Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: phone hacking 'made Dowlers think Milly was alive'

Parents of murdered schoolgirl say deletion of voicemails gave false hope, and they believe their own phones were hacked

By James Robinson

guardian.co.uk,

Monday 21 November 2011 07.25 EST

The mother of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler has told the Leveson inquiry of the moment she believed her daughter was picking up her voicemail messages, giving false hope that she was still alive.

It emerged in July this year that voicemails had been deleted from Milly Dowler's phone after she went missing in 2002, creating space for new messages to be left, giving her parents hope that she might still be alive.

Bob and Sally Dowler were the first victims of alleged press intrusion to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

Sally Dowler, speaking at Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into phone hacking and media standards at the high court in London on Monday, said: "It clicked through on to her voicemail so I heard her voice and [said] 'she's picked up her voicemail Bob, she's alive'."

She added: "I told my friends: 'She's picked up her voicemail, she's picked up her voicemail.'"

The couple also told the court that a private walk they took seven weeks after their daughter's disappearance was pictured prominently in the News of the World. They claimed photographers were tipped off about the walk after their own mobile phones were hacked.

Bob Dowler said: "The thing to remember is the walk was nothing to do with Milly's phone."

His wife added: "That was our own home phone or own mobile phones."

Sally Dowler also described a July meeting with Rupert Murdoch, during which the News Corporation chairman and chief executive apologised for the hacking of their daughter's phone, as "very tense". She added: "He was very sincere."

Murdoch met with the Dowlers after News Corp subsidiary News International had closed the News of the World in the wake of the Milly Dowler phone-hacking revelations.

Last month News International agreed to pay the Dowlers £2m in compensation, with Murdoch personally donating another £1m in total to charities of their choice.

Gemma Dowler, Milly's sister, told Murdoch in that meeting to use the hacking of Milly's phone as a opportunity to change newspaper practices in the future, the inquiry heard.

Bob Dowler said: "Given the gravity of what became public … one would sincerely hope that News International and other media organisations would look very carefully at how they procure … information about stories, because obviously the ramifications are very much greater than just an obvious story in the press."

The Dowlers learnt from the Metropolitan police that their daughter's phone had been hacked shortly before the trial of their daughter's killer, Levi Bellfield, earlier this year, the inquiry was told.

When this was revealed by the Guardian in July it led to a wave of public revulsion, which prompted the New of the World closure.

Earlier today Jonathan Caplan QC for the Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers told Leveson the newspaper group wanted the right to cross-examine some witnesses. Leveson said it would be "unusual to permit cross-examination outside the inquiry team", but added that he wanted to be "balanced and fair" and ensure that what is scrutinised is the "conduct and practice of the press, not the conduct and practice of any of the witnesses who are giving evidence".

The other witnesses today are journalist Joan Smith, actor Hugh Grant and footballer Ashley Cole's solicitor Graham Shear

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson Inquiry: 'bizarre' story raised Hugh Grant's phone hacking suspicions

Actor Hugh Grant today suggested to the Leveson Inquiry that his phone may have been hacked by the Mail on Sunday.

Daily Telegraph

3:40PM GMT 21 Nov 2011

Mr Grant told Lord Justice Leveson about a "bizarre, left field" story about him, which featured in the newspaper in February 2007.

He added: "I would love to hear what the (Mail on Sunday's) explanation of that is, if it wasn't phone hacking."

Mr Grant said he had not made the allegation in public before.

He said he had been preparing documents and going through his "trials and tribulations" when the "penny dropped".

Mr Grant said the story claimed that his relationship with then girlfriend Jemima Khan was on the rocks because of his "late night phone calls with a plummy-voiced studio executive".

He said the story was untrue and he had not been able to think "for the life of me" what the source of the story could be.

The only explanation he could think of was that messages had been left on his phone by an executive's assistant, who had a voice which could be described as "plummy".

"I was preparing these statements, going through these trials and tribulations," he said. "Then the penny dropped."

