange ranting epilogue against neo-liberalism at the end. Speaking as an orthodox broadcast journalist who believes politics and attitudes need to be locked at home, I find Davies editorialises as much as he reports. He comes across as the veritable Oliver Cromwell of media ethics reform. He put his name, along with John Pilger, to the demand from “200 leading cultural figures” for the press to <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/declarationmarch18/">surrender to Royal Charter approved regulation</a>. </p>
<p>He aims to eradicate cruel tabloid journalism that ruins people’s lives yet the unintended irony is that Davies’ greatest story has led to the ruin of many journalists’ lives, their sources and police media relations. The families of journalists and sources going to jail may not appreciate the tone of his speech at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEG1elQ311Q">Hack Attack’s book launch</a>. </p>
<p>This is the story that not only led to the Leveson Inquiry, criticised by some as <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/12004">a political show-trial</a>, but panicked News International into handing over computer hard-disks that may turn out to be the most <a href="http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4824/commentary-why-i-gave-evidence-in-trial-of-senior-police-officer">catastrophic betrayal of reporters’ sources in journalism history</a>. </p>
<p>No other country in the western world has been criminally <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2100664/Scotland-Yard-Stasi-sinister-assault-free-Press.html">investigating and prosecuting so many journalists</a>. An industry shedding circulation, titles and jobs has lost up to £1 billion <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-news-int-chief-exec-tom-mockridge-said-news-world-hacking-scandal-costs-could-rise-%C2%A31bn">compensating privacy claimants and paying lawyers’ fees</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9">Article 10 of the Human Rights Act</a> states that freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas must exist without interference by public authority. Existing criminal and civil law already cover the necessary exceptions. This is something the News of the World’s former chief reporter and newly released jailbird Neville Thurlbeck explained with some insight <a href="http://www.nevillethurlbeck.com/2014/08/oxford-union-debate.html">at the Oxford Union</a> prior to his Old Bailey sentencing. </p>
<p>Davies was indeed only the messenger who sowed the wind – and, as such, he should not be held responsible for reaping the whirlwind that has devastated some tabloid careers. But if there are people out there – other than what he calls “the bad guys” who regard him as a traitor to journalism, it may have more to do with his support for a form of press regulation which I and many others think may devastate the craft as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and serves on its Professional Practices Board.</span></em></p>
Nick Davies is a hero for my generation of journalists and many generations of younger reporters. He can be fairly characterised as a Woodward or Bernstein of British “quality” journalism. Davies decided…
Tim Crook, Reader in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27906
2014-06-25T13:58:08Z
2014-06-25T13:58:08Z
Phone hacking trial laid bare the dark arts of unethical journalism
<p>The unethical journalism practices laid bare by the phone hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry have been both astounding and sensational. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/29/leveson-inquiry-list-victims-phone-hacking">parade of celebrities and politicians</a> whose most intimate secrets were revealed through illicit access to their phones was startling, ranging from Hugh Grant, David Blunkett, and Charlotte Church to members of the royal family. </p>
<p>In the trial, Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World who went on to become David Cameron’s head of communications, was been found guilty of conspiracy to hack mobile phones. His former colleague, Rebekah Brooks, was cleared of all charges. The jury failed to reach verdicts on two further charges faced by Coulson and one charge faced by former royal editor Clive Goodman of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.</p>
<p>The scandal around phone hacking has been unfolding since the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6301243.stm">arrest</a> of News of the World private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006. But perhaps the most shocking revelations surrounded <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14017661">the hacking of murdered school girl Milly Dowler’s phone</a>, giving rise to widespread denunciations of a culture of ruthless, unethical and lawless journalism in the UK. These concerns were further fuelled by the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a> into the culture, practices and ethics of the press in the UK, which published its recommendations in November 2012, calling for a profound overhaul of press regulation in the UK.</p>
<p>Though the drama of the trial and the Leveson Inquiry have placed debates over journalism ethics in the limelight, there is nothing new about either the shocking behaviour of tabloid journalists, or about the debates over how it should be curbed. To anyone familiar with the history of journalism ethics and regulation in the UK, the phone hacking scandal is the logical outcome of the unfortunate union of a highly competitive tabloid industry, and a toothless system of press regulation.</p>
<p>Tabloid newspapers have long used illicit means to gather information. In 1981, newspapers including the Daily Express, the Sun, the Daily Star, the People, the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail were found guilty of gross misconduct for <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1983/jul/20/mr-peter-sutcliffe-press-council-report-1">making payments to family members of Peter Sutcliffe</a>, the Yorkshire Ripper. Just short of ten years later, tabloid newspapers bought audiotapes of an erotic phone conversation between <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-522508/Charles-Camillas-lovenest-bugged-Diana-inquest-told.html">Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles</a>, as well as recorded calls between <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-507163/Queens-fury-Squidgygate-tape-Palace-ordered-inquiry-leaked-Diana-lover.html">Princess Diana and her lover James Gilbert</a>.</p>
<p>Research by John Henningham and Anthony Delano (detailed in The News Breed: British Journalism, not available online) shows that compared to their US and Australian counterparts, British journalists are far more likely to believe that paying people for information, using confidential documents without permission, using hidden microphones or personal documents, and badgering sources for stories may be justified.</p>
<p>Writing about this in 1998, Henningham and Delano argued: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The strongly competitive newsgathering environment in the UK … may result in a culture in which ethical constraints are somewhat blurred. The relative recency of professional education in journalism may be another factor, together with a lack of a tradition of associations of journalists organised on purely professional (as opposed to union) lines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time, newspapers in the UK have <a href="http://www.editorsweblog.org/2012/12/05/reactions-to-leveson-lord-black">fought</a> tooth and nail against a stronger regulatory body with a statutory underpinning, as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543133">recommended by Lord Justice Leveson</a>. Such resistance to regulation not unique to the UK. It is central to the self-understanding of journalists around the world, <a href="http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3023/en/international-standards:-regulation-of-the-print-media.">which relies centrally on the idea of press freedom and independence</a>. The fight against regulation has been crucial in many national contexts where governments have tried to control media and curb their reporting.</p>
<h2>Failure of self-regulation</h2>
<p>In the UK, broadcasting is regulated by <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/">OFCOM</a>, which has the power to revoke licences and impose major fines. The BBC, as the standard bearer for public service broadcasting, has strict <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/">editorial guidelines</a>. However, there is no similar regulatory framework in place for print media. Members of the National Union of Journalists must sign up to its <a href="http://www.nuj.org.uk/about/nuj-code/">code of ethics</a>, but union membership is not a requirement for practitioners, and <a href="http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/is-the-nuj-still-relevant-to-new-generation-of-journalists/s6/a553385/">figures</a> suggest that union membership has declined by 18% over the past five years, with young journalists reluctant to join. </p>
<p>A succession of voluntary <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/nov/28/leveson-inquiry-report-essential-guide">self-regulatory bodies</a> has been charged with overseeing the print media, starting with the General Council in 1953, followed by the Press Council in 1962 and finally the <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/about/index.html">Press Complaints Commission</a> since 1991. </p>
<p>Their history is one of persistent failure in the face of the blatantly irresponsible behaviour of a small but powerful minority of journalists who have shown what it means to have “power without responsibility”.</p>
<p>This autumn, the PCC will be abolished and replaced by the <a href="http://www.ipso.co.uk/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a>, which describes itself as a “new, tough, independent organisation”. This new body will have <a href="http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/08/jul/13/independent-press-standards-organisation">far greater powers</a> than its predecessors. It will be able to levy fines up to £1m for serious or systemic wrong-doing, and will have a “standards and compliance arm with investigative powers to call editors to account”.</p>
<p>It is doubtful that the latest incarnation of press regulation will magically transform the culture of the tabloid press. But the public ritual of shaming those responsible, through the phone-hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry, has brought these issues to the forefront and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/nov/14/phone-hacking-public-trust">undermined the public’s trust in the press</a>. News organisations are desperate to regain this trust, and this can only be done by exercising their power with responsibility.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karin Wahl-Jorgensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The unethical journalism practices laid bare by the phone hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry have been both astounding and sensational. The parade of celebrities and politicians whose most intimate…
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Director of Research Development and Environment, School of Journalism, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27301
2014-06-25T05:08:15Z
2014-06-25T05:08:15Z
Hacking trial highlighted the cosy relationship between politicians and the press
<p>Andy Coulson has been found guilty of phone hacking and his former boss, Prime Minister David Cameron, has been quick to apologise for “giving him a second chance” by employing the former News of the World editor after two of his employees were jailed for phone hacking in 2006.</p>
<p>Cameron <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27998411">swiftly issued a statement</a> after the guilty verdict against his former director of communications was announced, saying: “Knowing what I now know it was obviously wrong to employ him. I gave someone a second chance and it turned out to be a bad decision.”</p>
<p>We’ll doubtless hear more of this, because – among its many colourful revelations – the phone hacking trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson threw open more windows on the tangled relationships between the press and senior politicians. </p>
<p>We already had the Leveson revelations of <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Second-Witness-Statement-of-Rebekah-Brooks.pdf">pyjama parties</a> at Downing St, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18273297">encouraging texts</a> between the then culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and James Murdoch over News Corp’s attempt to take full control of Sky and invitations to the prime minister to “country suppers” at Brooks’ home.
Now we have details of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10692842/Tony-Blairs-texts-to-Rebekah-Brooks-Call-me-if-you-need-to.html">personal phone calls </a>from Tony Blair offering advice to Brooks in her hour of need, and further indications of the former News International bosses close relationships with those at the very top of the political ladder. </p>
<p>There’s nothing new in this of course. Former Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/mar/06/pressandpublishing.comment">recounted in his memoirs</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bored one evening I counted up all the number of times I had met Tony Blair. And the result was astonishing really, or slightly shocking – according to your viewpoint. I had 22 lunches, six dinners, six interviews, 24 further chats over tea and biscuits and numerous telephone calls with him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It does seem an extraordinary tally. </p>
<p>As director of BBC News more than a decade ago, I met or spoke to the prime minister twice: once during an election campaign on the “battle bus” and once at a lunch for editors in Downing St. But then I always took the late columnist Hugo Young’s view that journalists and politicians should keep their distance – so was not too disappointed that invitations to tea or pyjama parties were not forthcoming. The point is, of course, that it’s the press that politicians seek to court, not a regulated public broadcaster. </p>
<h2>Back door to power</h2>
<p>Public concern over the close relationship between senior Murdoch executives and Downing St has receded in the wake of the Leveson inquiry – overshadowed by arguments over press regulation and by the Brooks-Coulson trial. But it was an issue Leveson himself was concerned about and made a number of observations in his report. </p>
<p>In response to Rupert Murdoch’s assertion that “I have never asked a politician for anything”, Leveson observed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes the very greatest power is exercised without having to ask, because to ask would be to state the blindingly obvious and thereby diminish the very power which is being displayed. Just as Mr Murdoch’s editors knew the basic ground-rules, so did politicians.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such power may have been overstated. The Sun declared it had won the 1992 election for the Tories with a triumphant front page. But at least one poll at the time suggested a majority of its readers thought it had backed Labour. </p>
<p>It’s the politicians who concede the power, as both David Cameron and Alastair Campbell admitted to Leveson – and as he recognised in his conclusions: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In some respects, the relationship between individual newspaper proprietors and senior politicians has not been wholly beneficial from the point of view of the public. I do not consider that the principle responsibility for remedying that situation lies with the proprietors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And later: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The essence of the problem … is not just that politicians may have simply spent too much time and effort on the press, to the detriment of other claims on their attention to the conduct of public affairs. It is that, although it has not been their intention, politicians have risked actual or potential conflict of interest (via both fear and favour) and have done so in dealing with sources of influence which are, in themselves, powerful and unaccountable. The perception that politicians have done this out of public sight has diminished public scrutiny and accountability and run the risk of eroding public trust as the full facts emerge. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leveson placed much emphasis on a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61402/ministerial-code-may-2010.pdf">2011 amendment to the ministerial code</a>, implemented and recommended by former cabinet secretary, Lord O’Donnell, to deal not only with actual conflicts, but the perception of conflicts: “The government will be open about its links with the media. All meetings with newspaper and other media proprietors, editors and senior executives will be published quarterly regardless of the purpose of the meeting.” </p>
<p>It’s hard to see – beyond encouraging and implementing a little more transparency – what else could be done. And, of course, we shouldn’t suppose that ministerial records will capture “country suppers”, pyjama parties or lengthy phone calls or texts. Imposed aggressive transparency is likely to just push the real business further underground. </p>
<p>But some transparency would be a start. So towards the end of the Leveson Inquiry I submitted a <a href="https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/meetings_with_newspaper_editors">Freedom of Information request</a> asking for details of the prime minister’s meetings with senior representatives of newspaper groups. I received a reply saying they were published quarterly on the Cabinet Office website and any further disclosure was exempt from the FOI Act as not being in the public interest. </p>
<p>(I submitted an informal request to Ed Miliband’s office for the same information and did not receive a reply of any kind). </p>
<p>Turning to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/cabinet-office">Cabinet Office website</a>, extensive searches using a variety of terms, including those offered by the Cabinet Office, reveal <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-publishes-meetings-data">one disclosure</a> of the prime minister’s meetings with senior media leaders at Chequers from July 2011 – just after the amended ministerial code – and nothing since. </p>
