Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media

[Douglas Caddy]

Pattern of Illegality Is Cited at Paper

The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL

November 14, 2011

LONDON —As a government-commissioned inquiry into Britain’s journalistic practices opened on Monday, its chief lawyer delivered a series of bombshell revelations about what he called a “thriving cottage industry” of illegality at the defunct News of the World tabloid.

In addition, said the chief lawyer, Robert Jay, police evidence showed that hacking was not limited to The News of the World, which was summarily closed by its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, in July. Instead, he said, two other tabloids — the Murdoch-owned Sun, and The Daily Mirror, owned by the Trinity Mirror Group — had also illegally intercepted people’s voice-mail messages, employing the same private investigator as The News of the World.

But those papers’ potential malfeasance appears to have paled beside that of The News of the World, according to Mr. Jay, chief counsel to the investigation, the Leveson Inquiry, a far-reaching examination into the practices and regulation of the British news media.

Mr. Jay said that 11,000 pages in notebooks belonging to the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, reveal that he conducted 2,266 investigations on behalf of at least 28 different employees of News International, the British newspaper arm of News Corporation, over several years. Four of those employees — listed in the notebooks under various code letters — apparently commissioned 2,143 of those investigations. The most prolific of the four commissioned 1,453 alone.

Until early this year, executives at News International repeatedly told the police, Parliament and other news media outlets that phone hacking was limited to a single “rogue reporter” at The News of the World. That was Clive Goodman, the paper’s royal correspondent, who was jailed in 2007, along with Mr. Mulcaire, for intercepting voice-mail messages of members of the royal household.

But the information from Mr. Mulcaire’s notebooks, seized by the police in 2006, contradicts News International’s claim, Mr. Jay said, suggesting instead a pattern of “wide-ranging illegal acts within the organization.”

“It is clear that Goodman was not a rogue reporter,” he said. He added: “Aside from the number of individuals potentially inculpated, we also have evidence of a significant quantity of illegal activity over a relatively lengthy time period. There are a number of ways in which this activity might collectively be characterized. I suggest that it would not be unfair to comment that it was, at the very least, a thriving cottage industry.”

Mr. Jay said that a total of 690 audio tapes were seized from Mr. Mulcaire’s office, along with records of 586 recordings of voice-mail messages intended for 64 different people. The notebooks listed a total of 5,795 names of people who could be potential victims of phone hacking.

He also said that the inquiry had seen documents suggesting that phones were being hacked as early as May 2001 — at least a year earlier than previously disclosed — and that the practice continued until 2009, two years after Mr. Goodman and Mr. Mulcaire were jailed.

The inquiry, led by Lord Justice Leveson, is one of three started since The Guardian newspaper disclosed in July that The News of the World had illegally hacked into the phone of a murdered teenager, Milly Dowler, in 2002, while she was missing but before her body had been found. The disclosure caused a wave of revulsion and led, ultimately, to the closing of The News of the World, the resignation of top officials at News International and the Metropolitan Police Service, the withdrawal of News Corporation’s $12 billion bid to acquire the satellite company British Sky Broadcasting, and the dissolution of the close ties between News Corporation and the British political establishment.

Other investigations are being conducted by the police and by a parliamentary panel, which last week interviewed James Murdoch, News Corporation’s deputy chief operating officer and a son of Rupert Murdoch, for the second time since July. James Murdoch told the panel that no one had ever told him about the extent of the hacking at The News of the World — not even in 2008, when he agreed to authorize a payment of more than $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a hacking victim, Gordon Taylor, against The News of the World.

On Monday, Mr. Jay said that one of the questions at hand was how high up in News International “the metaphorical buck stops.”

“Is there a culture of denial — or even worse, a cover-up — at News International?” he asked.

The Leveson inquiry will examine the relationship between privacy and freedom of the press, the newspapers’ code of conduct and whether Britain’s self-regulating news media should have governmental oversight.

In his opening remarks, Justice Leveson said that his team would monitor news coverage in the next months to ensure that no one speaking at the inquiry would be threatened by or punished in the news media. In the past, Britain’s tabloids have made it standard practice to print damaging articles about their critics and those who refused to cooperate with them.

Among the likely witnesses are 46 celebrities, politicians, sports stars and other public figures who have complained about media intrusion. They include J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books; the actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller; and a number of lawmakers, including Lord Prescott, former deputy leader of the Labour Party.

One of the issues the judge will consider is the ties between politicians and the news media — particularly the erstwhile coziness between lawmakers and News International.

The inquiry is scheduled to fall into two parts, the first a general review of media culture and ethics. The second, into illegal activity, is meant to begin only when the police investigations and potential prosecutions are finished.

So far, 16 people have been arrested in the phone hacking inquiry, including Andy Coulson, the former editor of The News of the World and the former chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron.

Earlier this month, a journalist at The Sun was arrested on suspicion of making illegal payments to police officers, the first sign that the scandal had spread beyond The News of the World.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting.

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: NoW owner disputes 28 staff commissioned phone hacking

News International's barrister asks inquiry to check counsel's statement and admits hacking could have continued after 2007

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 15 November 2011 08.48 EST

The News of the World's former owner has disputed whether there is evidence that 28 of the paper's employees commissioned a private investigator to hack into mobile phones.