He added: "I would love to hear what the (Mail on Sunday's) explanation of that is, if it wasn't phone hacking."

Mr Grant gave details of the story after being asked how many times he had brought libel actions.

He said in the past 17 years he had brought libel actions on between six and 10 occasions.

Grant referred to an article published earlier this year about him attending the Accident and Emergency department at Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London.

The article, which appeared in the Sun and the Daily Express, showed him as a celebrity who waited patiently with everyone else in the A and E ward. However, Grant said that by publishing him in a good light the tabloid was trying to "cover a breach of privacy".

He said: "This is an article that says that I went to hospital – it is my medical record saying I was dizzy with shortness of breath – which was a gross intrusion of my privacy.

"I think no one would expect their medical records to be made public or to be appropriated by newspapers for commercial profit.

"That is fundamental to our British sense of decency."

Grant told the newspapers that he would not file a lawsuit if each of the papers would donate £5,000 to Healthtalkonline.

"The Express flatly refused to pay a penny ... the Sun gave £1,500," he said.

He said he believed that someone at the hospital may be "on retainer" for a newspaper or an agency – when the worker would tip off the press if someone famous was to attend.

In April 2007, Mr Grant accepted undisclosed libel damages over claims that his relationship with Ms Khan was destroyed by a flirtation with a film executive – and his conduct over Liz Hurley's wedding.

The settlement of Mr Grant's legal actions over articles in the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail in February 2007 was announced at the High Court in London.

Mr Grant's solicitor, Simon Smith, told Mr Justice Gray that the damages would be donated to the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity.

He said the first article – Hugh, Drew and the Jealousy of Jemima – alleged that Grant, while in a relationship with Ms Khan, was conducting a flirtation with a female senior Warner Bros executive.

It also claimed that he pretended to Ms Khan that his regular late-night calls with this woman were simply to discuss a movie, that Ms Khan's suspicion was the cause of such acute distress on her part that she barely ate for weeks, and that it was this that had finally destroyed their relationship.

A second article – Guess Hugh's free to join Liz at her wedding after all – asserted that he would be attending Ms Hurley's wedding, would be making a speech and acting as an usher.

It added that as a wedding gift, he had sponsored a chimpanzee at a British zoo and had separately bought an extraordinarily expensive necklace and arranged for it to be inscribed with a personal message from him for Ms Hurley.

The article then alleged that Grant's actions amounted, as far as Ms Khan was concerned, to "a nail in the coffin" and "the last straw", thus causing the end of their relationship.

In addition, it alleged that Grant's gift came despite Ms Hurley's wish to wedding guests that instead of gifts, donations be made to Sir Elton John's Aids Foundation.

A third article – Hugh aren't good enough – alleged that Grant resented having to promote his films.

Mr Smith said that at no stage was any of this put to Grant prior to publication.

He said Mr Grant did not know of a woman from Warner Bros matching this description, let alone that he was conducting a flirtation with her. As far as he was aware, she simply did not exist.

Mr Smith said that the publication of these numerous false allegations in quick succession caused hurt, embarrassment and distress to Grant and damage to both his personal and professional reputations.

Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, offered its apologies and agreed not to repeat the false allegations.

As well as the damages, which Grant made clear from the outset would be donated to charity, it also agreed to reimburse his legal costs in full.

Afterwards, Grant said in a statement: "I took this action because I was tired of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday papers publishing almost entirely fictional articles about my private life for their own financial gain.

"I'm also hoping that this statement in court might remind people that the so-called 'close friends' or 'close sources' on which these stories claim to be based almost never exist."

[Douglas Caddy]

Elle Macpherson's aide fired over leaks, inquiry hears

A former adviser to supermodel Elle Macpherson today told the phone hacking inquiry that she was fired after being suspected of leaking stories.

Daily Telegraph

22 Nov 2011

Mary-Ellen Field said she was accused of speaking to the media because she was an "alcoholic" and was persuaded to spend time in a clinic.