<p>So much for the transparency of regular quarterly reports. If anyone can point me to any I have missed I’d be grateful. There are more up-to-date returns for other cabinet ministers and for special advisors – though no regular quarterly pattern that is discernable. They reveal names and dates of meetings and usually a topic such as “general discussion” or “discussion of departmental business.”</p>
<p>This is a shame. The UK has made commendable progress on <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-open-government-partnership-2013">open government</a> – led by the Cabinet Office – yet in this one regard still seems shy of walking the talk. Mainstream politics has some way to go to assimilate the strengths of the open agenda. </p>
<p>In reality, press barons and politicians will always seek the mutual advantage of each others’ patronage – and have for a hundred years or more. But the phone hacking trial and Leveson inquiry have revealed that the embrace became too intimate. Although for the moment, both sides are wary of being seen to return to the old ways, it seems inevitable they will. </p>
<p>The only factors which may change it are the voters and readers. At least part of the current appeal of UKIP is its distance from the Westminster/media bubble. A protest vote at some level against closed “insider” politics and secret deals as much as policies. But the perceived influence of the press may outweigh any such concerns for the politicians. </p>
<p>In the longer term, the internet and digital services may break media near-monopolies and provide greater plurality of voice and transparency in doing so. But it’s a long game. </p>
<p>It leaves many of us feeling, as Hugo Young <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/sep/24/pressandpublishing.politics1">observed </a> of the increasing enthusiasm of his newspaper colleagues to indulge in the spoils and perks of back-room politics: “I think there should be more austerity - isn’t journalism enough?” </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27301/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Andy Coulson has been found guilty of phone hacking and his former boss, Prime Minister David Cameron, has been quick to apologise for “giving him a second chance” by employing the former News of the World…
Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27938
2014-06-24T11:48:26Z
2014-06-24T11:48:26Z
Hacking trial: Brooks cleared, Coulson guilty on one charge
<p>Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World newspaper who rose to be David Cameron’s head of communications, has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27997688">found guilty of conspiracy</a> to hack mobile phones. His former colleague, Rebekah Brooks, walked free from the Old Bailey after the jury found her not guilty on all counts. </p>
<p>In emotional scenes at the Old Bailey, Brooks – the former editor of the News of the World and Sun newspapers who became chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International – was overcome with emotion and helped from the court by the court matron. Her husband Charlie Brooks, former PA Cheryl Carter and News International’s head of security Mark Hanna were also cleared of all charges, as was former News of the World managing editor, Stuart Kuttner.</p>
<p>The jury has yet to deliver its verdicts on two further charges faced by Coulson and one charge faced by former royal editor Clive Goodman.</p>
<p>At 11.59am, as the verdicts were announced, Twitter exploded with the news as hundreds of people who have been following reports from the trial reacted to the news. As well as being one of the longest trials in British criminal history, this has been one of the all-time most discussed cases on social media. As blogger <a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/">Peter Jukes</a>, who by the end of the judge’s summing up at the phone hacking trial on June 11 had tweeted live from the proceeding some 24,464 times, wrote with some understatement: “Week 30, Day 130 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/hackingtrial?src=hash">#hackingtrial</a> – this has been quite some journey.”</p>
<p>Brooks was acquitted from charges of conspiring to intercept communications by listening to mobile phone messages, plus two further counts of making corrupt payments to public officials. Coulson faced, and was found guilty of, the same phone hacking charge as Brooks while he and Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s former royal editor, also face charges of allegedly conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials.</p>
<p>Some journey indeed. When the jury was sent away by Justice Saunders on June 11 to consider the verdict its members were accompanied by a 304-page electronic index to around 30 files containing the evidence presented over the past eight months. It had been, said the judge, “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/11/rebekah-brooks-phone-hacking-trial-jury-consider-verdicts">a privilege to work for you all</a>”.</p>
<p><a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/uk-britain-hacking-idUKBRE99S11720131029">The judge</a> was no less dramatic than he was when the trial began on Tuesday October 29 last year. Then, explaining the importance of the proceedings to the jury, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2479266/British-justice-trial-Judges-warning-jurors-start-phone-hacking-case.html">he stated gravely</a>: “In a way, not only are the defendants on trial, but British justice is on trial.”</p>
<p>Well, that matter is moot – but what is indisputable is the fact that this case has laid bare some of the <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/journalism-in-the-dock-the-prosecution-rests/">seedier aspects</a> of British tabloid journalism. Let’s go back through Saunders’s summing up and examine what we’ve learned.</p>
<h2>Tabloid tales</h2>
<p>In respect of count one of the charges, that is to say the conspiracy to illegally intercept voicemail communications, the first thing that needs to be recognised is that there is no dispute that phone hacking took place. As Justice Saunders stated, <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/hacking-trial/mr-justice-saunders-begins-three-day-summing-up-in-phone-hacking-trial/">everyone agreed</a> about that fact. What the jury had to determine was how much, when, where and who knew?</p>
<p>These considerations were at the heart of the Milly Dowler affair – the kidnapping and murder of a teenage girl who went missing in 2002. It was the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world">report by Nick Davies in The Guardian</a> in 2009 that Milly’s phone had been hacked which sparked the scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World and the Leveson inquiry into media practices in the UK. Under questioning, Brooks stated that she did not know phone hacking was illegal until 2006 and she knew nothing of the hacking of Dowler’s voicemail until 2011, nine years after it was alleged to <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/02/25/phone-hacking-trial-brooks-tells-shock-hearing-milly-dowlers-phone-hacked">have taken place</a>. Asked by her QC, Jonathan Laidlaw, if she had ever <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/25/rebekah-brooks-milly-dowler-phone-hacking-trial">sanctioned someone to access a voicemail as a technique,</a> Brooks replied “No”.</p>
<p>In his summing up, the judge pointed out the denial and said that if Brooks did know “<a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/05/phone-hacking-trial-hacking-may-have-caused-milly-dowler-voicemail-deletions-jury">she has lied to you</a>” but added that this, in itself, didn’t make her guilty of conspiracy – as that <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/inchoate_offences/#Conspiracy">requires an agreement</a>, not just knowledge.</p>
<p>In respect of Coulson, Saunders noted that he denied being told about messages on Dowler’s phone at the time even though he was deputy editor of the News of the World. Saunders said that the prosecution case was that this was such an important story Coulson must have been told and that it was not credible that Stuart Kuttner, a senior News of the World journalist also now cleared of being part of the hacking conspiracy, would have contacted Surrey police about the Dowler voicemails without informing Coulson. Giving evidence, Coulson denied knowing anything about the hacking of her voicemail and that he did not remember discussing the story with his then boss, <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/15/phone-hacking-trial-coulson-didnt-rate-milly-dowler-story">Brooks</a>. Asked by his barrister: “Were you ever party to or in agreement with phone hacking at the News of the World?”, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10767754/Andy-Coulson-denies-knowing-Milly-Dowlers-voicemail-was-hacked.html">in a clear voice</a>, Coulson replied: “No”.</p>
<p>Turning to the evidence of former News of the World reporter, Dan Evans, who earlier in the trial claimed that it was <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/hacking-trial/andy-coulson-i-did-not-knowingly-recruit-phone-hacked-to-notw/">“obvious”</a> that he was employed by Coulson for his skills in phone hacking, Saunders reminded the jury that Evans had said he carried out “in excess of <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/09/phone-hacking-trial-news-international-executives-knew-about-blunkett-voicemails">1,000 phone hacks</a>” in a year, but his claims about hacking being so prevalent even the “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-trial-notw-reporter-dan-evans-says-phone-hacking-such-common-knowledge-at-paper-even-the-office-cat-knew-9092864.html">office cat knew</a>” must be considered “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/09/phone-hacking-jury-dan-evans-justice-saunders">with care</a>” by the jury.</p>
<h2>Cover up claims</h2>
<p>On <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/10/phone-hacking-trial-judge-asks-jurors-consider-news-international-damage">day four</a> of his summing up Saunders moved on to the prosecution claim that there was a “cover up” by News International to hide the extent of phone hacking and considered Brooks’ decision to offer Clive Goodman a job after he had been released from prison. Saunders asked the jury to consider the prosecution allegation that this was an attempt to stop Goodman naming other people in connection with hacking – while the defence say this was “damage limitation”. </p>
<p>Earlier in the trial it became clear that convicted hacker and former News of the World royal correspondent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25096381">Goodman</a> was offered a job at the Sun by Brooks because, she said, he was going to allege others at the News of the World were involved in hacking and, although the allegations were unfounded, to go through an embarrassing employment tribunal would lead to a series of damaging headlines: “I had an objective which was to offer him a job to stop him going through an industrial tribunal”, <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/news/brooks-offered-goodman-a-job-to-stop-further-notw-hacking-allegations/">Brooks said</a>.</p>
<p>This was a trial that had scandal: the first few weeks of the proceedings concentrated on Brooks and – to some extent – her relationship with Coulson. They had, the court was told, a love affair which allegedly ran from 1998 to 2004. Part of what appeared to have been a love letter written to Coulson by Brooks was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10653671/Brooks-wrote-Coulson-love-letter-after-a-few-glasses-of-wine-court-hears.html">read out in court</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact is you are my very best friend. I tell you everything. I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you. We laugh and cry together.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It had political intrigue: before any testimonies were heard the court was shown the <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/02/19/phone-hacking-trial-tony-blair-offered-help-brooks-and-murdoch-over-hacking%20">transcript of an email</a> sent by Brooks to James Murdoch, who was then News International’s executive chairman, reporting a conversation she had with Tony Blair. Sent the day after the final edition of the News of the World (July 11 2011), Brooks tells Murdoch that she had “an hour on the phone” with the former PM, during which Blair advised her to set up and publish “a Hutton-style report” which should be chaired by former Crown Prosecution Service chief, Ken McDonald. Blair, Brooks also wrote, advised her to “keep strong”, use “sleeping pills” and to “tough up”. </p>
<p>Finally, Brooks wrote, Blair said he would be “available” to her and the Murdochs provided it was all “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26260790">between us</a>”. Naturally enough, this dominated the next day’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-trial-tony-blair-advised-rebekah-brooks-before-her-arrest-jury-told-9138738.html">headlines</a> though some commentators, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/blair-brooks-and-murdoch-a-m-nage-made-in-fleet-street-23486">Ivor Gaber</a>, did ask why anyone should be surprised at Blair’s alleged actions, given his closeness to the Murdoch clan. He is after all and lest we forget, the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/09/blair-jordan-murdoch">godfather</a> of Murdoch’s daughter.</p>
<h2>Right Charlies</h2>
<p>And it had moments of high farce. In respect of the allegations that Brooks, her husband Charlie, her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter and News International’s head of security Mark Hanna were part of a conspiracy to prevent police from gaining access to seven boxes of documents and computer equipment removed from News International buildings in the days after the closure of the News of the World, the court was told that a holdall in which evidence was allegedly hidden from police by Charlie Brooks contained pornographic paraphernalia including seven DVDs and a magazine called Lesbian Lovers. </p>
<p>Fernando Nascimento, a cleaner who found the holdall in the car park of Mr Brooks’ London home, was asked about the contents by Mr Brooks’ barrister Neil Saunders. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10575305/Hacking-trial-Charlie-Brooks-hid-holdall-containing-porn-from-police.html">The Telegraph</a> reported that Nascimento, who had said he found two laptops, an iPad and some paperwork inside the bin bag, was shown a photograph of a Jiffy bag which was also found inside. He denied opening the Jiffy bag, and Saunders said: “If you had opened it, you wouldn’t have forgotten.” Brooks, Carter and Hanna were cleared of all charges.</p>
<p>Most of all though, the trial gave us insight into the world of <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-trial-verdict-coulson-guilty-and-brooks-cleared-but-end-of-an-era-for-the-red-tops-27753">tabloid journalism</a> where illegal activities, whether sanctioned or not in the higher echelons, were rife. We learned of staff at the News of the World who were given briefings on the “<a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-news-world-editor-andy-coulson-i-would-have-rejected-edward-snowdens-nsa-leak">dark arts</a>” of journalism which Coulson described as “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27031723">investigative techniques”</a>. These briefings included instruction on using surveillance, hidden cameras, recording devices and following people.</p>
<p>But the pertinent questions are about the nature of journalism itself. To paraphrase and adapt the arguments of <a href="http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/a-year-after-leveson-has-british-press-cleaned-up-its-act-des-freedman/">Des Freedman</a>, the structural causes of the phone hacking crisis need to be addressed. What the trial has illustrated is “the determination of a highly ideological and competitive press to increase circulation and secure exclusives and influence by any means necessary”. </p>
<p>Now the verdicts are in, we must hope that the long-forgotten <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/john-whittingdale-second-part-leveson-inquiry-may-never-take-place">second part</a> of the Leveson enquiry – looking at specific claims about phone-hacking at the News of the World and what really happened with the original police investigation – will eventually take place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World newspaper who rose to be David Cameron’s head of communications, has been found guilty of conspiracy to hack mobile phones. His former colleague…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27753
2014-06-24T11:30:44Z
2014-06-24T11:30:44Z
Hacking trial verdict: Coulson guilty and Brooks cleared, but end of an era for the red tops
<p>So, Andy Coulson has been found guilty of plotting to hack phones – but former colleague Rebekah Brooks walked free after the jury in the hacking trial cleared her of all criminal charges. The verdicts mark more than the end of the case which has unfolded at the Old Bailey <a href="http://inforrm.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/phone-hacking-trial-jury-retire-to-consider-their-verdicts-martin-hickman/">for the past eight months</a>. They also come at the end of an era in British popular journalism.</p>
<p>Not a golden age, certainly, but a distinct period during which tabloid or “red-top” journalism walked tall, looking down on more serious newspapers and their scruples. For the past half century, the mass-selling papers with red mastheads (or logos) had defied the logic of media history and swaggered at the centre of the stage.</p>
<p>That they reached this position at all was something of a miracle achieved against logic and the odds. The coming of television in the 1950s changed the landscape of news media, but not in the way that most predictions expected. Newspapers were not put out of business by television news, just as they had not been abolished by radio in the 1920s. But all the same, broadcasting undermined the foundations on which popular print journalism had been built. </p>
<h2>Irreverent, snappy, noisy</h2>