News International's barrister, Rhodri Davies QC, told the Leveson inquiry into press standards at the high court on Tuesday that the company "would like to have this information rechecked".

Davies also said the company now accepted that phone hacking "was not the work of a single rogue reporter". The practice was "wrong", "shameful" and "should never have happened", he said.

"The News of the World managed to plumb both the depths and the heights," he added. "The depths, I need hardly say, are taken up by phone hacking."

The inquiry heard on Monday that the names of at least 28 News International employees – former royal editor Clive Goodman and 27 others – were written in the page corners of notebooks belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed in January 2007 for intercepting voicemail messages on behalf of the News of the World. That suggests the practice was employed by far more than a handful of News of the World journalists, as the company has claimed.

Davies said that the statement, by the inquiry's counsel Robert Jay, "has occasioned some surprise on our side".

He added that Jay had referred to "at least 27 other NI [News International] employees … this is a context where NI means the News of the World".

News International was aware that five News of the World journalists were named in the notes – Goodman, who was jailed along with Mulcaire in January 2007, and four others, who Davies did not name.

Davies said the company believed Scotland Yard had also identified the names of other News of the World staff in Mulcaire's notes but "our understanding is it does not add up to 27".

"We have never seen the whole set of Mulcaire notebooks," Davies pointed out. "I believe the only people who have are the police."

The inquiry was told on Monday that four individuals at the News of the World instructed Mulcaire to carry out 2,143 out of a total of 2,266 "taskings" the investigator conducted for the paper.

Several jobs were commissioned by names that are ineligible, while others were marked "private" by Mulcaire. Goodman also requested some of those taskings.

Davies expressed surprise that the remaining 123 "taskings" could have been requested by as many as 21 other News of the World staff. But he added: "2,266 taskings is 2,266 too many."

He also said that the Sun "disputed" a claim brought against the paper by actor Jude Law, who is also suing the News of the World for breach of privacy, but added that he could not go into detail because of confidentiality rules imposed by the judge who is hearing the case.

Davies told that inquiry hearing that, following Goodman and Mulcaire's jailing in 2007, the paper had put its house in order. While he could not guarantee that no phone hacking took place after that date, he said: "If phone hacking continued after that it was not … the thriving cottage industry which existed beforehand."

He added that the decision to place MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport committee and lawyers representing alleged victims of hacking under surveillance was "unacceptable", saying "it wasn't journalism at all".

The inquiry also heard on Tuesday from Jonathan Caplan QC, for Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers.

Caplan warned Leveson against putting forward changes to the current system of press regulation based on what had happened in the industry in the recent past.

"We need to be clearly aware that any recommendations … are not simply introduced on the basis of historic transgressions which no longer occur," he said. Caplan added that as far as the publisher was aware: "No journalist at Associated Newspapers has engaged in phone hacking."

Addressing the use of Steve Whittamore, another private investigator who was the subject of a police investigation, and who was used by the Daily Mail, he said there was no evidence that its journalists had asked him to do anything illegal.

Whittamore had mostly been asked to obtain telephone numbers that were already publicly available by busy journalists who did not have the time to find them, Caplan added. "There simply is no evidence that they ever asked Mr Whittamore to do anything illegal."

The private investigator was also used by several other national newspapers, including the Observer, the Guardian's sister paper.

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone hacking 'may have continued after prosecution'

Daily Telegraph

November 15, 2011

The News of the World's publishers admitted today that they could not guarantee the paper stopped hacking phones after one of its journalists was jailed for the illegal practice.

A lawyer for News International told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards "lessons were learned" when the Sunday tabloid's royal editor, Clive Goodman, received a prison sentence for intercepting royal aides' voicemail messages in 2007.

But he conceded phone hacking may have continued at the News of the World after this on a much smaller scale.

Police believe illegal voicemail interception at News International had begun by 2002 and continued until at least 2009, the inquiry heard yesterday.

The hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London was also told notebooks seized from disgraced private detective Glenn Mulcaire suggest at least 28 of the publisher's employees commissioned him to hack phones.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: "I suggest that it would not be unfair to comment that it was at the very least a thriving cottage industry."

"No doubt that will be explored during the evidence, and we note that Mr Jay said the police thought the last instance was in 2009.

"Nonetheless it does look as if lessons were learned when Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire went to jail.

"If phone hacking continued after that it was not, as it appears, what Mr Jay described as the 'thriving cottage industry' which existed beforehand."

Earlier, Mr Davies apologised on behalf of New International for the phone hacking scandal saying it was "wrong, shameful and should never have happened".

He said the company now accepted that hacking was not carried out by a single "rogue reporter" and that it was not properly investigated until police launched a new inquiry in January this year.

But he appeared to question the claim that 28 NI staff were involved in the practice

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone-hacking scandal – the movieLeveson inquiry will feature an all-star cast of celebrities taking the stand to do a reverse kiss-and-tell on the media

By Amelia Hill

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 15 November 2011 17.23 EST

When the inevitable Hollywood blockbuster is made of the phone-hacking scandal, directors risk bankrupting their studio when casting this, the most glittering public inquiry in history.

On Tuesday, we heard that over the next two weeks, Hugh Grant, Sienna Millar, JK Rowling, Steve Coogan and 17 other high-profile core participants will take the stand to do a reverse kiss-and-tell on the media.

