tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/jude-law-8895/articlesJude Law – The Conversation2017-05-04T04:33:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770972017-05-04T04:33:36Z2017-05-04T04:33:36ZAn act of faith: watching The Young Pope<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167804/original/file-20170504-21620-qwrhb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How can a Pope not believe in God? Jude Law as Pius XIII in The Young Pope.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wildside,imdb</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Young Pope is a fascinating exploration of the ambiguities and doubts within Christian faith. The series is directed by Paolo Sorrentino, famed for his 2013 Academy Award winning movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358891/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Great Beauty</a>, which like The Young Pope, explores the search for authenticity, divinity and beauty in a materialistic, PR-obsessed world. Yet, what is and what is not sacred in this hyperreal setting remains uncertain, and indeed, a matter of faith.</p>
<p>As the name suggests, the series centres on the fictional character of a young American Pope, Pius XIII, and the unfortunate cardinals who have to endure and survive his turbulent papacy. But it is a series that confounds expectations. From the trailer you might expect Law’s character to be a Machiavellian psychopath only interested in power. But the show resists such clichés. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Young Pope.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Pius is not a young <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Underwood_(House_of_Cards)">Frank Underwood</a> in a Papal rather than presidential setting. Still, he isn’t particularly likeable – which makes him a strange character to be played by the usually charismatic Jude Law. The character of Pius is difficult to understand precisely because he doesn’t understand himself. Abandoned as a child and raised by Sister Mary, a nun played by Diane Keaton, he definitely has a chip on his shoulder.</p>
<p>Indeed, Pius is quick to make enemies: everyone disagrees with his retrograde stances on homosexuality and abortion, including and perhaps surprisingly his surrounding cardinals. But he also isn’t a religious zealot; as we learn he doesn’t really believe in God. He states paradoxically:</p>
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<p>God, my conscience does not accuse me because you do not believe that I am capable of repenting and therefore I do not believe in you. </p>
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<p>He clarifies in his confession, “I am saying I don’t believe in God” – and even makes the same claim later in the series. </p>
<p>As such, the show – while funny and enjoyable – may be unfulfilling for some viewers and bewildering to others. After all, how can a Pope not believe in God? </p>
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<span class="caption">Pius chills out.</span>
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<p>The series sets up clichés and leads the audience to expect one thing, but delivers another. This resistance to any neat encapsulations is evident from the very beginning of the first episode where Pius prepares for his Papal address. In order to calm himself, he pictures a naked woman and then, when restored, goes out to make his first homily.</p>
<p>It sounds like a sales pitch: he’s a young, telegenic American Pope and he wishes to modernise the Church’s stance on a range of issues – starting with masturbation. The scene is a type of wish fulfilment for progressives. Wouldn’t one simply love to hear the Pope talk so encouragingly? It is, of course, too good to be true. Pius wakes up and we discover it was all a dream.</p>
<p>From this opening, you might suppose that Pius is a progressive in the church or a charismatic scoundrel. But far from being licentious, it transpires that he is, in fact, squeaky-clean, refuses sexual advances and is abrasive rather than charismatic. </p>
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<span class="caption">Pius with Sister Mary (Diane Keaton).</span>
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<p>His first real homily is a PR disaster for the church. Delivered at night, the silhouette of Pius yells at the people gathered below, warning that those who doubt God have no place in the Church. He then tells the crowd that they may not be worthy of him.</p>
<p>This episode introduces us to the narrative structure, which resembles a sort of thematic coitus interruptus, with disruptions and false-starts. The Pope, at times, seems clever and a charlatan, but at other moments he seems mad as he wonders if he <em>is</em> God. </p>
<p>Mostly, he doubts God’s existence. </p>
<h2>Echoing Pascal’s advice</h2>
<p>For Pius, the best way to save the Church is to return the institution to its past where faith was founded on terror. This solution to uncertainty echoes 17th century philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal’s advice to atheists. Famously, he evaluated the merits of belief versus disbelief. He argued the risks are only slight if you believe in God (if you’re wrong, nothing happens). But if you don’t believe in God (and if there is one), you jeopardise eternal life and happiness.</p>
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<span class="caption">Pius surrounded by his cardinals.</span>