<p>Papers cheap enough to be afforded by millions had been published in Britain since the late 19th century. They were irreverent, snappy and noisy, drawing much of their inspiration and style both from working-class Sunday papers devoted to crime and sensation and from (then) brasher American papers. But at the start of the 20th century, British popular papers carried plenty of politics and social commentary alongside. They scorned long-winded writing and established pieties and did so with relish. <a href="http://www.athlone.ie/people-of-note/tp-o-connor">T P O’Connor</a>, editor of the swashbuckling Star (founded in 1888), once casually dismissed one of the major events in the political calendar as “<a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w2t_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=the+few+dozen+lines+of+drivel+known+as+the+Queen%E2%80%99s+Speech&source=bl&ots=ursrhM0cs4&sig=e501ERuYltH1QDca9jTQ_GZXjfQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RmSZU6_ROcjYPIvzgfAM&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20few%20dozen%20lines%20of%20drivel%20known%20as%20the%20Queen%E2%80%99s%20Speech&f=false">the few dozen lines of drivel known as the Queen’s Speech</a>”. </p>
<p>But by the start of the 21st century, that mixture of silly and serious no longer worked. First radio and then television began a long, gradual process of cramping the style of popular papers. They could no longer mix education and entertainment delivered with brio: they could only entertain. By the time phone-hacking was rife ten years ago, truly investigative stories were unusual.</p>
<p>But they still had huge circulations, which promised profits if only publishers and editors could colonise new parts of the market which broadcasters could not reach. Politicians still paid court to titles with readerships in the millions and cared about which way they spun coverage of politics. Cosy relationships with politicians of all parties left editors, particularly of Rupert Murdoch’s London popular papers, feeling that they were invulnerable.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50939/original/x35v6c9x-1402561698.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not true - but who cared?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bandt.com.au/news/media/could-it-be-the-tele-wot-won-it">B&T</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“It was The Sun Wot Won It” was an arrogantly arresting headline after the unexpected Conservative victory in the General Election of 1992. The fact that the claim was almost certainly wrong did not stop a lot of people believing it. The diaries of Piers Morgan, made editor of the News of the World at the age of 28 and later editor of the Daily Mirror, are an entertaining string of encounters with deferential politicians and trivial disclosures with occasionally life-wrecking consequences. The high point of the Daily Mirror’s circulation had been 1966; Morgan was sacked for presiding over the publication of faked pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.</p>
<h2>Leveson pressure</h2>
<p>The state of the popular papers was laid bare by the long <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/the-report/">Leveson report</a> after the inquiry into phone-hacking. By the time the report was published in 2012, there were three separate Scotland Yard inquiries into phone interception, computer hacking and bribery of civil servants. The trial just ended is the largest case brought after those inquiries but it is not the only one; others are still to come.</p>
<p>Lord Leveson described a “press” which no longer dominated news but which had become increasingly devoted to finding ways round law and regulation in order to keep up a level of intrusion which would keep circulation-raising stories coming. His report describes the fury of the popular papers when a public agency was created with the job of enforcing data protection laws. The man once in charge of that agency told Leveson how angry newspapers had been when he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16108643">tried to restrict “blagging”</a>, the use of private detectives to get hold of ex-directory phone numbers, mobile phone bills and home addresses:</p>
<p>“Although they rested their case … on threats to investigative journalism, I was surprised by how hard they were fighting, and it really left me with a message that we were challenging something which went to the heart of much of the – certainly tabloid press activity. Someone once said to me: ‘You do realise that you are challenging their whole business model?’”</p>
<p>That was not the only pressure on the business of popular papers. By the 1990s, circulations were declining slowly but steadily. Advertising revenue remained healthy, but long-term prospects were poor. It was not obvious – and still isn’t today – how the popular paper formulas could take advantage of online publishing. There was plenty of demand for gossip, but the market was being won by agile digital natives with sites like Gawker in the US or Popbitch in Britain.</p>
<h2>Kiss and tell</h2>
<p>Celebrity scandal had become a specialised business in which journalists operated as traders in a market for revelation and editors negotiated obstacle courses erected by equally specialised lawyers engaged to protect the reputation of their clients. As markets usually do, a new breed of brokers and middlemen emerged to make sure that supply and demand were matched. As privacy laws tightened around the world over the last 15 years, these stories became riskier.</p>
<p>Max Clifford was the acknowledged king of “kiss-and-tell”. If you had slept with someone famous, or even slightly well-known, and you wanted to make money, you told Max Clifford. Clifford, on first name terms with editors and celebrities, well-known for his charity work, would cut a deal. </p>
<p>But Clifford had another life. As controversies still swirl around the failure to prevent sexual abuse of children by the celebrity disc jockey Jimmy Saville, the 71-year-old Clifford <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16108643">was convicted in April</a> of eight indecent assaults on girls as young as 15. He was sentenced to eight years in jail.</p>
<p>The abrupt closure of the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch in 2011 when the phone-hacking scandal turned into a storm opened the last act of the drama which saw a small group of once-potent papers stripped of most of their power. This does not mean that demand for celebrity gossip has gone, merely that it is being supplied by other sources. The internet has brought back tabloid sensibility to the American news media: it’s not being done by newspapers but by a new generation of snarky, revelatory and unashamedly trashy websites.</p>
<p>“Tabloid” stories will be with us as long as there is human curiosity about other peoples’ private lives. But the British “tabloids” have had their day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock worked for The Times, owned by News International, 1981-2009.</span></em></p>
So, Andy Coulson has been found guilty of plotting to hack phones – but former colleague Rebekah Brooks walked free after the jury in the hacking trial cleared her of all criminal charges. The verdicts…
George Brock, Head of Journalism, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26263
2014-05-08T08:45:08Z
2014-05-08T08:45:08Z
Phone hacking judge sums up as Coulson holds firm on stand
<p>It seems that after six long months, the phone hacking trial is nearing its conclusion. The trial judge, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24723801">Justice John Saunders</a>, has begun his summing up, and has instructed the jury to consider an <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/05/06/phone-hacking-trial-baroness-sayeeda-warsi-gives-character-reference-andy-coulson%20./">amendment to count seven</a> of the charges, relating to the allegation that Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charlie and News International security chief Mark Hanna removed and hid material to conceal evidence from police investigating hacking at the News of the World. </p>
<p>Now, the jury has been told, this charge has been changed from “conspiring to pervert course of justice” to “perverting the course of justice”.</p>
<p>But what has been of main interest over the last few weeks has been the defence and cross examination of Andy Coulson whose testimony has provided a valuable insight into the workings of national tabloid journalism. </p>
<p>Coulson, the prime minister’s former communications chief and one-time editor of the News of the World, is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24351068">on trial</a> for conspiracy to hack phones between <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-news-world-editor-andy-coulson-enters-hacking-trial-witness-box">2000 and 2006</a> and conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public place.</p>
<p>Coulson’s cross-examination <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/14/phone-hacking-trial-andy-coulson-takes-stand">began</a> with insight into the workings of the tabloid press in the last 15 years. On the first day alone, the jury heard about the importance of contacts, the influence of PR people, and the widespread use of private investigators – though as far as private investigators were concerned, Coulson claimed he could not remember ever using one while he ran the Sun’s Bizarre column.</p>
<p>As the week progressed, Coulson’s barrister, Timothy Langdale QC, explored the finer points of editing a national newspaper. The jury was shown a floor plan of the News of the World offices, which included a “secret office” where high-profile stories were kept hidden lest they be leaked to competing titles. They heard that Coulson’s role as editor meant he wouldn’t have read the paper’s every word, and that he was principally concerned with the front pages and bigger stories.</p>
<p>Staff at the News of the World were given briefings on the “<a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-news-world-editor-andy-coulson-i-would-have-rejected-edward-snowdens-nsa-leak">dark arts</a>” of journalism, which Coulson described as “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27031723">investigative techniques</a>.” These included utilising surveillance, hidden cameras, recording devices and following people. </p>
<p>Asked about the phrase “turning a mobile”, Coulson said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“turning a mobile” or “spinning a mobile” – these are phrases that I heard during my time as an editor. To me it meant getting an address from a phone number or getting a phone number from an address, or vice versa. And I believed there were perfectly legal ways of doing that. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Coulson voiced regrets about how this process worked and how stories were investigated. He told the court that this was something he “should have applied my mind to”; “I should have looked at it more, interrogated it more,” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27031723">he added</a>.</p>
<p>As for phone hacking, Coulson told the court that he was “<a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/15/phone-hacking-trial-coulson-didnt-rate-milly-dowler-story">aware of it</a> in very vague terms, it was in the ether, people gossiped about it.” But he denied that he was party to it – and claimed that in 2002, he did not know that intercepting voicemails broke the law. Not that that made it acceptable, of course: “It was intrusive and lazy journalism,” he said, <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/andy-coulson-phone-hacking-is-lazy-journalism-and-im-innocent-over-milly-dowler-9262016.html">adding</a>: “the people I worked with were never interested in phone hacking.”</p>
<p>Asked by his barrister if he was ever party to phone hacking at the News of the World, he simply <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10767754/Andy-Coulson-denies-knowing-Milly-Dowlers-voicemail-was-hacked.html">replied</a>: “No.”</p>
<p>Before the court rose for the Easter recess, Coulson told the court that he still didn’t know phone hacking was an illegal act at the time of the <a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/hacking-trial-live-tweets-16-Apr/">David Blunkett</a> affair in August 2004 – though he did listen to the former home secretary’s private messages at that time. He <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27046180">told the court</a> this was “the first and the only time voicemail messages were played to me”.</p>
<h2>Known unknowns</h2>
<p>Day four of Coulson’s spell in the witness box began with questions about former News of the World reporter Dan Evans, who claimed earlier in the trial that it was “<a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/hacking-trial/andy-coulson-i-did-not-knowingly-recruit-phone-hacked-to-notw/">obvious</a>” he was employed by Coulson for his skills in phone hacking. </p>
<p>Referring to a meeting in 2004, Langdale asked whether “anything [was] said by Dan Evans about or concerning phone hacking?” Coulson replied: “Not that I can remember.” Coulson also <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27107983">denied</a> that in 2005, as Evans claimed, he listened to a message left on actor Sienna Miller’s phone before the News of the World published a story about her relationship with Daniel Craig.</p>
<p>There was much that Coulson did not know about or could not remember. Asked by Langdale if he knew or suspected that reporter <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-in-the-dock-first-month-of-phone-hacking-trial-20737">Clive Goodman</a> (the News of the World’s royal editor, facing two counts of conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials) had hired Glenn Mulcaire to intercept messages, Coulson replied: “<a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/22/phone-hacking-trial-actress-affair-and-relative-source">absolutely not</a>”. </p>
<p>Indeed, the court was told, it was not until the day of Goodman’s arrest in August 2006 that Coulson had <a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/hacking-trial-live-tweets-23-Apr/">heard</a> of Mulcaire at all. Goodman’s claim that Coulson knew about Mulcaire was, Coulson said, “<a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/23/phone-hacking-trial-two-resignations-government-job-and-replica-gun">a lie</a>”.</p>
<p>However, the court heard that when Goodman and Mulcaire were <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jan/26/newsoftheworld.pressandpublishing1">sentenced to prison</a> on January 26 2007 for hacking royal voicemails, Coulson <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/23/phone-hacking-trial-two-resignations-government-job-and-replica-gun.">resigned </a> as editor of the News of the World because “I felt it was the right thing to do as I was the boss”.</p>
<p>As the defence case rested, the court heard that on July 9 2007, Coulson was appointed director of communications for the Conservative party only to resign from his position in January 2011. Explaining that resignation from Downing Street, Coulson said that given the “<a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/hacking-trial-live-tweets-23-Apr/">long history of press coverage… I couldn’t do the job I was employed to do</a>”.</p>
<h2>Dowler and Blunkett</h2>
<p>The cross examination of Coulson by lead prosecutor, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/31/phone-hacking-mr-justice-saunders-andrew-edis-qc">Anthony Edis</a> QC, began on April 25. Edis took Coulson back to the Milly Dowler case and the News of the World story that the murdered schoolgirl was alive and looking for a job. </p>
<p>That story originally appeared on page 9 of the paper, but in later editions appeared on page 30 with quotes obtained from Dowler’s voicemail removed. Coulson rejected the accusation that there was a “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27158920">process of hiding the true source</a>”, and stated that the story’s initial prominent position was a “mistake”. Asked by Edis why verbatim quotations from voicemails were left out, <a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/hacking-trial-live-tweets-25-Apr/">Coulson stated</a> that he couldn’t remember and didn’t know why.</p>
<p>Returning to David Blunkett’s hacked voicemails in 2004, Edis questioned Coulson’s decision not to ask reporter<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/30/phone-hacking-trial-news-of-world-staff"> Neville Thurlbeck </a> how he had obtained the information. Denying that he already knew from whence they came, <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/25/phone-hacking-trial-denials-dowler-and-dark-arts">Coulson conceded his error</a>: “I asked no questions, I accept that, it was a failure on my part.”</p>
<p>Edis then managed to draw out of Coulson the admission that he was lying to Blunkett later when, on the record, the pair met to discuss whether or not the News of the World would publish the details of Blunkett’s love affair. At this meeting Coulson did not tell Blunkett that the private details had come from hacking. He had been, he admitted, <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/28/phone-hacking-trial-coulson-challenged-david-blunkett-affair-tapes">“disingenuous”. </a> Repeatedly, Edis asked: “so you lied to him?” Eventually, the judge<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-trial-andy-coulson-knew-david-blunkett-affair-story-came-from-hacked-voicemails-9299128.html"> Justice Saunders intervened:</a> “Were you telling a deliberate untruth? Yes or no?” After a moment’s hesitation, Coulson said: “Yes”.</p>
<p>Edis’s questioning frequently touched on the editorship of the News of the World and how much knowledge and control Coulson had. Referring to the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/28/andy-coulson-accused-hiding-payment-police-officer?CMP=ema_546">routine payment of police officers</a> and the hacking of leading politicians’ phones, it was put to the defendant that he didn’t want to know where the resulting stories had come from. To which Coulson replied: “I don’t think I did.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/28/phone-hacking-trial-careless-not-couldnt-care-less-andy-coulson-tells-jury">Edis then asked Coulson:</a> “Is the explanation that you couldn’t care less or that you were slapdash and careless?” to which Coulson replied: “I accept I was careless, but not that I couldn’t care less.”</p>