Some of the celebrities are more verbose than others, it emerges: Max Mosley, apparently, has submitted 450 pages of evidence – others, just a few paragraphs. It's bound to liven things up in an inquiry already losing momentum: despite having been long-awaited, just two days in, the press gallery of the courtroom was half-empty yesterday.

The annex, a massive tent erected in the courtyard of the Royal Courts of Justice with space for around 180 members of the public, was virtually empty on the first day of the Inquiry – and was entirely empty today.

For those keen to discover what had become of the Trojan Horse virus that had apparently infiltrated the computer of David Sherborne QC yesterday, the morning bought glad tidings.

"The message on Mr Sherborne's screen has been investigated," Lord Justice Leveson announced, as he took his seat. It was, it seems, nothing but a message from the lawyer's anti-virus software. "It does not mean that the inquiry's systems were accessed unlawfully but rather demonstrates that the system was working as it should," Leveson emphasised as Sherborne, looking abashed beneath his tan, fiddled with his maligned computer.

Rhodri Davies, the lawyer acting for News International, took to his feet to make a no-holds-barred apology for the illegal activities of News of the World – before making the startling admission that while the News of the World's publishers now accepted phone hacking was "wrong, shameful and should never have happened", the practice might well have continued at the newspaper for another couple of years after Clive Goodman was jailed in 2007.

"It does look as if lessons were learned when Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire went to jail," he said. Hopefully. Sounding uncannily like Mr Salter from Scoop, Evelyn Waugh's satire of sensationalist journalism, he added torturously: "I am not going to give any guarantees that there was no phone hacking by or for the News of the World after 2007.

"If phone hacking continued after that it was not, as it appears, what Mr Jay [counsel for the inquiry] described [yesterday] as the 'thriving cottage industry' which existed beforehand," he added.

He could just have quoted the magnificent Salter directly: "Up to a point, Lord Copper," would have been an equally clear response to the question of whether it had taken the arrest and imprisonment of one of their journalists to bring NoW publishers to the realisation that hacking and deleting the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl wasn't an entirely honourable way to source stories.

The Daily Telegraph got its knuckles elegantly rapped by Leveson for inaccurately interpreting a past judgement of his, to suggest that the judge did not favour state regulation "lest it have a chilling effect on responsible journalism".

"It's not generally dangerous to quote a judge, is it?" Leveson asked, his basilisk eyes drilling into Gavin Millar QC. Leveson is not a man who wears his reputation lightly.

Millar was appropriately contrite: "If you cut and paste it in that way – if you take part of a judge's sentence out of context – you can get yourself into a mess, sometimes."

"We didn't intentionally spin part of your judgement," he added, pleadingly. "That makes us more devious and perhaps more clever than we are. But we do understand that this was how it appeared to you and we do, of course, apologise for that but it was inadvertent."

It was a short day. There was a touch of refined heckling, when a woman got to her feet at the back of the courtroom and tried to make a statement. Leveson made short work of her. "You don't have any standing in front of me," he said witheringly. "You've been told that if you wanted to submit a statement, you could do. You don't have a standing in the inquiry. Thank you very much."

Tomorrow it is the turn of Sherborne to take the stand, representing the 51 victims. Computer glitches allowing, of course.

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: lawyer claims mother of Hugh Grant's baby was threatened

Lawyer claims mother received menacing phone call when actor appeared on Question Time discussing phone hacking

By Josh Halliday

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 16 November 2011 11.18 EST

The mother of Hugh Grant's daughter received a barrage of threatening phone calls while the actor was appearing on Question Time to talk about the closure of the News of the World, the lawyer acting for victims of alleged press intrusion has claimed at the Leveson inquiry.

David Sherborne, who represents the woman as well as speaking on behalf of 51 alleged victims of press intrusion at the Leveson inquiry, told the high court she was too stressed at the time to call the police.

Sherborne said that "Whilst Mr Grant was appearing on Question Time, discussing the closure of the NoW, Rupert Murdoch and press standards generally, she received a barrage of telephone calls from a withheld number from someone who managed to get it from somewhere, and when they finally answered she was threatened in the most menacing terms, which should reverberate around this inquiry: 'Tell Hugh Grant he must shut the xxxx up'. Unsurprisingly she was too stressed to call the police."

The barrister also claimed that Tinglan Hong's mother was almost run over by paparazzi in the weeks after Grant became one of the most prominent critics of News International.

He told Lord Justice Leveson that the incidents had been reported to the Metropolitan police on the third day of the judicial inquiry into phone hacking and media standards on Wednesday.

Near the end of a lengthy diatribe against tabloid press ethics and behaviour, the lawyer said he had secured an emergency injunction on behalf of the mother of Hugh Grant's child. Sherborne claimed the real reason for her injunction is that she has received threats because the father of child has spoken out against the press.

Grant appeared on Question Time on 7 July to discuss phone hacking. On the same day News International announced the closure the News of the World following the revelation that the paper had accessed the voicemail of murdered teenager Milly Dowler.

Leveson told Sherborne he had presented one side of alleged press intrusion "very graphically" and he wanted to be satisfied he has a full picture of the incidents the QC made claims about.

Sherborne also told the inquiry that the parents of Madeleine McCann "begged for restraint" from blatant intrusion into their private lives by the News of the World.