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<p>Pascal’s solution for an atheist is to practise religious faith even if one does not believe – in hope that one will. Pascal thereby opens up the question of what constitutes faith. Does faith have to entail belief, or can faith continue even when belief is absent? In short, Pascal leads us to ask whether faith is practice, rather than just a belief.</p>
<p>For Pius, it appears so. He frequently entrusts his fate, and indeed also the Church’s, to God even when he remains unsure of its existence. This quality of disbelief becoming part of faith may seem disingenuous, but there is a long tradition of faith that encompasses doubt within the Church. After all, Mother Teresa was known to have her <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1561247/Mother-Teresas-40-year-faith-crisis.html">doubts</a> about God’s existence and mercy. </p>
<p>For the religious believer, there is a paradox: the further you go away from God but continue to worship him, the closer you come to God as your faith persists the test of doubt. Even without belief you still worship God with the hope that the belief will return, but of course there is the danger that it won’t and will therefore be insincere. Sin and salvation thereby come at a razor’s edge, and in the modern world entail what Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard framed as a leap toward and into faith, a commitment to the unknown.</p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.catholicreview.org/article/home/hbo-s-the-young-pope-repels-more-than-it-engages">Catholics</a> have been critical of the series given the ludicrous, heightened qualities of Law’s performance and its potentially blasphemous connotations. But their condemnation seems to miss some of the more nuanced aspects of his performance. Indeed, one central theme to the show is the idea that Catholicism must be ambiguous in order to have adherents – that the Church must present a friendly face in order for people to ignore its reactionary position. However, history does always involve <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4786824/">interpretation</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">The young pope contemplates his faith.</span>
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<p>Although the series is, thematically speaking, as adorned as the Vatican itself, it explores questions of reverence and celebrity, and further delves into the masochism of faith. It also surveys the ambiguity of the Pope’s faith, which adds intrigue. </p>
<p>While Pius is easily the least likeable of the characters, there’s a strange appeal to his anti-populist stance. However unconscionable his regressive stances are – and they are unconscionably cruel – they are based on a brutal honesty.</p>
<p>Unlike populists, he makes no secret of his sense of power as an institutional head, refusing to go all Dalai Lama and spout placating platitudes. </p>
<p>The series, like Pius, is funny, bizarre and mad — at once relevant to our media dominated age and unapologetically esoteric in its evocation of ideas that aren’t readily apparent to non-theologians. In short, the series is almost as enigmatic as the Church itself. </p>
<p><em>The Young Pope is currently viewable on SBS on Demand.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aleks Wansbrough 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 TV series The Young Pope is a fascinating exploration of the ambiguities and doubts within Christian faith.Aleks Wansbrough, Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/606932016-06-10T10:08:59Z2016-06-10T10:08:59ZCan Jude Law’s ‘Genius’ capture the essence of Thomas Wolfe?<p>For Jude Law, playing the part of early 20th-century novelist Thomas Wolfe is a tall order. Yes, the actor is a half-foot shorter than the literary giant he portrays in the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703957/">“Genius,”</a> which tells the story of Wolfe and his contentious, complicated relationship with prominent Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth). </p>
<p>But forget about altitude. What about attitude? </p>
<p>Over the past several years, I’ve been putting together a book of reminiscences entitled “Thomas Wolfe Remembered” (forthcoming in 2017). My co-editor, Nami Montgomery, and I have combed through dozens of accounts of the man by his family, friends, agent, editors, typists and others who knew him intimately or casually. </p>
<p>These acquaintances tell quite a story, and Wolfe’s personality was even larger than his 6'6" frame (which, by Wolfe’s own admission, once weighed some 240 pounds).</p>
<p>Alternatively exuberant and morose, captivating and maddening, delightful and just plain weird, Wolfe is likely the most fascinating author I’ve encountered in the quarter-century that I’ve been reading and studying literature. </p>
<h2>‘A hydroelectic plant of emotion’</h2>
<p>Those who knew Wolfe remembered him as an overgrown child – one who could skip around a room in excitement or throw outrageous tantrums over a bad review.</p>
<p>His childlike sense of wonderment endeared him to many. One evening, after he spotted a freight car at a tiny train station in New Jersey (nothing delighted him more than trains), his eyes lit up. As he often did when he became excited, he began to stutter. </p>
<p>“K-K-Kitty!” he said to one of the women with him. “Look! This is America.” He then insisted that his companions touch the tracks.</p>
<p>Reviews and letters from Asheville, North Carolina – Wolfe’s hometown – could elicit very different reactions from the temperamental author.</p>