<p>As the cross examination ended, Edis focused on Coulson’s resignation as the government’s director of communications in 2011. The timing of his resignation was, Coulson said, to do with the increasing difficulty he had doing his job. <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/04/29/phone-hacking-trial-coulson-denies-resigning-truth-was-about-come-out">Not according to Edis</a> who stated: “You knew the truth was going to come out that you were involved in a conspiracy to hack phones.” Coulson denied this – and the court adjourned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It seems that after six long months, the phone hacking trial is nearing its conclusion. The trial judge, Justice John Saunders, has begun his summing up, and has instructed the jury to consider an amendment…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22910
2014-02-07T17:08:04Z
2014-02-07T17:08:04Z
Journalism in the dock: the prosecution rests
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40924/original/m4dprw49-1391699221.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andy Coulson: out of town on key dates in prosecution evidence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Brady/PA Wire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The phone hacking trial which began on 28 October, has entered the final phase of the prosecution case. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24351068">On trial</a> along with five others are Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, former editor of the News of the World and The Sun; and Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s former communications chief and, before that, editor of the News of the World. </p>
<p>Brooks is charged with conspiracy to intercept communications by listening to mobile phone messages, plus two further counts of allegedly making corrupt payments to public officials and two final accusations that she allegedly conspired to pervert the course of justice by removing and concealing evidence. Coulson is charged with conspiracy to hack phones and conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public place.</p>
<p>As the prosecution case drew to a close, the judge in proceedings, Mr Justice Saunders, warned the court that the <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/uk-britain-hacking-idUKBRE99S11720131029">trial </a> may run to seven months. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/04/rebekah-brooks-andy-coulson-phone-hacking-trial-verdict">Speaking to the jury</a> he said: “The worst-case scenario which you have to be prepared for … we estimate that the latest time you are going to go out to consider your verdict will be the middle of May.”</p>
<p>So, with the defence teams not due to begin their arguments until 17 February, let’s examine the final weeks of prosecution.</p>
<h2>Jiffy bags and videos</h2>
<p>Reconvening on the first Monday of the new year, the court’s initial focus was on allegations that Brooks, her husband Charlie, her former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, and News International’s security chief Mark Hanna were part of a conspiracy to prevent police from gaining access to seven boxes of documents and computer equipment removed from News International buildings in the days after the closure of the News of the World. </p>
<p>The court was told that Carter allegedly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24962471">took part</a> in a plan to permanently remove Rebekah Brooks’ journalistic records from the company’s archives. According to <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/08/cfo-unjogged-memory-and-more-budgets">Carter</a>, the seven boxes of documents merely contained “some shit” she wanted to get out of the way.</p>
<p>On 14 January, the court heard that on 17 July 2011, when Rebekah Brooks was arrested, she was in <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/14/texts-drives-and-video-tapes">“constant communication”</a> with her husband and Hanna. The jury was shown CCTV footage of Hanna and a security contractor, Mark Sandell, arriving at Brooks’ apartment that afternoon. Then the court saw footage of Hanna and Charlie Brooks meeting in the apartment’s underground car park before Hanna left with a jiffy bag, a laptop computer and a brown bag. A recording shown to the jury in the previous day’s proceedings appeared to show Brooks leaving a jiffy bag in the car park. Later, Robert Hernandez, a security guard colleague of Hanna’s told the court that after the final edition of the News of the World was published on 10 July, the two went for drink. In the early hours of the morning Hernandez says his boss told him he had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25813319">“dug a hole in his garden and burned stuff”</a>.</p>
<p>Jiffy bags became something of a theme in the opening weeks. In an episode which appeared to delight all sections of the press, the court was told that a holdall in which evidence was allegedly hidden from police by Charlie Brooks contained pornographic paraphernalia including seven DVDs and a magazine called Lesbian Lovers. </p>
<p>Fernando Nascimento, a cleaner who found the holdall in the car park of Brooks’ London home, was asked about contents by his barrister, Neil Saunders. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10575305/Hacking-trial-Charlie-Brooks-hid-holdall-containing-porn-from-police.html">The Telegraph</a> reported that Nascimento, who had said he found two laptops, an iPad and some paperwork inside the bin bag, was shown a photograph of a Jiffy bag which was also found inside. He denied opening the Jiffy bag, and Mr Saunders said: “If you had opened it, you wouldn’t have forgotten.”</p>
<p>However, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, for Mrs Brooks, said it was “wrong” to claim equipment had been removed “prior to and since” her arrest and that computers taken by police from the Brooks’ house were not in use when she quit News International. </p>
<p>DC Alan Pritchard said police had not recovered equipment with “relevant activity” from the time that Mrs Brooks resigned as CEO in 2011. But, Pritchard told the court, some “computers, iPads and phones” of Mr and Mrs Brooks <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25839961">had never been recovered.</a></p>
<h2>Law and order</h2>
<p>On Monday 27 January, events returned to the key theme of phone hacking as actor <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/uk-britain-hacking-judelaw-idUKBREA0Q0K520140127">Jude Law</a> was called to the stand. In scenes worthy of many a court room drama, Law spoke of how the media had accumulated an “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/10599015/Jude-Law-Media-had-unhealthy-amount-of-information-about-me.html">unhealthy amount of information</a>” about his life and relationships. </p>
<p>Timothy Langdale QC, for Andy Coulson, gave the actor the name of someone from his family whom he said had been paid by the newspaper to supply information. In a highly unusual move, Langdale wrote down the name of the relative on a piece of paper and passed it to Law in the witness box. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/jude-law-tells-phonehacking-trial-he-didnt-know-family-member-sold-his-stories-9088231.html">The Independent</a> reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Law opened the folded piece of paper, and read its contents, he displayed no specific reaction.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Salmon and eggs</h2>
<p>Despite this theatre, the appearance of Law was the calm before the storm of explosive assertions made by former News of the World reporter, Dan Evans. Evans, who has admitted hacking mobile phones, told of how he was recruited from the Sunday Mirror to the News of the World at a series of informal interviews, culminating with a breakfast meeting with Coulson at which he told Coulson, over smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, that he could get stories “cheaply” through the “stuff with phones” without the expense of an investigation. </p>
<p>Shortly after this meeting he was informed: <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/27/phone-hacking-trial-journalist-admits-intercepting-voicemails">“You’ve got the job.”</a> Pressed on whether he had hacked the phones of various contacts at the News of the World, Evans stated that this had been an almost daily occurrence and he had accessed voicemails <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25917344">more than 1,000 times. </a></p>
<p>Evans indicated that his relationship with Coulson was a close one and that his editor was familiar with phone hacking methods. After listening to a voicemail message on Bond actor Daniel Craig’s phone left by actress Sienna Miller, Evans reported that Coulson exclaimed, “brilliant!” Evans <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/andy-coulson-sienna-miller-phone-hacking-trial">then alleged</a> that Coulson ordered him to make a replica tape, put it in a Jiffy bag, and send it to the front gate at the News of the World’s offices in Wapping, east London. Evans alleged that Coulson said security staff at the front gate “would then ring up and say this has been sent in anonymously”. He told the jury that a colleague collected the Jiffy bag and came back to the office, expressing mock surprise.</p>
<p>Challenged by Langdale that Coulson was not even in London that day, Evans said that even if this was the case, certain facts were clear in his mind. To this Langley suggested this was <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/30/phone-hacking-trial-coulson-miller-and-groucho-club">“just another example of you changing your story when new facts are put to you”. </a></p>
<p>By the time the sixth day of Evans’ evidence finished on February 3, he had painted an ugly picture of tabloid journalism where he alleged quotes were fabricated and newspapers took calculated risks over whether they would be sued or not. Speaking of the News of the World, <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/01/30/phone-hacking-trial-evans-changes-evidence-and-bringing-it">he said</a>: “This is a tabloid newspaper. It might come as a shock but not every quote is nailed on truth, especially when the word source is used … I have to sanitise it, clean it up, it’s tabloid fluff.”</p>
<p>As the prosecution case drew to close on 5 February, the jury heard of two final significant pieces of evidence. It was alleged that senior executives at News International considered giving publicist Max Clifford a £200,000 annual contract in exchange for abandoning a civil phone-hacking damages claim. At a meeting of executives it was apparently suggested that Brooks could even meet Clifford with the cash. A memo of the discussion was referred to by prosecutor Andrew Edis QC, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-trial-rebekah-brooks-had-200000-deal-to-silence-max-clifford-9107744.html">it said</a>: “We either get something in writing or she could physically turn up with the cash to see him.”</p>
<p>And then, in final submissions before the close of the prosecution’s case before resumption on February 17, came a startling piece of evidence: it was alleged that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World jailed in 2007 for intercepting voicemails, had hacked the phones of <a href="http://fothom.wordpress.com/indexed-evidence/breaking-news/">Brookes 44 times and Coulson 21</a>. No one, it seems, was exempt.</p>
<p>The case continues…</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The phone hacking trial which began on 28 October, has entered the final phase of the prosecution case. On trial along with five others are Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/20737
2013-11-29T18:48:39Z
2013-11-29T18:48:39Z
Journalism in the dock: first month of phone hacking trial
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36535/original/bx947kn7-1385729041.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the dock: a who's who of tabloid journalists</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/uk-britain-hacking-idUKBRE99S11720131029">Justice John Saunders</a> opened what has been called the “trial of the century” he told the jury: “In a way, not only are the defendants on trial, but British justice is on trial.”</p>
<p>To say the defendants in the case are prominent in the world of journalism would be an understatement of gigantic proportions. Charged with conspiring with others at The Sun, where she was editor, to intercept communications by listening to mobile phone messages, plus two further counts of allegedly making corrupt payments to public officials and two final accusations that she allegedly conspired to pervert the course of justice by removing and concealing evidence is Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, former editor of the News of the World and The Sun and, famously, a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/29/cameron-accused-misleading-leveson-brooks-friendship">close friend of David Cameron</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36536/original/jq24jj3h-1385729125.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rebekah Wade arrives at the Old Bailey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Brady/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beside her in the dock is Andy Coulson, who is facing the same alleged phone hacking charge as Ms Brooks. He and Clive Goodman, the newspaper’s former royal editor, face two counts of conspiring to make corrupt payments to public officials. Coulson was the Prime Minister’s former communications chief and, before that, the editor of the News of the World.</p>
<p>Brooks’ husband, horse trainer and socialite Charlie Brooks faces charges of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and an array of former senior editorial executives, such as Sun managing editor Stuart Kuttner and Sun head of news Ian Edmondson also face charges relating to phone hacking. </p>
<p>Outlining the case against Brooks and Coulson, crown prosecutor Andrew Edis QC stated that two of the accused, Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, had been convicted in 2006 of phone hacking. He then revealed that Mulcaire had pleaded guilty in 2013 to three further charges of conspiracy to hack phones, and that Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherall, all former news editors at the News of the World, had also pleaded guilty to the same charge. </p>
<p>Edis suggested “corporate involvement” given the number of people from the same organisation who had admitted their guilt of the offence. The fact that three news editors of the News of the World had pleaded guilty, Edis claimed, meant that it was impossible to believe News International’s long and oft-stated contention that hacking had been the responsibility of a single “rogue reporter”. </p>
<p>He also laid down a marker when it came to public interest: “There is no justification of any kind for journalists for getting involved in phone hacking. That is an intrusion into people’s privacy which is against the law,” Edis said. “The prosecution says that journalists are no more entitled to break the law than anyone else.”</p>
<h2>Orgy of schadenfreude</h2>
<p>But it wasn’t necessarily journalism that dominated the first week, but the private life of Brooks and Coulson after the jury was told of a six-year love affair between the pair which allegedly ran from 1998 to 2004. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36539/original/4zv66m6j-1385729469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andy Coulson arrives at court.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Anthony Devlin/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Part of what appears to have been a love letter written to Coulson by Brooks was read out in court: “The fact is you are my very best friend. I tell you everything. I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you. We laugh and cry together.”</p>
<p>This, said the prosecutor, was proof of a “deeply trusting” relationship. Edis told the jury:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What Mr Coulson knew, Mrs Brooks knew too and what Mrs Brooks knew, Mr Coulson knew too, that is the point. Because it’s clear from that letter as at February 2004 they had been having an affair which had lasted at least six years. So that takes us right back to 1998 which is the whole conspiracy period.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whatever point Edis might have intended the jury to take from this, News International’s rival papers (and the Twittersphere) enjoyed the hell out of the moment - erupting in an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2013/oct/31/steve-bell-news-world-hacking-trial">orgy of schadenfreude</a> that two tabloid editors had seemingly been hoisted so high on their own petard.</p>
<h2>Private lives, c'mon baby leave me out</h2>
<p>That bedroom antics are very much grist to the tabloid mill is axiomatic so you would expect there to be some racy moments - and these were largely provided courtesy of Calum Best – whose <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/4312792.stm">dad, George</a> was no slouch when it came to horizontal jogging. Best jnr became famous for emulating his father’s off-field exploits around the nightclubs – and the often symbiotic relationship between celebrities and tabloid newspapers was teased out when he took the stand to give evidence about allegations his phone had been hacked. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36540/original/3vpjndf6-1385729575.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Calum Best: ‘took money from NoTW’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Jonathan Brady/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The jury had already heard from Edis how, when Coulson wanted to verify a tip-off about Best he instructed Edmondson in a three-word email to “do his phone”. But under cross-examinition, Best also admitted to having taken the tabloid shilling, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/13/calum-best-liz-jagger-phone-hacking-trial">telling the court</a> that he had been paid £2,000 by the News of the World in February 2005 for a story titled “Calum confesses” about an alcohol-fuelled sexual liaison with Elizabeth Jagger.</p>
<p>Meanwhile glamour model Lorna Hogan told the court she had an “arrangement” with the News of the World to meet celebrities in nightclubs and pass on gossip to the newspaper, a practise that had led to her becoming pregnant with Best jnr’s child. </p>
<h2>Broadsword calling Danny Boy</h2>
<p>The second week of the trial began with Edis describing the “panic-stricken” days around the decision to close of the News of the World in July 2011. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/04/rebekah-brooks-news-world-phone-hacking-trial">As the Guardian reported</a>, Brooks and her personal assistant Cheryl Carter are accused of trying to conceal seven boxes of her notebooks the day after the announcement that the paper was to close down.