He claimed that the now-defunct tabloid newspaper published Kate McCann's private letters to her missing daughter without consent and even before her husband Gerry had seen them.

Charlotte Church will also give evidence as a core participant to the inquiry.

Sherborne told the high court that Church had been hounded incessantly by photographers looking for a scoop – and as recently as a week ago was the subject of a "complete fabrication" published in one unnamed newspaper.

He claimed that Church's mother attempted suicide shortly after the News of the World published a story in 2005 alleging that her father was having an affair. "This is the real, brutally real impact this kind of journalism has," Sherborne said.

Earlier, the inquiry heard how Max Mosley believed that the News of the World's invasion of his privacy contributed to the suicide of his son

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone hacking: Sun's former head of features sues News Corp execs

Matt Nixson seeks £100,000 in damages after being abruptly fired from his job on 21 July

By Josh Halliday

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 17 November 2011 05.42 EST

The Sun's former head of features, who was sacked in July, is suing News Group Newspapers and four members of the News Corporation team investigating phone hacking for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract.

Matt Nixson is suing his former employer, News Corp executives Will Lewis and Simon Greenberg, the media group's chief lawyer Jeffrey Palker, and Lord Grabiner QC, the independent chairman of its management and standards committee, for more than £100,000 in damages.

Nixson was abruptly fired from his job at the Sun on 21 July when News Corp's internal committee said it uncovered evidence of wrongdoing during his time at the News of the World. Nixson joined the Sun in April 2010 after five years at its now-defunct News International sister title.

In documents filed at the high court, seen by MediaGuardian, Nixson denies any involvement in unlawful activity and claims News Corp's independent management and standards committee does not have the power to sack News Group employees. News Group is a subsidiary of News International, which is owned by News Corp.

Nixson said in the claim form that a full disciplinary hearing would have exonerated him of any allegations of wrongdoing.

The Metropolitan police wrote to News International in September saying it will not be arresting or questioning Nixson as part of its phone-hacking investigation.

Nixson filed a separate employment tribunal complaint against News Group for unfair dismissal in September. That tribunal is understood to be on hold while the high court legal action proceeds.

The former Sun head of features is seeking damages of more than £100,000, which incorporates 12 months' salary plus additional benefits. The document states that Nixson will face difficulty in finding alternative employment "given the stigma attached to his dismissal and the imputation that he was involved in or otherwise associated with the phone-hacking activities or other criminal newsgathering activities of the News of the World".

Nixson was abruptly sacked at a meeting with the Sun's managing editor, Richard Caseby, and Derrick Crowley, the HR director at News Group, on 21 July.

The high court claim form says Nixson was not provided with any reason for his dismissal at the meeting, but that the decision had been taken by the management and standards committee following the discovery of emails relating to the journalist's time at the News of the World which were "of interest to the police in their investigations". However, Nixson was not told what was in the emails.

In a letter to Nixson two days later, News Group confirmed that he had been dismissed for gross misconduct over the discovery of "what we believe to be direct evidence of criminal conduct".

Nixson has consistently denied any wrongdoing. The claim form states: "[Nixson] has never knowingly been involved in any unlawful activity relating to phone-hacking or in any other criminal newsgathering activity.

"In particular, he has never intercepted voicemail, email or text messages himself, or conspired with anybody else to intercept voicemail, email or text messages (whether expressly or implicitly), and has never received or used information that he knew or had reason to believe was obtained from intercepted voicemail, email or text messages."

News International declined to comment

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: tabloids accused of blackmail and bullying

Popular press hound victims to satisfy an insatiable public appetite for salacious gossip in the pursuit of profit, hearing told

By James Robinson and Lisa O'Carroll

The Guardian,

Wednesday 16 November 2011

The British tabloids were accused of misdemeanours including "blackmail, intrusion, harassment, hounding … and bullying" by a barrister representing victims of their behaviour at the Leveson inquiry into press standards .

In a detailed and, at times, devastating attack on the popular press which lasted over three hours, David Sherborne told the inquiry those practices were "systemic, flagrant and deeply entrenched".

They were employed in order to "satisfy an insatiable public appetite for salacious gossip" in the pursuit of profit, he said, and could rarely, if ever, be justified on public interest grounds.

Phone hacking at the News of the World was widespread, he added, and the information intercepted was used as "quotes from pals" or "just to stand up stories".

Sherborne offered a flavour of the evidence the inquiry will hear next week, when witnesses including Sheryl Gascoigne, Charlotte Church, JK Rowling and Chris Jefferies, who was wrongly suspected of murdering Joanne Yeates, will appear in person. Jefferies, said Sherborne, had been the subject of "a media feeding frenzy of almost unprecedented proportions" after his arrest. Other witnesses will include Steve Coogan and Ian Hurst, an ex-army intelligence officer who alleges the NoW hacked into his emails.

Some victims had their home addresses made public, Sherborne said, and most had seen their friends, families and employees targeted by the tabloids.

Max Mosley, who won a privacy case against the NoW, believed his son's death from a drug overdose was linked to Mosley's treatment at the hand of the press, Sherborne said. "He was mobbed by journalists at the house even though he had written to newspaper editors asking to be left alone." A reporter wore a disguise in an attempt to gain entry to his son's funeral, it was alleged. Mosley will appear before the inquiry on Thursday.