<p>Wolfe’s first novel, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=koSYQSSCjKwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=you+can't+go+home+again+thomas+wolfe&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj11aPwp5vNAhUC2D4KHR7xD9IQ6AEINzAD#v=onepage&q&f=false">Look Homeward, Angel</a>,” was a thinly veiled autobiography, and the inspirations for many characters were easily identifiable. The portraits were far from rosy. <a href="http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newcentury/6052">As one reviewer noted</a>, Wolfe’s portrayal of Asheville was “crowded with pain, bitterness and ugliness,” and many townspeople were displeased over having their scandals “dragged forth into the light.” </p>
<p>Fellow novelist Vardis Fisher remembered Wolfe reading some of the backlash aloud to him, “weeping, cursing, hating – hating as I have never seen a man hate.”</p>
<p>He was, as one of his typists put it, “no single-watt man, but a hydroelectric plant of emotion.”</p>
<h2>A creative force</h2>
<p>When it came to writing, though, this hydroelectric plant generated an astonishing output. He was prone to procrastination, but when he did get around to putting pencil to his patented yellow sheets of paper, he made them “fly as though they’d been blown from a fan,” recalled one typist, who “would catch up the pages as he finished them” and try to decipher his notoriously cryptic handwriting.</p>
<p>After “Look Homeward, Angel,” Wolfe worked on various manuscripts simultaneously, simply writing whatever anecdote or scene he wished to capture on any particular day. The products of these efforts – thousands upon thousands of pages – filled a giant packing crate (along with shoes, hats, pots and pans, and more) in his apartment. </p>
<p>One manuscript he delivered to an editor was almost five feet tall. When Wolfe died unexpectedly before he could help sort out all the pages, the editor spent years preparing it for publication. The result was three posthumous books: “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_web_and_the_rock.html?id=dRZHAAAAYAAJ">The Web and the Rock</a>,” “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/You_Can_t_Go_Home_Again.html?id=JvJxTAnB17cC">You Can’t Go Home Again</a>” and “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=S7byrQEACAAJ&dq=the+hills+beyond+google+books&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirrdL7qpvNAhVBHD4KHeylCssQ6AEIJzAA">The Hills Beyond</a>.”</p>
<p>You might expect someone who used a packing crate as a filing system to have less than orderly personal habits. You’d be correct.</p>
<p>He lived in spectacular disarray and squalor. One of his typists, James Mandel, recalled a table “cluttered with papers, ledgers, books, unwashed dishes, ashes, cigarette butts, pencils and glasses” and a floor piled so high with debris that it was nearly impossible to navigate. </p>
<p>“And his personal appearance was no better when he was busy with his writing,” Mandel continued. “Hair unkempt, dirt under his finger nails, grimy hands, soiled shirt, unpressed trousers!” </p>
<p>A friend wrote that Wolfe “always looked as if he was on his way to a fire, having pulled his pants on as he was sliding down the pole.”</p>
<h2>A ‘genial bear’ at heart</h2>
<p>For all his eccentricities, Thomas Wolfe was remarkably warm, polite and modest. One acquaintance remembered him at parties acting like a “great, genial bear.” </p>
<p>People loved to listen to his stories, which were as vivid as his fiction. And at a conference in Colorado, he spoke sympathetically to less accomplished writers, sharing his own struggles.</p>
<p>But my favorite story about Wolfe reveals his humanity – and humor. </p>
<p>He was in a bar in New Orleans, and a man who didn’t know Wolfe came upon a copy of “Look Homeward, Angel,” which someone had brought to the bar. He read a bit of it and declared it worthless – “a lot of bosh” and “a lot of tripe.” </p>
<p>Wolfe overheard the man. Here was an artist who had exhausted years crafting those words, who embraced writing as his life’s driving force – and who was also known to fly into a rage over a bad review.</p>
<p>William H. Fitzpatrick, a journalist who was present, left us an account of what happened next.</p>
<p>Wolfe snatched the book from the man and read aloud its most famous words: “O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”</p>
<p>“Tripe,” said Wolfe. “And bosh. I never read such bosh in my life. Rack ‘em up, Ollie.”</p>
<p>That was Thomas Wolfe, too.</p>
<p>Did Jude Law capture this Thomas Wolfe – and all the other Thomas Wolfes – in “Genius”?</p>
<p>To express even a fraction of the Byzantine personality that Wolfe’s agent, Elizabeth Nowell, compared to the “facets of a diamond” would be an impressive feat.</p>
<p>There will never be another Thomas Wolfe. But Law, if he has succeeded, will qualify as another kind of artistic “Genius.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘Genius.’</span></figcaption>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Canada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The president of the Thomas Wolfe Society explains why Law had his work cut out for him when he agreed to portray a man who was “a hydroelectric plant of emotion.”Mark Canada, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/229102014-02-07T17:08:04Z2014-02-07T17:08:04ZJournalism 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 UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.