Edis also alleged that Brooks’ husband, Charlie, and News International’s head of security, Mark Hanna, had conspired to conceal evidence from police. </p>
<p>The jury was told how computers and other material had been removed from the Brooks’ home and hidden and that News International security guards who handled the computers and documents communicated via text in the language of the Hollywood film, Where Eagles Dare. After the drop off the jury heard that the message was sent: “Broadsword to Danny Boy. Pizza delivered and the chicken is in the pot.” </p>
<p>Edis said the Crown’s case was not that the computers contained “devastating evidence of phone hacking” but that “the only rational explanation for it [the alleged stowing of the material] was that it was designed to hide material so the police didn’t get it.”</p>
<h2>Hacking allegations</h2>
<p>It was the death of schoolgirl Milly Dowler and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world">allegations that her phone had been hacked</a> which led to the closure of the News of the World and, arguably, to this trial.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36541/original/f5y6bbmx-1385729778.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Blunkett: stories about affair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The jury heard that Stuart Kuttner had informed police that the paper had accessed the girl’s voicemail messages and were shown an email which appeared to support this allegation. They also heard that chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck had contacted Operation Ruby, the Surrey Police investigation into Dowler’s disappearance, and confirmed the paper had “access” to the girl’s voicemail and that a story would appear the following day. Thurlbeck has already pleaded guilty to phone hacking.</p>
<p>The court also heard that, while all this was going on, Brooks – who was editor of the News of the World at the time – was in Dubai and Coulson as her deputy was editing the paper. The jury was told of regular contact between the two and that a story had been changed between the paper’s first and second editions to remove a transcript of a message left on the schoolgirl’s phone.</p>
<p>Jonathan Laidlaw QC, for Brooks, made the point that contact between the editor and deputy editor of a newspaper were commonplace.</p>
<p>As, in Central Criminal Court 12 at least, was talk of phone hacking. Day after day the jury heard allegations of the phone hacking of politicians <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/11/phone-hacking-trial-david-blunkett">(David Blunkett)</a>, pop stars <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2013/11/12/phone-hacking-trial-prescott-mccartney-and-operation-abbey-rd">(Paul McCartney)</a> and actors <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/uk-britain-hacking-editors-idUKBRE9AD0SV20131114">(Jude Law</a>).</p>
<p>Blunkett’s special advisor, Huw Evans, told of a meeting with Coulson at which the then editor of the NoTW had informed him they were going to run with a story about the former home secretary’s affair with former Spectator publisher Kimberly Quinn. Evans said he believed that all the paper had was a picture of the pair together and that this could not constitute proof. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I told him that the photograph in itself proved nothing. I remember the tone of his voice… it was flat, unequivocal, that he was absolutely certain that the story was true and he was going to run it. I remember at that time remaining puzzled as to why he could be so certain.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Chattering classes</h2>
<p>At issue, as in so many court cases, is who said what to whom - and the hacking trial is no different. The jury has heard evidence from a series of dinner parties, lunches and receptions, including from the ex-wife of golfer Colin Montgomerie, Eimear Cook, whose mobile number and PIN had allegedly been found among Mulcaire’s papers and who told of a lunch with Brooks at which she alleged Brooks told her “how easy it is to listen to people’s voicemails if they have not changed their factory PIN numbers.”</p>
<p>The court heard of another meal, this one a dinner at Number 10, where - as Dom Loehniss, a former journalist and a pal of the prime minister David Cameron, told the court Brooks had “discussed the techniques by which messages could be intercepted”. Laidlaw in Brooks’ defence, claimed the exchange was not admission of guilt but rather “a discussion of a topical subject”.</p>
<p>The case continues…</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When Justice John Saunders opened what has been called the “trial of the century” he told the jury: “In a way, not only are the defendants on trial, but British justice is on trial.” To say the defendants…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19733
2013-11-01T06:17:00Z
2013-11-01T06:17:00Z
British justice on trial in ‘R v Rebekah Brooks and Others’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34192/original/ktqwjrw8-1383251026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sensitive: reporting of the Brooks trial must take care not to be prejudicial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is rare indeed to hear an English judge, presiding over a case described as the “Trial of the Century”, explain to the jury that “in this case, in a way, not only are the defendants on trial, but <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/jury-selection-continues-brooks-and-coulson-phone-hacking-trial">British justice is on trial” as well.</a></p>
<p>Mr Justice Saunders is the legal referee in an extraordinary case taking place at the Old Bailey featuring two former editors of the <em>News of the World</em> who deny plotting to hack phones and illegally paying public officials for information. But the trial of former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, and Andy Coulson, the former director of communications for the prime minister, David Cameron, and others is part of an intense political and global context.</p>
<p>In the post-industrial information age, the speed and scale of cyberspace means that past and present media information is retrievable in an instant by digital search engines. Smart phone technology makes digital detectives of us all. Online social media makes us all instant global publishers.</p>
<p>How can the English legal system create an effective firewall around the integrity of the proceedings? How can it ensure that all eight defendants are not denied their rights under <a href="http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/humanrights/hrr_article_6.pdf">Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights</a>? </p>
<p>This states that “everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing … by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law”. It also asserts: “Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”</p>
<h2>Fair trial vs open justice</h2>
<p>There is a recognition that “open justice” is part of the right to receive and communicate information enshrined in Article 10 of the convention. But this is qualified by the need to protect “the rights of others” and “for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”.</p>
<p>Human rights law arises out of, and remains in conjunction with, English common law principles where there is a public interest in fair trial as much as a public interest in open trial. In Britain, rights and interests are balanced equally with each situation judged according to the circumstances and an intense focus on the facts. The evolving unwritten constitution in Britain has never recognised that freedom of expression is either absolute or carries priority. </p>
<p>Unlike the United States, British judges have wide powers to control reporting outside their courtrooms. <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/49">The 1981 Contempt of Court Act</a> means that Mr Justice Saunders can postpone reporting of any proceedings heard in the absence of the jury. He also has inherent common law jurisdictional powers to control the proceedings before him. Other legislation and precedents grant him further powers of prohibition and postponement. The 1981 legislation means that the courts have injunctive powers to prevent any substantial risk of serious impediment or prejudice to the administration of justice. </p>
<p>The judge told the jury: “It is absolutely vital that you decide this case solely on the evidence and the arguments that you hear in court.” He briefed them on the unprecedented amount of publicity about the case, some of which he described as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/29/rebekah-brooks-phone-hacking-uk-justice-trial-andy-coulson">“offensive and demeaning” to some of the defendants.</a> He dismissed the current cover of <em>Private Eye</em> as something to ignore as it was “a joke in especially bad taste”.</p>
<p>The judge directed the jurors not to discuss the case with anyone outside their group, or use social media such as Twitter or Facebook to talk about it. They were told about successful prosecutions for contempt of court of jurors who had defied the warnings given by trial judges. </p>
<h2>Competing rights</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">The First Amendment</a> of the United States’ written constitution states that congress shall make no law “prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press … ”.</p>
<p>This means that Twitter, social media, mainstream media and anything anybody wants to say about any kind of legal case being determined by jury anywhere in the US jurisdiction <a href="http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/RulesAndPolicies/conduct/SocialMediaLayout.pdf">cannot be prosecuted or banned by court order</a>. No American judge has any power to control the speech of anybody beyond his or her courtroom walls. Since the current trial at the Old Bailey is big news in the US, the main base for Rupert Murdoch’s global publishing operations, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/27/rebekah-brooks-andy-coulson-phone-hacking-trial">US journalists must be experiencing something of a culture shock.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment">The 6th Amendment</a> to the United States constitution states that: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” </p>
<p>But guaranteeing the impartiality of the jury cannot be at the expense of the First Amendment. The US system at state and federal levels uses a number of devices to minimise prejudice: (1) Continuance – delaying trial until prejudicial publicity has died down:(2) Change of venue (3) Intensive voir dire – questioning members of the jury panel to determine whether they have been prejudiced by media coverage; (4) Jury admonitions – instructing jurors not to read or listen to media coverage; (5) Sequestration – providing for a supervised location for the jurors throughout the trial to shield them from news reports.</p>
<p>The journalists covering the current Old Bailey trial have a legal duty to report fairly and accurately and with strict compliance to contempt laws that would be unconstitutional in the USA. The British system uses the devices (1) and (4) and sometimes (2). But avoids (3) and (5). I am not convinced the UK could fully eradicate the risks of prejudice by adopting all of the US measures. It is a geographically small country with homogeneous media. </p>
<p>Mr Justice Saunders, like all British criminal judges, exercises an authority that calms the social atmosphere and gives the jury space to try the case as the real experts who are following the evidence day by day. Much better that professional and social media suspend their propensity for propaganda and report what the jury hears and sees and the right to fair trial is sustained and endures. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It is rare indeed to hear an English judge, presiding over a case described as the “Trial of the Century”, explain to the jury that “in this case, in a way, not only are the defendants on trial, but British…
Tim Crook, Reader in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/17520
2013-08-27T20:32:33Z
2013-08-27T20:32:33Z
In Conversation with Tom Watson MP: edited transcript
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30023/original/56y2z489-1377590321.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British Labour MP has worked to expose and investigate activities by News Corporation figures ranging from phone hacking to bribing police.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Boland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> You’ve come here fresh from being British Labour’s campaign coordinator, which you’re not doing now. We won’t get into all the argy-bargy about that. But I wonder, coming from that perspective and looking at Labor’s campaign here, what do you think of the way Labor is campaigning?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> It’s really hard to make a judgement three or four days in. I’ve not dived in to the campaign, and literally the first Labor politician I met was <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3818772.htm">last night on Q&A</a>, when I met Bill Shorten. So I’ve not got a sense of what is going on the doorstep, but it’s an unusual campaign for them as they’re running as insurgents as the government so it can’t be easy for them to pick their message.</p>
<p>What struck me is that it feels very much like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1992">1992 general election</a> in Britain, where it was pretty close at the start, and News Corp definitely did not want the Labour leader Neil Kinnock to win, so there was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It">very, very aggressive campaign</a>. What their involvement in the campaign did was to make it very hard for both parties to pitch the future, talk about their message of hope and how they wanted to change the country.</p>
<p>And the effect of the reporting here strikes me as being somewhat similar.</p>
<p>On the panel last night they were all talking about how this <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-these-guys-ever-shut-up-how-tony-abbott-reignited-the-gender-debate-without-realising-it-17339">line by Abbott</a>…</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> “Does this guy ever shut up?”</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> It seemed to me they would prefer to talk about Kevin Rudd’s character rather than what Kevin Rudd actually stands for and what kind of Australia you want into 2020. Unfortunately the parallels with the UK in 1992 are very similar.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30032/original/ffvvmjz3-1377601640.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Does Tony Abbott have Rupert Murdoch in his corner for this federal election?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the ALP campaign, it obviously has been a very bruising period with leadership changes and that has made it quite hard for them to get their message across. Other than that I can’t really say much about the campaign because I haven’t really had a look at it.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> We’ve certainly got so much in common - including Rupert Murdoch. We’ve had a lot to say about Rupert Murdoch’s influence in Britain which we’ve seen, we’ve seen the repercussions of the Leveson Inquiry and a lot of that has come out. I wonder if there are any parallels here though because we’ve had News Limited in Australia saying: “any problems that have been there, have not been in Australia, that culture that people have complained about and has been exposed due to the Leveson Inquiry is not part of the culture here”. How plausible do you think that claim is?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> I think it’s plausible, but I never rule anything out with this company.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> What possible commercial interest do you think Rupert Murdoch could have in having an Abbott government elected?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> They would be one of the only companies that would benefit from there not being <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-corp-australia-vs-the-nbn-is-it-really-all-about-foxtel-16768">superfast broadband</a>, an NBN, that goes straight into people’s homes.</p>
<p>I’m sure that he feels his commercial interests in the market would be best served by not welcoming competition there, and if an Abbott government doesn’t deliver that then they will be one of the few governments around the world that don’t have the intent to allow faster broadband connectivity into homes.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> Rupert Murdoch scoffs at that, Rupert Murdoch says that’s absolute nonsense, that the NBN would not damage his reach, or Foxtel, or anything at all.</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> I don’t believe that. I just don’t believe it.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> I think some people might not realise how much and individual can be consumed when they take on Murdoch, on certainly on that personal level, you have paid a fairly high price for taking on Murdoch haven’t you?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> Yes. I try not to talk about my personal life really. Occasionally there is stuff in newspapers such as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/british-mps-casual-bid-to-take-on-murdoch-press/story-e6frfkp9-1226704600874">The Australian today</a>, but when you come under that level of scrutiny, at the time I was being followed by private investigators, but they were commissioned by a guy called <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/22/news-of-world-tom-watson">Mazher Mahood</a> – The Fake Sheik they call him – and then they brought in a guy called Gareth who one of the journalists told me worked with audio visuals.</p>