Sherborne said another witness, former Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft, whose affair was revealed by the Sunday People, believed its coverage contributed to the suicide of his father, who was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The children of Rowling, who has fought a long battle with Fleet Street to try to avoid press intrusion, had notes placed in their school bags, Sherborne said.

Gerry and Kate McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, will also give evidence to the inquiry – was set up in the summer by David Cameron in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal –

Sherborne revealed, describing their treatment by the press as a "national scandal". He said Gerry had described Kate as feeling "mentally raped" when the NoW ran the contents of a private diary she had written to her daughter following her disappearance. The lawyer said it had been presented in such a way that it created the impression it had been published with her permission: "On what grounds did they think they could justify such a staggering intrusion into the McCanns' privacy?"

He added: "There are the stories behind the headlines. This is the real, brutally real, impact this kind of journalism has."

Lawyers representing Britain's biggest newspaper groups, including the Daily Mail's owner, Associated Newspapers, and News International, which publishes the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, listened in silence as the worst excesses of the press were described.

The claim that at least 28 NoW journalists were involved in hacking phones was withdrawn by the inquiry QC Robert Jay, however, after Scotland Yard made clear it could not be sure that specific number of journalists had been named in notebooks seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the paper. Neil Garnham QC, for the Metropolitan police, said: "Some of them probably are. For many others, it's impossible, at least thus far, to say whether they were or not."

Sherborne concluded by arguing: "Self-regulation through the PCC [Press Complaints Commission], as one of my clients says, is tantamount to handing the police station over to the mafia" – echoing the Labour MP Tom Watson's claim last week that News International was a "mafia organisation".

The inquiry has been asked to recommend how the industry should be regulated in the future after the PCC, which is funded by newspapers, accepted News International's assurances in 2009 that phone hacking was the work of a single "rogue reporter".

That was widely regarded as proof that the PCC had failed as a regulator.

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, told the inquiry the phone-hacking scandal had exposed the "dogs that didn't bark". Parliament, police, PCC and press all failed to investigate the paper's revelations about hacking, he said.

He raised the prospect of the PCC being superseded by a beefed-up body that could mediate in disputes between public and press, which he called "the Press Standards and Mediation Commission".

"It could then be a one-stop shop disputes resolution service so that people seldom had to go to law to resolve their differences with newspapers", he said. "It would be quick, responsive and cheap."

Leveson hinted he might support such a proposal: "I would like to investigate the idea of having some sort of service that … allows for the resolution of disputes between members of the public and the press short of the courts", he

[Douglas Caddy]

Poster's note: This is an important article in that it reveals the evil perpetrated by Murdoch's criminal enterprise that caused a number of suicides. The Murdoch family's fiancial fortune and media empire grew as innocent people were destroyed.

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Lawyer Outlines Methods Used by British Paper in Hacking Case

The New York Times

By SARAH LYALL

November 16, 2011

LONDON — A lawyer representing 51 people who say they were victims of phone hacking and press intrusion told a hearing on Wednesday that his clients and their families had been followed, spied on, threatened, harassed, vilified, blackmailed and driven to suicide attempts by a British tabloid run amok.

Testifying before the Leveson Inquiry, called to examine press ethics in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that shook the British news media and political establishment last summer, the lawyer, David Sherborne, described some of the particulars.

He told of the actor Hugh Grant’s former girlfriend, while pregnant with the couple’s child, receiving “a barrage of telephone calls” from a blocked number one evening just as Mr. Grant was speaking out against the tabloid press on a BBC program. “When she finally answered,” he said, “she was threatened in the most menacing terms” and ordered to tell Mr. Grant to “shut up.”

He also described how the parents of Milly Dowler, a teenager who was murdered in 2002, felt “euphoria” when they discovered that voice mail messages had been deleted from her cellphone after she went missing, leading them to think it meant that she was still alive. The parents later learned that The News of the World had hacked into her phone and deleted the messages to make room for more messages from her distraught friends and family, so they could then listen to those, too.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owned The News of the World and shut it down in July, recently paid the Dowler family $3.2 million in compensation.

The disclosure that Milly’s phone had been hacked, first made by The Guardian in July, caused widespread revulsion in Britain. The matter escalated into a full-blown scandal, and more than a dozen former News of the World employees have been arrested so far on suspicion of phone hacking and paying police officers for information.

Many of Mr. Sherborne’s clients, including several members of Parliament and the writer J. K. Rowling, are due to testify before the panel next week, and Mr. Sherborne laid out some of their grievances in advance.

He mentioned Max Mosley, a former motor racing executive who was the subject of a News of the World article that accused him of having taken part in a Nazi-themed sex session with several prostitutes (he admitted to the sex session, but not to the Nazi theme; he won a court case proving the paper wrong).

The story — which had been sold to the newspaper by one of the prostitutes, who was instructed (unsuccessfully) by an editor to lure Mr. Mosley into giving a “Sieg Heil” salute that could then be photographed — so distressed his family that it was a factor in his son’s subsequent suicide, Mr. Sherborne said. A journalist posing as a passer-by then tried to crash Mr. Mosley’s son’s funeral and photograph the guests.

The lawyer also cited a celebrity singer, Charlotte Church, saying that The News of the World had reported that she was pregnant, before she told her parents.

The paper also published an article exposing Ms. Church’s father’s extramarital affair, Mr. Sherborne said — whereupon Ms. Church’s mother tried to kill herself.

“In an act of ‘sensitivity,’ ” he added, the newspaper then told the mother, who had been hospitalized, that if she gave them an exclusive interview, “they would not run another lurid story about her husband’s affair.”

Another of Mr. Sherborne’s clients, the soccer player Garry Flitcroft, was exposed for having cheated on his wife. The subsequent treatment of Mr. Flitcroft’s parents and children — followed by reporters and photographers on foot, in cars and in helicopters — proved so upsetting that it contributed to Mr. Flitcroft’s father’s suicide, Mr. Sherborne said.

[John Dolva]

from johnpilger.com

Murdoch: a cultural Chernobyl

...

''The Murdoch "ethos" was demonstrated right from the beginning of his career, as Richard Neville has documented. In 1964, his Sydney tabloid, the Daily Mirror, published the diary of a 14-year-old schoolgirl under the headline, "WE HAVE SCHOOLGIRL'S ORGY DIARY". A 13-year-old boy, who was identified, was expelled from the same school. Soon afterwards, he hanged himself from his mother's clothesline. The "sex diary" was subsequently found to be fake. Soon after Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1971, a strikingly similar episode involving an adolescent diary led to the suicide of a 15-year-old girl. And Murdoch himself said, of the industrial killing of innocent men, women and children in Iraq: "There is going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better we get it done now . . ." ''

...

[Douglas Caddy]

Rebekah Brooks 'overjoyed' she is to have baby girl through surrogate

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is expecting a baby girl through a surrogate mother.

Daily Telegraph

5:21PM GMT 17 Nov 2011

The 43-year-old, who was arrested over the phone hacking scandal, said she and her husband, the racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, expect to become parents in February and are “overjoyed”.

However, Mrs Brooks also disclosed that the child had had a twin who died at an early stage of the pregnancy.

The couple, who married in June 2009, have been trying for a child for five years.

After having no success, they elected to investigate other options and found the surrogate mother in early summer.

She has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous.

Mrs Brooks edited the News of the World and the Sun before becoming chief executive of News International, the newspapers’ parent company, in 2009.

In July, it emerged that a private detective working for the News of the World had hacked the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl.

Mrs Brooks resigned her post on July 15 and, two days later, Scotland Yard detectives arrested her on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption.

She is currently on police bail. Her lawyer has said she denies committing any criminal offence.

A spokesman for Mrs Brooks said yesterday: “Charlie and Rebekah are overjoyed. While the pregnancy has not been without its difficulties and sadness, Charlie and Rebekah are obviously hoping for a very happy ending to almost five years of trying to conceive themselves.

“Both parents are acutely aware of the infertility problems encountered by many other couples, and in the longer term hope to recognise their own good fortune by working in some way to help others facing similar

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone hacking: NI asks judge to strike out exemplary damages claims

Publisher's lawyer seeks to avoid punitive fines in civil actions brought by Steve Coogan, Sky Andrew and other victims

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 17 November 2011 12.54 EST

News International wants a high court judge to strike out demands from phone-hacking victims for high-value exemplary damages in a case conference due to be heard in London on Friday.

Olswang, the Murdoch-owned publisher's new lawyers, wants Mr Justice Vos to rule that the company should not be liable for punitive fines in any of the cluster of civil actions ranged against it.

News International is the defendant in more than 60 phone-hacking-related civil actions, including cases brought by Sheila Henry, the mother of 7/7 victim Christian Small, actor Steve Coogan and football agent Sky Andrew.

Trials in a handful of "lead actions" are expected to be conducted next year, with the intention of setting a benchmark for compensation cases in the future.

Exemplary damages are payments so large that they are intended not as compensation to the victim but to deter the publisher from doing something similar again.

News International is not disputing that it could be liable to pay a lower level of compensatory damages, in cases where it has admitted liability or a judge had ruled against it.

In October, News International reached a £2m settlement with the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone had been targeted by the News of the World. Rupert Murdoch also made a personal donation of £1m to charities nominated by the family.

Earlier this year, Sienna Miller agreed to £100,000 in compensation after the News of the World accepted unconditional liability for her phone hacking claims, which had been considered a high level of payout before the Dowler settlement was announced.

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone hacking: Alan McGee says detail in NoW PI's notes is 'frightening'

Creation Records founder says police told him that he may have been targeted in 2005 – but believes he was hacked earlier

By Josh Halliday

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 18 November 2011 08.37 EST

Creation Records founder Alan McGee has been told by police what personal details appear on notes seized from the former News of the World private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

"The information that they have on me is ridiculous," he told the Guardian. "The News of the World had my answer machine number, the code to break into it, they had my postcode, my landline, Poptones number, they even had the old account number on my bill. They had too much information. How the xxxx did they get that? It's frightening."

The former Oasis and Primal Scream label boss is poised to sue News International, after the Metropolitan police uncovered evidence a fortnight ago that he may have been targeted in 2005.

Sitting in the foyer of a central London hotel, wearing tinted glasses and a gingham bowler hat, McGee said: "Do I want to take it to a civil case? I probably do. I'm outraged more by the whole ethos of it."