<p>The former chief reporter of the News of the World told me that was instruction from down the executive, from what he described as the “deep carpet land” of the executive.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> So Murdoch people had private detective following you. What do you think they were hoping to find?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> What the journalists told me is that they were digging for dirt. Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter for the News of the World told me that they were instructed to line up every member of the committee that was investigating the companies, and he used the phrase: “find out who is gay, find out who is having an affair, we want to know everything about them”.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> Say you wanted to get some dirt on Murdoch. Do you ever understand the drive to get around, or cross ethical boundaries and get the information. Do you understand that temptation?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> I believe there should be a defence of public interest for journalism in the UK. In certain circumstances, for the greater good, a journalist can cross the line of law. But the way that worked in the UK was totally rampant.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> At the time when Rupert Murdoch was giving evidence before Leveson, he said it was the most “humble day of his life”. Did you believe him?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> No. But I immediately thought, “that’s the soundbite”. And I have experience of that because when I was put on the committee, the first evidence session we had with the editor of the NOTW, Colin Myler and the lawyer Tom Crone, and the very first thing they did, before even questions were taken, was challenge the chair and ask for my removal from the committee and ask for my removal from the committee because I had <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/oct/28/the-sun-tom-watson">a legal action against The Sun</a> for libel.</p>
<p>So before I left the room, before the MPs finished their questioning, the breaking news story on Sky News was “Attempt to remove MPs from committee over their interest”. I thought: “this is where they are looking for their headline”.</p>
<p>It actually wasn’t what he wanted because most people reported it as “humble pie” given the pie incident, but the soundbite was just all part of the media operation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30031/original/5rwmrvxk-1377601350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media mogul Rupert Murdoch on the ‘humblest day’ of his life before the Leveson Inquiry in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> How concerned are you over the possibility that Rupert Murdoch perjured himself at the Leveson Inquiry?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> That would be for others to make that judgement in law. But what he said to Leveson was contrary to what he said in private to Sun journalists who were obviously so concerned about his conduct that they recorded it.</p>
<p>That was journalists at The Sun, there was more than one journalists who taped him, and there was more than one person who recorded that. While he was before Leveson he welcomed the inquiry and said they would co-operate with the police to get to the facts of the criminality. </p>
<p>What he told the journalists was we made a mistake, we should never have cooperated, and we won’t cooperate with the police anymore and sort of gave them the nod and the wink and said you’ll be alright if you ever get done for jail. Which is extraordinary for the chairman of a powerful global company to take that approach.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> Was that on oath?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> He was on oath, and if I was Lord Leveson I’d be asking which Rupert Murdoch was telling me the truth.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> What do you think should happen to Julian Assange?</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30033/original/3fnyrpnb-1377601879.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WikiLeaks may not have properly protected Chelsea Manning, according to Watson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> It is very hard for me to give you a clear answer on this because I’m not across it all. The main issue for me with Julian Assange is his relationship with Chelsea Manning and I was genuinely taken aback when Chelsea Manning got 35 years for what she called whistleblowing.</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether the WikiLeaks people necessarily protected her interests throughout the case and I worry about that. I do think you have to care for a source like that and circumstances might have made that impossible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Singer was a columnist for the Herald Sun from 1997 to 2012.</span></em></p>
Jill Singer: You’ve come here fresh from being British Labour’s campaign coordinator, which you’re not doing now. We won’t get into all the argy-bargy about that. But I wonder, coming from that perspective…
Jill Singer, Lecturer in Journalism, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/17519
2013-08-27T20:30:29Z
2013-08-27T20:30:29Z
In Conversation with Tom Watson MP: “If I was Lord Leveson I’d be asking which Rupert Murdoch was telling me the truth”
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30029/original/rw6z9hy3-1377600594.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch's evidence to the Leveson Inquiry appears to contradict statements recorded by his journalists in mid-2013, says Labour MP Tom Watson.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toastwife</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rupert Murdoch may have perjured himself before the Leveson Inquiry, according to claims made by British Labour MP Tom Watson.</p>
<p>Watson, who has spent much of the last five years investigating activities by News Corporation figures ranging from phone hacking to bribing police, spoke candidly with RMIT journalism lecturer Jill Singer about the “corrosive” effect that Murdoch’s media holdings can have on modern democratic processes.</p>
<p>Watson asks why Rupert Murdoch <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/world/most-humble-day-of-my-life-20110719-1hndl.html">expressed contrition</a> to the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking by his now defunct Sunday tabloid the News of the World (NOTW) and was then <a href="http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5026/transcript-rupert-murdoch-recorded-at-meeting-with-sun-staff">secretly recorded</a> telling journalists from The Sun that he regretted cooperating with the various investigations into activities by his employees.</p>
<p>“He was on oath and if I was Lord Leveson I’d be asking which Rupert Murdoch was telling me the truth?” asks Watson.</p>
<p>As the Australian election campaign draws to its denouement, Watson, a guest of international activist group Avaaz, says he believes Murdoch-owned media are openly agitating for the fall of prime minister Kevin Rudd in order to prevent superfast broadband in the form of the National Broadband Network becoming a reality that would challenge News Corp’s commercial interests.</p>
<p>Watson also says he holds grave concerns that WikiLeaks founder and lead candidate for the WikiLeaks Party in the Senate in Victoria, Julian Assange, may not have protected key source Chelsea Manning - sentenced to 35 year imprisonment for her role in leaking classified US secrets to the whistleblowing organisation - in accordance with sound journalistic ethics.</p>
<p>In this wide-ranging interview, Watson also describes his reaction to Murdoch being forced to give testimony to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Murdoch’s diminishing influence in UK politics and his own experiences when he began investigating initial reports of wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-tom-watson-mp-edited-transcript-17520">here</a> for an edited transcript.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> How concerned are you over the possibility that Rupert Murdoch perjured himself at the Leveson Inquiry?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> That would be for others to make that judgement in law. But what he said to Leveson was contrary to what he said in private to Sun journalists who were obviously so concerned about his conduct that they recorded it.</p>
<p>That was journalists at The Sun, there was more than one journalists who taped him, and there was more than one person who recorded that. While he was before Leveson he welcomed the inquiry and said they would co-operate with the police to get to the facts of the criminality. </p>
<p>What he told the journalists was we made a mistake, we should never have cooperated, and we won’t cooperate with the police anymore and sort of gave them the nod and the wink and said you’ll be alright if you ever get done for jail. Which is extraordinary for the chairman of a powerful global company to take that approach.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> Was that on oath?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> He was on oath, and if I was Lord Leveson I’d be asking which Rupert Murdoch was telling me the truth.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> What possible commercial interest do you think Rupert Murdoch could have in having an Abbott government elected?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> They would be one of the only companies that would benefit from there not being superfast broadband, an NBN, that goes straight into people’s homes.</p>
<p>I’m sure that he feels his commercial interests in the market would be best served by not welcoming competition there, and if an Abbott government doesn’t deliver that then they will be one of the few governments around the world that don’t have the intent to allow faster broadband connectivity into homes.</p>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> Rupert Murdoch scoffs at that, Rupert Murdoch says that’s absolute nonsense, that the NBN would not damage his reach, or Foxtel, or anything at all.</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> I don’t believe that. I just don’t believe it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/30030/original/47nk6v2k-1377600857.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British MP Tom Watson has dedicated the last several years of his parliamentary career to investigating the activities of Rupert Murdoch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> What do you think should happen to Julian Assange?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> It is very hard for me to give you a clear answer on this because I’m not across it all. The main issue for me with Julian Assange is his relationship with Chelsea Manning and I was genuinely taken aback when Chelsea Manning got 35 years for what she called whistleblowing.</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether the WikiLeaks people necessarily protected her interests throughout the case and I worry about that. I do think you have to care for a source like that and circumstances might have made that impossible.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Jill Singer:</strong> At the time when Rupert Murdoch was giving evidence before Leveson, he said it was the most “humble day of his life”. Did you believe him?</p>
<p><strong>Tom Watson:</strong> No. But I immediately thought, “that’s the soundbite”. And I have experience of that because when I was put on the committee, the first evidence session we had with the editor of the NOTW, Colin Myler and the lawyer Tom Crone, and the very first thing they did, before even questions were taken, was challenge the chair and ask for my removal from the committee and ask for my removal from the committee because I had a legal action against The Sun for libel.</p>
<p>So before I left the room, before the MPs finished their questioning, the breaking news story on Sky News was “Attempt to remove MPs from committee over their interest”. I thought: “this is where they are looking for their headline”.</p>
<p>It actually wasn’t what he wanted because most people reported it as “humble pie” given the pie incident, but the soundbite was just all part of the media operation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill Singer was a columnist for the Herald Sun from 1997 to 2012.</span></em></p>
Rupert Murdoch may have perjured himself before the Leveson Inquiry, according to claims made by British Labour MP Tom Watson. Watson, who has spent much of the last five years investigating activities…
Jill Singer, Lecturer in Journalism, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/15810
2013-07-04T07:09:46Z
2013-07-04T07:09:46Z
The Murdoch tapes: News Corp culture and the phone hacking scandal
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26883/original/m4n7btxy-1372917354.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A secret recording of News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch has emerged, where he candidly discusses how much he really knew of the phone hacking allegations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>News Corporation executive chairman Rupert Murdoch has been <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/murdoch-rupert-tape-police-the-sun-journalists">secretly recorded</a> regretting the assistance given to authorities who were investigating allegations of phone hacking and corruption at his newspapers.</p>
<p>In a 45-minute recording of a speech to staff at his British newspaper The Sun made by a reporter in attendance and subsequently leaked to the press, the News Corporation boss also described payments to police and public officials as part of “the culture of Fleet Street”.</p>
<p>Of the police investigation, Murdoch added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I mean, it’s a disgrace. Here we are, two years later, and the cops are totally incompetent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a statement, News Corporation said: “Mr Murdoch never knew of payments made by Sun staff to police before News Corporation disclosed that to UK Authorities. Furthermore, he never said he knew of payments. It’s absolutely false to suggest otherwise.”</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with David McKnight, an Associate Professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at UNSW and author of <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781742373522">Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power</a>, for his reaction to Murdoch’s comments.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>What do these tapes tell us about what Rupert Murdoch knew about the phone hacking scandal and payments to police?</strong></p>
<p>I didn’t see any reference that suggested that he knew all about it. What struck me about the whole thing is his remark that they were having the biggest inquiry ever over “next to nothing” and quote “next to nothing”. </p>
<p>That’s what he really thinks the phone hacking scandal and the payments to police amounts to. It’s an extraordinary contrast to the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/world/most-humble-day-of-my-life-20110719-1hndl.html">“humblest day of my life”</a> public persona. </p>
<p>The other thing I thought was really striking was one of the journalists asked him “when are we going to hit back” and he said “we will”. It’s really a kind of ominous boasting that is very familiar to anyone who has studied Murdoch. It was just a sort of general disdain to the seriousness of the whole thing – the whole scandal.</p>
<p><strong>What do these comments tell us about the culture at News Corp, given Murdoch made these comments in March 2013, well after the phone hacking scandal and the arrests of many staff?</strong></p>
<p>In the book I wrote, I said that essentially what you had in News Corporation was a corporate culture of contempt for rules, and the unofficial motto of News Corp was “do whatever it takes, rules are for other people”. The company rewarded those who pushed the boundaries. </p>
<p>What this shows is that the corporate culture of contempt for rules is very lively besides all the public statements and even in spite of the cooperation that News International has given the police – nothing seems to have changed in Murdoch’s view of the world.</p>
<p><strong>What implications, if any, does this have for Murdoch’s Australian operations?</strong></p>
<p>The other thing about this and about the situation more generally in Australia, of course there is very little discussion of this, is that we’re moving to a situation here where the gradual weakening of Fairfax will essentially mean that Murdoch will have a quasi-monopoly of newspapers in Australia. </p>
<p>I think this culture of contempt for rules – I mean I can talk about it at great length – where it has a direct relevance to Australia – everyone says, and they’re probably right, that there has been no hacking in Australia – but the contempt for rules here takes the form of contempt of any notion of political balance in his newspapers.</p>
<p>He’s got newspapers, particularly in Brisbane and Melbourne, they already have a monopoly there. They’ve got the only newspaper in Darwin and Hobart, they’re competitors are weakening and if you look at those newspapers – and his most powerful newspapers the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph – not every columnist and comment is right-wing but the overwhelming bulk is. There is no sense of balance. </p>
<p>The newspapers we have seen recently have been used as campaign vehicles against the Gillard government, that’s what they were and we can expect more of this if Fairfax is broken up. All of this is significant because whatever people say about electronic media and new media, in all their problems, newspapers still generate the vast amount of original content and original reporting which is reproduced elsewhere and television and radio live of it. So newspapers are still central. </p>
<p>In a sense it’s not the newspapers, it’s the newsrooms. Even the broken business model of newspapers continues to support the biggest newsrooms in Australia – Murdoch understands that, and that’s why he is even toying with buying more newspapers even at this stage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15810/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David McKnight receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study News Corporation and its political commentary.</span></em></p>
News Corporation executive chairman Rupert Murdoch has been secretly recorded regretting the assistance given to authorities who were investigating allegations of phone hacking and corruption at his newspapers…
David McKnight, Associate Professor, Journalism and Media Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/12900
2013-03-19T03:39:30Z
2013-03-19T03:39:30Z
UK and Australian media reforms are very different beasts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21396/original/ydmxygwz-1363652540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks leaves the Old Bailey after appearing on charges of conspiring to bribe public officials. It was revelations about journalistic practises at News that inspired inquiries in Australia and the UK.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are at least two points of convergence in this week’s parliamentary deliberations on media freedom in Australia and the UK.</p>
<p>Both are driven by reports – Finkelstein and Leveson respectively – responding to ethical and criminal transgressions perpetrated by newspapers of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire in the UK. </p>