However, McGee suspects that his voicemail messages were being intercepted long before 2005. He says he was "obviously hackable" in the late 1990s, when the Gallagher brothers or other Creation Records artists were rarely out of the papers. Police are unable to confirm whether McGee was targeted in the 1990s, as Mulcaire's records only go back to 2000.

"I can remember stories breaking at the end of Creation in 1998, 1999. I'd speak to Noel and then the next day, 9am, someone would say it's in the Currant Bun. I think if I was getting turned over properly it was in the latter part of the 1990s. That's when I was obviously hackable," he said.

"The weirdest one for me – now it seems to make sense – was me saying to Noel at 11pm 'I'm going to chuck Creation in' and it arriving in the paper at 9am the next morning. I always thought somehow he'd told the wrong person, and he probably thought I had dropped it [to the paper]. I didn't tell the Sun. I don't think he did. I think either of us were hacked. But the police don't have records going back to 1999."

McGee said his voicemail in 2005 would have been full of troubled messages from Courtney Love, who was signed to his Poptones label at the time. In August 2005, there were false reports that Love was pregnant with Steve Coogan's child. Coogan is one of a number of celebrities suing the News of the World for breach of privacy.

Despite being distressed at the thought of his private messages being intercepted, McGee is keen to downplay his own role in the hacking saga.

"Compared to Milly Dowler and the McCanns I'm not even on the map," he said. "In comparison to the xxxx these people have had to deal with … to me it's just morally utterly wrong and bankrupt and I'm outraged by what they've done to other people."

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone hacking: Steve Coogan compares NI to a 'protection racket'

Actor, who will give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week, says News International uses negative coverage as a weapon

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 18 November 2011 12.53 EST

Steve Coogan has compared News International to a "protection racket" that uses the threat of press intrusion to ensure it is allowed to "conduct business unencumbered by scrutiny or regulation".

The actor, who will give evidence to the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking on Tuesday, is one of dozens of people suing the former owner of the News of the World in the high court for allegedly hacking into his mobile phone messages.

In an article for the Guardian, Coogan writes that Britain's most powerful newspaper group, whose titles include the Sun and the Times, employs the prospect of negative coverage "as a weapon against those who get in the way of News International".

"Its behaviour is not unlike a protection racket: be nice to us – that is, let us conduct our business unencumbered by scrutiny or indeed regulation – and we will return the favour. Be nasty to us – ie subject us to too many checks and balances, or curtail our plans to expand our empire – and you will feel our wrath," he said.

Coogan added that the reputations of those who fail to do News International's bidding are damaged if they do not cooperate with the company.

"It's a word in the ear and a life is ruined," he said. "This intrusion into people's lives has been the way of things for the past 40 years. History teaches us that it doesn't matter how plainly wrong something is; if you do it systematically, unblinkingly and for long enough then it becomes accepted, part of the zeitgeist. That is Rupert Murdoch's toxic legacy."

Coogan attacks James Murdoch, who is the third most senior executive at News International owner News Corporation, for declaring war on the publicly funded BBC.

"At the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2009, he said the only way to guarantee independence is the market. No, Mr Murdoch, the unchecked market leads to the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone," he wrote.

The revelation that the murdered schoolgirl's voicemail messages were intercepted and deleted by the News of the World prompted a wave of public revulsion and lead directly to the closure of the paper.

"No amount of respectable, well-modulated management-speak from James Murdoch can disguise the direct link between increased circulation and, literally, going through people's rubbish bins", Coogan said. "At the heart of this scandal is the wholly undemocratic alliance between newspaper proprietors and government. In a hundred years, the relationship will be seen as corrupt as the Corn Laws and rotten boroughs of the 19th century."

Coogan has spent tens of thousands of pounds on his legal battle with News International. "I became involved in this saga because, apart from a few notable exceptions including [the Guardian], no one was giving NI as hard a time as they give everyone else", he wrote.

He calls for a "fundamental cultural change" at newspapers similar to that which took place following the MPs expenses affair. "How we achieve this is yet to be determined, but it is about ethics, common decency and treating people with respect."

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: Hugh Grant and Dowlers to give evidence on Monday

Actor and parents of murdered schoolgirl likely to be first of phone-hacking victims to give evidence

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 18 November 2011 09.43 EST

Actor Hugh Grant is due to join the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler at the high court on Monday to tell Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media standards about how their lives have been affected by press intrusion.

Bob and Sally Dowler are the first of five core participant victims of press intrusion provisionally scheduled to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Monday, followed by Grant.

The Dowlers, who received a £2m settlement for phone hacking from News International, plus a £1m personal donation from Rupert Murdoch to charities of their choice, are likely to give powerful testimony about their treatment by the defunct Sunday tabloid, which they claim wrote front-page stories based on information gained by accessing Milly's mobile as well as their own phones. Messages left on Milly's phone were deleted by the paper to make way for new ones while she was missing in 2002.

Grant, who has become a fierce critic of the tabloid press over phone hacking, is expected to launch a full scale assault on the Daily Mail and News of the World.

Earlier on Friday the high court judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, explained why he had granted an injunction against "unbearable" paparazzi from stalking the mother of Grant's baby.

Actor Tinglan Hong disclosed the full details of the menacing calls she had received telling her to "tell Hugh Grant to shut the xxxx up" when he was on Question Time talking about phone hacking.

The Dowlers and Grant will be joined on Monday by Jude Law's lawyer, Graham Shear, and Joan Smith, the writer and former partner of Labour MP Dennis MacShane.