<p>Reinforcing the gravity of those crimes, hundreds more phone-hacking allegations have emerged in the last 24 hours alone, and dozens of former News International staff face serious criminal charges which could lead to prison sentences.</p>
<p>Second, both debates have generated entirely predictable, infantile accusations of despotism and dictatorship directed at the advocates of legislative reform by that very same organisation, News Corp, and equally hostile, if less hysterical criticisms by other media companies likely to be affected by the proposals. </p>
<p>Last week’s Daily Telegraph front page declaring the communication minister’s ideological affinity with Stalin, Kim Jong Un and Castro (to name but three) brought to mind the worst of the UK Sun’s anti-Labour propaganda.</p>
<p>But there are important differences in the context underlying both discussions, which provide some basis in logic for the opponents of the Conroy proposals. There are good reasons why Australian legislators should not be marching in formation behind the UK parliament, or seeking to emulate what is a genuinely epochal turn in British press regulation.</p>
<p>First, the phone-hacking scandal is indeed a UK affair, and there is no evidence, nor any credible suggestion that comparable offences have been committed by media organisations in Australia. The question posed by Kim Williams and others - “what exactly is the problem that proposed media reform is supposed to be addressing?” - is a valid one.</p>
<p>For this observer, there seems little doubt that much of the momentum for regulatory reform of the press in this country has stemmed from the ALP’s annoyance and frustration with some titles’ editorial hostility. Anti-Labor media coverage may be uncomfortable for the prime minister and her government. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21400/original/qthjhgn9-1363653391.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler arrive at the Leveson Inquiry. Revelations that News International journalists may have hacked Dowler’s phone lead to widespread public anger. No Australian media outlet has been accused of such behaviour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kerim Okten</span></span>
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<p>It may be unfair and offensive at times – the Australian’s recent description of Gillard’s media advisor John McTernan as a “haggis-munching, porridge-scoffing” interloper was bordering on the racist (speaking as a Scotsman myself). But taking offence is no reason in itself to impose constraints on what the press can say. </p>
<p>We may disapprove of what the more deranged gentlemen and women of the press say on this or that issue, but we should defend to the death their right to say it, as Voltaire is said to have put it. With the exceptions of hate speech and defamation, that is an essential principle for a democracy to follow.</p>
<p>In short, events in the UK cannot be a rationale for regulating the media in Australia, and the attempt to make them so has always looked uncomfortably like political payback.</p>
<p>Second, there is nothing like political consensus on Stephen Conroy’s proposals, and that is not a solid foundation on which to introduce such far-reaching legislative reform. In the UK, the phone-hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry produced a near-universal agreement that something had to be done to rein in the excesses of a press clearly out of control. Tories, Lib Dems and Labour all accepted this necessity, even if there were and remain disagreements on the mechanics and extent of beefed-up regulation. </p>
<p>As of this writing, a compromise appeared to have been reached in which industry self-regulation will be shored up by a royal charter with a “dab of statute"’, as one commentator describes it. UK newspaper groups are throwing a tantrum even at this compromise, which is to be expected, but they too will accept it in due course, because the force of public and political distaste at the phone-hacking scandal is just too great to be ignored.</p>
<p>In Australia, by stark contrast, Conroy cannot get the support of the independents or the Greens (unless he makes concessions on regional news), let alone any kind of compromise with the Coalition, and his proposals seem doomed to failure later this week. Which may be the best thing for all concerned, given the shambolic and petulant manner of their announcement. "No bartering”, indeed? In that case, no deal.</p>
<p>Third, and following on from that point, maybe that’s what the government wants to happen. We are now in an undeclared election campaign, and though it is probably too late in the political cycle for the ALP to expect any kind of favors from News Ltd editors, it’s also the case that being able to avoid meaningful press reform while at the same time appearing to be tough is preferable to the months of parliamentary debate – and the torrent of “Conroy is worse than Stalin” commentary - which would be required to push it through.</p>
<p>Regardless of the merits of the minister’s proposals, then, and given the very different context of the reform debate in Australia as compared with the UK, we are entitled to conclude that they are more for show than serious policy making.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
There are at least two points of convergence in this week’s parliamentary deliberations on media freedom in Australia and the UK. Both are driven by reports – Finkelstein and Leveson respectively – responding…
Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/10880
2012-11-21T19:53:27Z
2012-11-21T19:53:27Z
UK phone hacking victims’ lawyer Charlotte Harris In Conversation: full transcript
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17826/original/g4s97n8p-1353380607.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">UK lawyer Charlotte Harris, who represented phone hacking victims, said the police should have acted to protect the public.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © Mishcon de Reya; Used with permission. All rights reserved.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Charlotte Harris, thanks for getting together with us. We’re doing this interview when Lord Leveson – the Leveson Inquiry’s been one of the most major inquiries ever held into media in the UK – when his report is expected within a matter of weeks. And the remit of the Leveson Inquiry was to examine the phone-hacking scandals that engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s News International, especially since July 2011.</p>
<p>But to me, there’s two astounding things about all this. First is the extent of the scandal: the scale of the phone hacking, the breaking into emails, the bribery of public officials and so forth that was routinely practised by the Murdoch tabloids. But the second astonishing thing is that the scandal almost never became a public scandal in a large and revealing way.</p>
<p>For a long time, News International’s cover-up, its stonewalling, looked as if it might succeed, because the first public evidence of the scandal was in January 2007 when a News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and a private investigator Glen Mulcaire were both sent to prison for having hacked into the phones of the royal princes.</p>
<p>And the News defence at that time was that this was just the work of a single rogue reporter. And it’s really four-and-a-half years - between January 2007 till July 2011 - before the scandal explodes.</p>
<p>Now, one important element in the cracking of these defences, especially when the police were so passive and uninterested, was the mounting of civil cases. In fact, these civil cases have probably played more of a role in this scandal than in most others. And you and your colleague Mark Lewis were centrally involved in this. So could you tell us how you came to be involved? What was the start of your involvement in this, in this whole saga?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Originally, I was an associate at a firm in Manchester that looked after the Professional Footballers’ Association and so I did the Gordon Taylor case with Mark Lewis, but that’s the only time he’s ever been my colleague.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Oh, OK.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> So I don’t work with Mark now. The second phone-hacking case, or the third if you count the princes, was Max Clifford, who is the publicist.</p>
<p>So Gordon Taylor’s case was settled in a secret settlement. And, as it happened, which was interesting, was that I wasn’t actually party to the settlement. That was something that Mark did and I wasn’t aware of the secret settlement because I was giving birth at the time. And I never went back to work with Mark after that.</p>
<p>But I did go on and do on my own the third case, which was Max Clifford’s case. And Max Clifford’s case was also settled, except the so-called secret settlement wasn’t secret for more than, I think, a day, which is quite interesting given Max. Max did us all a great favour actually. At the time, when I realised that the case (was being settled), I had a furious [argument] with Max and I said “What happens now? It might be the end.” And he said, “Don’t worry, poppet”.</p>
<p>And he was right and Max has really taught me things that nobody else could teach me. Anyway, the fact is that, you know, Max had started it and very soon, people heard that there had been this settlement for a lot of money.</p>
<p>Now, by then I was already looking after Sky Andrews, who was a sports agent. And, whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong, the fact is, the news of these huge damages paid out certainly attracted attention from potential claimants.</p>
<p>Now, one of these things came up in the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/cmscom">Media, Culture and Sport Select Committee</a>, where Tom Crone, who was the News International lawyer at the time, was asked: in relation to the Gordon Taylor settlement (which something like, allegedly, 425,000 pounds), why was he paid so much?</p>
<p>Now, we know now that this was a huge cover-up and that actually, this needed to shut them down. What Tom Crone said about it was [it was] a commercial value of how much damages this would have been worth.</p>
<p>Now, in the second tranche of litigation, claimants are being told that their hacking is worth something like 5000 pounds, 10,000 pounds. But Tom Crone wasn’t necessarily wrong when he said that. It’s very easy to say “Well, Tom Crone lied to the committee.” I don’t think he did. I think the commercial value of the cover-up, and the commercial value in terms of going and losing the case and the legal fees on the other side, possibly was as much as that. Because, certainly, now that we have hundreds of claimants, not only has the price of damages gone down, it’s become almost the exact opposite of what it was in the beginning.</p>
<p>Starting up working on the Gordon Taylor case and working on Max Clifford’s case and Sky Andrew’s – the front runners – and later Mark Thompson who is a lawyer at another law firm in the UK who has also been very central, somewhat of an unsung hero, I think. He did Sienna Miller’s case. And these cases were so difficult because you had to constantly go to court and say “Can we have this disclosure? Can we see these papers?” And the answer would always be “They don’t exist.” They were: “You’re barking up the wrong tree. They’ve been destroyed.”</p>
<p>Turned out, they did exist. People might have thought they were destroyed. But these things, you tend to be able to find. And slowly, slowly it all began to crumble. The pressure [was] put on the metropolitan police to explain themselves. Why on Earth hadn’t they, when the princes’ phones had originally been intercepted, why on Earth hadn’t they notified these victims?</p>
<p>Now, originally, in the princes’ case – so again, I’m way back in 2007 – we had been told that there were categories of victim. So, there were supermodels – that’s Elle – with the first one who was the example. The sports agent – that’s our Sky Andrews – who was very helpful later. Max Clifford, we know, was helpful. Gordon Taylor – the first one after the princes’ – and the MP Simon Hughes who took an action later on, once it had all got going.</p>
<p>Now, that was very misleading because those categories – MPs, sports agents, celebrity – missed out on what essentially became the 2011 big exposé, which was: victims of crime, ordinary people, and the families of victims of crime.</p>
<p>And when those categories were revealed, and it was those people who hadn’t been notified, whilst there had been some kind of public consumption for the press saying “Celebrities, you know, who cares about them? They put themselves in the public eye. MPs – public interest,” and all these other excuses. Not their own readers. Public, massive public outcry over Milly Dowler and that, it was really then, that the story came into the press.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Really exploded.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> It was already breaking down.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> It was breaking down but I really agree with you that one of the most fascinating things about this is the cover-up. And it’s not just a cover-up by News International and this is not just an attack on Murdoch’s paper.</p>
<p>What was fascinating was the fact that the British press – the British press who had for so long said that it’s a free press and they should continue to be self-regulated because they exposed scandal – failed, systematically failed to expose their own scandal.</p>
<p>And it shone a light of hypocrisy on them and it was really that and the (Leveson) inquiry opening, and then once the inquiry opened, we started to find out a lot more – not just about the narrow criminality of phone-hacking but about the process of media and media efforts.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen</strong>: Yeah, well I think that’s crucial. Can I take you back a little way to your involvement in these cases? I mean even celebrities are not necessarily non-human beings.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> I agree. I’m very pro-celebrities having private lives. I think that they form quite a lot of my clients. I only meant it in forms of perception.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> But the damage that News of The World and others did to them. At one level, it’s the exposure of their private lives – like they’re having a tiff with their boyfriend or whatever – but at the other level it seems to me is the impact on their personal relationships, about who can they trust. And you read again and again of people saying “I thought this friend of mine was betraying me,” or “I thought my secretary was betraying me” or whatever. And so it’s sort of set up this paranoia, which must have had very damaging consequences on their immediate circle of relationships. Did you see that at close hand?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yes, absolutely. And so it’s very Hitchcockian. It’s very gaslighting. It’s like going into somebody’s house and moving around the furniture and insisting it was always like that. And we see that with Mary Ellen Field’s case, where she was blamed for leaking information that turned out to have been, or we suspect, the subject of hacking – and I’m not a lawyer on that case. Mary Ellen Field is an Australian lady who used to be one of the assistants to Elle Macpherson.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> What shocked you as you got into these things? [You were] working with little prospect of overall success for some years. What were some of your biggest shocks?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> I spent a lot of the early years carrying a baby and pregnant. So part of my memory of the early – and I’m sure that lots of women will understand this because you remember what happened very clearly in the years you were pregnant and how pregnant you were – and I remember being close to bursting point, so very heavily pregnant with my second child, having been up all night with my first baby who was still in nappies and not yet one, and going for a disclosure exercise at the information commissioner’s place and sitting in a room full of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/31/press-privacy-information-commmissioner">Operation Motorman</a> stuff and it was absolutely teeming with it and looking through this evidence and realising the widespread use of private investigators by all of the media.</p>
<p>It was looking at all of this evidence and realising that there was this situation where private detectives had been used for years and years and that people knew about it and that nothing had been done. That’s in terms of things like <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14120244">blagging</a> and finding out people’s ex-directory telephone numbers and all of this information. And there was another point where I started to get disclosure from the other side and it was clear that it was wider.</p>
<p>I think the point that is my big, big turning point with it was my client [who] is an actress, Leslie Ash. She is married to the ex-premier league footballer Lee Chapman.</p>
<p>Now, Leslie has gone on the television and she’d said “It is terrible that the metropolitan police will not give me my papers and I want to see.” So she was very brave and an early voice as well.</p>
<p>So we made our way down to the metropolitan police and we’d said we want to look for Leslie Ash’s name and also her married name, which is Leslie Chapman. Because that’s what her accounts may have been in.</p>
<p>And so they showed us these papers and Leslie and Lee and I are looking at them and the policeman said something along the lines of “You know, well this says Leslie Chapman, but you can see that it says Fulham, which is where they lived, but it doesn’t have a Fulham postcode.” And I looked at it and I said “It doesn’t say Fulham; it says Soham.”</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> So this is actually, you made a very major contribution to the investigation here, didn’t you? Because you could read Glen Mulcaire’s writing.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Well, what we were discussion earlier is the quite ironic and scary similarity between Glen Mulcaire’s handwriting and my handwriting.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> And the significance of the fact that the word was Soham…</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> And Leslie Chapman happens to be the same name as the father of the murdered schoolgirl Jessica Chapman. And so suddenly…</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Which happened in Soham.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yeah, which happened in Soham, which was a terrible, terrible murder.</p>
<p>And when I saw that, I mean, you know, terribly shocking for my client, but it was then – and this in January, this was before the Milly Dowler story in March – and when I saw that, it all suddenly came crashing down that this wasn’t, as I up until then had thought it was, about those five categories but it was wider.</p>
<p>This is in January 2011. So I had worked all that time and not known that. And so I said to the policeman that he must tell <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Akers">Sue Akers</a> (Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the British Metropolitan Police Service). And then I found it difficult to sleep for a while.</p>
<p>So I ended up making an appointment with Sue Akers myself. I wasn’t happy until I’d actually told her face-to-face myself. But, I think, and I know that this is a piece of information that’s been out there for some time -— that Tom Watson wrote about in Dial M for Murdoch,](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9229094/Dial-M-for-Murdoch-by-Tom-Watson-and-Martin-Hickman-review.html) his book. But it was an important moment for me. But it didn’t actually; it didn’t actually come out until the Dowler’s had a very public campaign. But it shouldn’t take a public campaign by the parents of a murdered schoolgirl to make the police act, let alone the newspapers. I mean the police are meant to be protecting us.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> The fact that the complete immorality and cynicism of it was bought home by the affair, but this Soham -— what were their names? I’m sorry, the victims…</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Yes, and that really showed that it wasn’t a one-off.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yes, that’s when I knew. And I had a conversation with somebody at News of the World about it at the time.</p>
<p>It was around that time a little later that somebody gave me a package that had the material that showed that I’d been under surveillance. And again, it’s not something that I went to the press with, just like I wouldn’t have gone to the press with the Soham [issue] because I thought that that there were proper ways of getting it done and that was through telling News International, through telling the police. Now I accept that there has to be an element of campaigning and it took me a long time to get there because I just thought that they would do something about what was clearly lawbreaking. I thought that telling the police would be enough. Maybe that’s my naivete.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> So when we look at that period of four years until the beginning of 2011, what would you say about the performance of the police and perhaps about the prosecution service?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Shocking. It shouldn’t have taken civil actions. I wrote letter after letter after letter to the police on behalf of my clients. Many of those clients now did turn out to be victims and I’d received the most ridiculous responses. For instance, on Leslie Ash… we said ‘Is there any information on Leslie Ash/Chapman because we suspect her phone was intercepted’ and the police wrote back and they said, ‘Well, there’s some bits of paper. They’ve got her numbers on it and her account number but you can’t see them and it doesn’t mean that she was hacked.’</p>
<p>And she had to go for a… disclosure order pre-action which cost her 18,000 pounds which, thankfully, she’s recovered.</p>
<p>But had it not been for, you know, Leslie Ash saying ‘Fine, I’ll pay the money, I’ll take the risk’, you’d have to pay for your own pre-action disclosures. It’s only once you take a case and win that you get the money back.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> She took a big risk.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yeah thank you, Leslie. It’s not a small amount of money. She shouldn’t have had to pay that. The police simply should have said, ‘This is what’s happened.’</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> When you look back at the performance of the police over that period, which seems to me at various points quite mind-boggling, from the conviction of Mulcaire and Goodman on, it’s sort of, you know, they’re a part of the cover-up a lot of the time.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Very much part of the cover-up. And if you ask them about it like I have done we were just told ‘Well, we’re drawing the line and we’re doing our own investigation.’ We haven’t heard much about the police internal investigation.</p>
<p>Because the police were meant to be protecting us. This is not to let the newspapers off the hook, they are currently an unregulated bunch, commercial, censored by their own proprietors, and that’s a free press. So my expectations of them are, you have to say, lower. I think that they have obligations, I really do, but the police - I’m upset about it.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> We don’t have definitive proof, but how would you explain police behaviour at that time.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> I think there was a long history of a relationship between the press, and maybe particularly News International, and the police in terms of leaking of information. I think it had all got terribly casual and out of hand. I think that the iron triangle that was the very powerful press, the Murdoch press, their relationship with Parliament, and their relationship with MPs, and then the relationship with the police, meant that somewhere there was formed a kind of strange institutional narcissism that made them feel that they were in some ways above the law.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> And a set of alliances.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> And these lofty sort of self-justifications that you hear are extraordinary. And so hypocritical and yet if you say they’re hypocritical nobody responds.</p>
<p>For instance, the whole thing about ‘If you believe in free press why didn’t you report on the scandal’. No response, ever. Nobody says anything to that. I have not heard one, in all these fights I’ve had with various journalists and editors. Not once has anybody come up with anything that is a reasonable response to that.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> One of the interesting things about all this is the role of lawyers and it seems to me it raises, especially on the other side, where does professional obligation finish and unscrupulous partisan promotion for your side start? I notice in particular that you were subjected, simply because you were a lawyer for some of these victims, to two periods of surveillance. At least one of these seems to have been on the direct recommendation of News International solicitors.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yeah, it’s a really strange one. I know that [News of the World lawyer] Julian Pike has said that he’d do it again, and he was certainly very cross, and has justified doing it.</p>
<p>But frankly, I’m on the other side of lawyers the whole time in cases, and the idea that I would go and order their children’s birth certificates, to have a look… I have to say that while I’ve been very robust about it, I am somewhat creeped out by the fact that these things were on order whilst I was writing what I thought were quite sensible letters.</p>
<p>I am uniquely equipped, and robust about these things, but having found about the surveillance in retrospect, having found out about it once the scandal had emerged, it was oddly reassuring because when you are told by the other side for years that you’re wrong, that you are barking up the wrong tree, that you are simply promoting yourself, and that this has got everything to do with celebrities – and then you find out, all within the space of a few weeks, that actually it’s not celebrities only, it is proper victims of crime, and their families, and murdered schoolchildren, and that you weren’t wrong, and that they did know about it, and that they put you under surveillance to see what they could find to stop you from doing it.</p>
<p>I’m kind of grateful for knowing about it because it did rather prove that I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree after all. I’m afraid that all of it was part of the behaviour. What you say about what happens in terms of lawyers, to be fair I’m a lawyer now, I mainly deal with claims although sometimes I represent the other side, and also I’ve been very interested in how the law has been developing.</p>
<p>But you have to make sure that you remain sensible and forensic and work on evidence so that you don’t end up pushing what you believe in too much, because lawyers have to base things on good, clear evidence. That means there can’t be any exaggeration. I think that some of the News International lawyers, I think they went a bit institutional with it. I think they became indoctrinated in the philosophy of their proprietor’s in the same way as journalists.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> It very much seems to be a News International style that, ‘Someone’s criticised us for this, we’ll discredit them by looking at their sex lives or whatever, and that will then make the criticism go away’. That seems to be almost their modus operandi.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Yes, that you have to be absolutely top notch, pure. That’s why I would quite like it if I was writing these proposals, I’d make editors have a little ethics test. Maybe they could have a little certificate that they were a fair and proper person. We could put some cameras in there.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Yeah, well good luck. It could create a few vacancies.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> It could do. That’s why I also worry about having these industry people on the self-regulated panel.</p>
<p>I mean which former industry people would they choose? Because a lot of them are in quite a lot of trouble.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> I just want to move now from the past to the present and the future. Before the scandal exploded, the interaction of several forces, the civil cases, parliament, journalists etc., all aided each other and produced a total cumulative effect.</p>
<p>But now I’m worried that there’s a chance that these different elements will get in each other’s way. I know, for example, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/10/robert-jay-qc-language-leveson">Robert Jay</a> [lead counsel at the Leveson Inquiry] had to really soft pedal his questioning of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/andy-coulson">Andy Coulson</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/rebekahwade">Rebekah Brooks</a> because of the criminal things, so especially there’s a danger that there will be a prejudice of criminal trials.</p>
<p>I think we can expect that all these people have hired very good lawyers who will concentrate very much on procedural issues to avoid getting at the substance of it, and I’m now little worried we won’t get a good clear overview and a good set of criminal prosecutions emerging from it all. Do you think this is a fair worry or is it overblown?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> I think we’re going to be OK. I think that there was soft pedaling and it was for good reason. Apparently we’re going to have another trial for the second tranche of phone hacking victims in Spring. Whether we will or whether they’ll settle is a matter for speculation. I think that Robert Jay was very careful and for good reason, and that we have preserved a fair criminal trial… One of the things that has been a complaint of victims of the press is that they are given trial by media. And so we have to be patient and wait and hope that this time due process happens.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Do you think the civil cases from now on will, in terms of their public importance, become less important? Do you think the moment for civil cases in this whole scandal is less?</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> I think we’ve done our job. I think civil cases brought it out and now it’s a little bit personal injury-esque because we get our papers automatically. There’s still various fights to be had, but yeah, I think the next thing will be what happens to the police, what happens to those who have been accused? And what happens in terms of the outcome of Leveson. What will the press do next, whether they’re independently regulated or whether they continue to be self-regulated, how will they behave?</p>
<p>And in terms of what I will doing in two or three years time, I honestly can’t very easily quite know what I’ll be dealing with because even after all this I’m not sure which way its going to turn out.</p>
<p>I have an idea of what Justice Leveson is going to recommend but I’m not yet sure whether or not it will actually be implemented. I hope that it is but not necessarily. There may be yet be one more drink in the last chance saloon.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> It could well be that if you come back to Sydney in a year’s time this will all still be going on.</p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Harris:</strong> Well, yes I’m having a great education here.</p>
<p><strong>Rod Tiffen:</strong> Well, Charlotte, congratulations on your role in all this and thank you very much for talking to us today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rod Tiffen received funding from the ARC in the past.</span></em></p>
Rod Tiffen: Charlotte Harris, thanks for getting together with us. We’re doing this interview when Lord Leveson – the Leveson Inquiry’s been one of the most major inquiries ever held into media in the…
Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/6787
2012-05-02T00:05:29Z
2012-05-02T00:05:29Z
Rupert Murdoch: the amazing transformation of the Wizard of Oz
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10217/original/wmnk97mj-1335915759.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">James and Rupert Murdoch appearing before the Westminster parliamentary committee that has subsequently attacked their fitness as media proprietors.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Press Association</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Will the damning, and somewhat surprising, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-not-fit-phone-hacking">verdict brought in on Rupert Murdoch by a committee of British parliamentarians</a>, spell the end of the reign of the Wizard of Oz?</p>
<p>The answer depends on what is meant by “the end”. Certainly it will be impossible for Murdoch to ever again exercise the power and influence that he has wielded over successive British prime ministers from Mrs Thatcher onwards. </p>
<p>What might be more problematic is whether “the end” also means that News Corporation, far from being able to complete their now abandoned takeover of the British broadcaster BSkyB (which has become a £1 billion a year cash cow) could in fact mean that they will be forced to divest themselves of their current holding completely?</p>
<h2>Fit and proper</h2>
<p>The answer to this conundrum lies with the <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/">British broadcast regulator Ofcom</a> which is considering whether News Corporation is a “fit and proper” organisation to hold a UK broadcasting licence at all; ironically the self-same regulator whose powers Murdoch (and son) had been pressing Prime Minister David Cameron to rein in. </p>
<p>Inevitably, the MPs (majority) verdict - that Rupert Murdoch, is “not fit to run an international company” - will no doubt be ringing in the ears of the Ofcom regulators when they come to make their fateful decision.</p>
<p>And if News Corporation is forced to divest itself of the highly profitable BSkyB, Murdoch’s American-based organisation might well decide that the time has come to pull out of the UK completely.</p>
<h2>Goodbye to the UK?</h2>
<p>This would involve selling the highly profitable, but also always controversial, daily newspaper The Sun, the newly-launched Sun on Sunday (the replacement for the News of the World which Murdoch closed at the height of the phone-hacking scandal) the Sunday Times (Britain’s most profitable upmarket newspaper) and The Times, loss-making but highly prestigious.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1208&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1208&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10218/original/cfm9whd3-1335915786.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1208&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch arrives to witness the first copies of The Sun on Sunday roll off the presses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Stillwell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the News Corporation board in New York, getting rid of its troublesome British holdings could look like an attractive proposition, given that in the great scheme of things, they remain small beer within the News Corporation brewery.</p>
<h2>A personal humiliation</h2>
<p>But for Rupert it would be a different matter.
Whilst he is a corporate man, and the bottom line is important to him, being forced to sell, or close his UK newspaper holdings would be wrench and an ignominious personal humiliation. For it was here, in his audacious swoops for the News of the World in 1968 and The Sun a year later, that he announced his arrival on the international media stage.</p>
<p>And even though he re-located to the US in the 80s and became a US citizen in 1985, he still retained a keen interest in his British newspapers – reputedly phoning his editors on a regular basis to praise, upbraid or just gossip.</p>
<h2>A lobby hack at heart</h2>
<p>Murdoch will find it similarly painful to decouple himself from the British political scene. For although his actual presence in the UK has been sporadic, when it he was here it was the company of politicians that he appeared to most sought out, as he revealed to the Leveson Inquiry. </p>
<p>Between 1997 and 2007 met with Tony Blair 31 times and in his first year in office he met with David Cameron on nine occasions (though Downing Street claim the real figure was six). </p>
<p>Whatever the correct number the fact remains that Murdoch was, is and will forever be a “political groupie” but as a result of the cumulative effects of the phone-hacking revelations, the Leveson Inquiry and the parliamentarians’ report, that pleasure will now undoubtedly be denied to him.</p>
<p>All of which leads to the final thought – surely it is now time for the old Wizard of Oz, to take a final bow, hang up his wand and retire gracefully behind his curtain. </p>
<p>Dream on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Will the damning, and somewhat surprising, verdict brought in on Rupert Murdoch by a committee of British parliamentarians, spell the end of the reign of the Wizard of Oz? The answer depends on what is…
Ivor Gaber, Professor of Political Journalism, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.