Monday will be the start of five days of sustained and uncomfortable criticism of the press by 21 celebrities and public figures who are alleged victims of intrusion and have been chosen to give evidence to the inquiry into media standards.

On Tuesday the actor Steve Coogan, who has also railed against the press, will be among the witnesses, followed by Elle Macpherson's former adviser Mary Ellen Field, the ex Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft and Margaret Watson, the mother of a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was murdered in 1991.

Watson is not a name that will stand out in the cast of core participants, but her story could be among the most pertinent. Watson and her husband have fought a 20-year campaign to reform defamation laws in Scotland in a challenge to the convention that the dead cannot be libelled.

On Wednesday Paul Gascoigne's former wife Sheryl will give evidence as will Mark Lewis, the solicitor who has helped expose the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World.

He will tell how he was the focus of a covert surveillance operation by the paper while the investigation into phone hacking was going on as part of an alleged plot to smear him.

Also scheduled for Wednesday is Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing from their holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007.

McCann is expected to tell how his wife Kate felt "mentally raped" when her private diaries appeared in the News of the World and how they battled against a hostile press who wrongly believed they had been involved in the disappearance of their child.

Thursday will be another busy day at London's high court with evidence due to be given by actor Sienna Miller, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, former formula one boss Max Mosley and solicitor Mark Thomson, who has been acting for Hugh Grant in the phone-hacking investigation.

The Leveson inquiry will not sit on Friday and will resume on Monday 28 November when Charlotte Church and Anne Diamond will appear alongside former army intelligence officer Ian Hurst, the Bristol landlord Christopher Jefferies who was arrested over the murder of Joanne Yates but released without charge, and Jane Winter, a peace

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone-hacking victims must not launch 'witch-hunt', says News International

Former News of the World publisher agrees to disclose information to claimants including Jude Law and Paul Gascoigne

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 18 November 2011 12.03 EST

News International has told the high court the celebrities, politicians and victims of crime suing the company over phone hacking must not be allowed to conduct a "witch-hunt" against the newspaper group.

A number of well-known figures, including Jude Law, Labour MP Chris Bryant and members of the public including Sheila Henry, whose son was killed in the 7/7 bombings, are suing the former News of the World owner for breach of privacy. In total News International is facing more than 60 civil actions for breach of privacy relating to phone hacking by the now-closed Sunday tabloid.

Michael Silverleaf QC, for News International, said: "it is not appropriate … for claimants to conduct a crusade. The proceedings must not be conducted as a witch-hunt against my client."

A trial of six "test cases" is scheduled for January so that a benchmark can be set for damages in those and other claims.

News International agreed to disclose information sought by the claimants on Friday after the company dropped an attempt to have a claim for exemplary damages struck out.

Exemplary damages are designed to act as a warning against repeating an offence and are set higher than conventional compensation payments for that reason.

Silverleaf argued that the Leveson inquiry into press standards was already conducting "a detailed examination of what went on at News International".

He said the court should not "cover the same ground" and become an "entirely parallel investigation".

But the high court judge, Mr Justice Vos, said: "It is not a witch-hunt. It is not a crusade. It's to determine the damages that you must fairly pay … I'm not going to allow a 'mini Leveson inquiry' to take place here."

News International subsequently agreed to search a copy made by the police of the hard drive of a computer belonging to Dan Evans, a former News of the World journalist.

Jeremy Reed QC, for the claimants, said the computer contained 76 digital recordings, although he conceded it was not clear whether they might include hacked voicemail messages.

Reed said Evans's computer was "the only computer that hasn't been put through the grinder by News Group Newspapers". News Group is the News International subsidiary that published the News of the World until it was closed in July at the height of the furore over phone hacking.

Reed added that the others had been "smashed up" when the company moved to new premises earlier this year.

Silverleaf, for NI, said: "The voicemails on Mr Evans's computer have already been reviewed … and they didn't appear to be relevant. We will check them again."

The claimants, who also include Paul Gascoigne and football agent Sky Andrew, will also be handed copies of any documents that show whether a private detective, Derek Webb, placed them under surveillance.

They also won an order forcing Clive Goodman, the News of the World's former royal editor, to hand over documents relating to an unfair dismissal complaint he made to the company in 2007 after he was sacked in the wake of being sentenced for hacking into phones belonging to members of the royal household.

News International has already searched for those documents but said they could not be found.

Silverleaf also repeated News International's apology over phone hacking. "These events should not have occurred," he said.

But he drew attention to what he said was the Leveson inquiry's inaccurate claim earlier this week that at least 28 News of the World journalists were implicated in phone hacking because they were named in notebooks recovered form private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

The barrister acting for the Metropolitan police told the Leveson inquiry on Wednesday that it was wrong to assume that the 28 names found in Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks were News of the World employees.

Neil Garnham QC told Lord Justice Leveson towards the end of the third day of the inquiry at the high court on Wednesday that Scotland Yard had not yet established whether each of the 28 names were NoW employees.

"While some of them probably are News of the World journalists many of them could easily not be," he said. "Relatively few of the names are demonstrably News of the World journalists."

NI also agreed to hand over any instructions it issued to HCL Technologies, a company based in India which managed the company's email archive, to delete data, which it did on nine separate occasions.