Lord Justice Leveson was told that Ms Field had made allegations of phone hacking, spoken to police and was seeking damages in the High Court.

Ms Field told the inquiry that she was a specialist in "intellectual property rights" and was working for an international tax and accountancy firm when she met Macpherson in 2003.

She said she got on well with Macpherson - who, like her, came from Sydney, Australia - and the model became her client.

Ms Field said the relationship was "very successful" from both a "financial" and "developmental" point of view and the pair did "very exciting things".

She said she and Macpherson became friends and the model confided in her. Ms Field said Macpherson was given an office at her firm.

"She said 'Why don't I move into your office?"' said Ms Field. "I asked my CEO (Chief Executive Officer), who was a man, and it took probably three nano-seconds to decide it would be a good idea to have a supermodel in the office."

Ms Field said in 2005 Macpherson separated from her boyfriend and "tittle-tattle" appeared in the press.

She said the model became concerned about "listening devices" and security checks were carried out but nothing was found.

Ms Field said she was contacted by a lawyer representing Macpherson and told that the model was "not prepared to have me speaking in the press any more".

"I was amazed. So I called Elle," said Ms Field. "It was the first time she was really grouchy with me. She said 'I can't have you speaking to the media. You have been speaking to the press'."

Ms Field told the inquiry that she had "absolutely not" been speaking to the media about Macpherson.

She added: "Until last year I had probably only met about four journalists in my life."

Ms Field said it was suggested to her that she had been speaking to journalists because she was "alcoholic".

She told the judge: "I said, 'excuse me?"' and added: "I thought they had all gone mad."

Ms Field said Macpherson had proposed rehabilitation.

"Elle had proposed I go to rehab to recover from this 'alcoholism' - the same place she goes to," said Ms Field. "She said she knows I would never go to the press unless I was alcoholic."

Ms Field said the model had told her that if she did not go to the clinic she would be fired.

She said Macpherson wore her down and she "gave in" and went to a clinic called The Meadows - which the inquiry has been told was in the United States.

"I have never even had a cigarette in my life. I didn't even know what they were talking about," said Ms Field.

"They wanted me to take anti-depressants. I wouldn't. I'm a runner and I wanted to use the gym and they wouldn't let me because they said it was 'obsessive behaviour'...

"They said I was getting intervention - like in those CIA renditions."

Ms Field added: "Elle told me it was like a spa or something. It was a grade-one psychiatric facility with men going around with guns."

She went on: "One woman had injected drugs between her toes ... It was horrible."

Ms Field said after she left the clinic Macpherson had told her that she was "fired". She had lost her job and her firm after being told that she was "indiscreet" and that "Elle didn't trust me".

She said the loss of her job had a "very serious effect" on her which was made worse by her becoming "ill".

Ms Field said police investigating phone hacking had made arrests in 2006 and following those developments she had contacted police and begun litigation.

A lawyer representing Ms Field had earlier told the inquiry how it emerged that stories had been obtained by the unlawful interception of Ms Field's and Macpherson's voicemails.

[Douglas Caddy]

November 21, 2011

Testimony in British Hacking Inquiry Takes Debate Beyond Murdoch’s Empire

The New York Times

By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA

LONDON — The actor Hugh Grant said Monday that British tabloid newspapers had broken into his home, accessed medical records and menaced his family as part of a “cowardly, bullying and shocking” press culture whose targets were not just celebrities, politicians and the police, but also people left vulnerable by misfortune.

Through two hours of testimony before an official inquiry into press practices, Mr. Grant raised new accusations that broadened the debate to include all of the mass-circulation British tabloids, not just those owned by the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Mr. Grant displayed a barely contained animosity toward press intrusion that contrasted starkly with the boyish congeniality of his film roles.

The inquiry was prompted by accusations that The News of the World, the weekly tabloid that the News Corporation shut down in July, had intercepted the voice mail messages of nearly 6,000 people, including Mr. Grant and some of his former girlfriends. But many of his accusations on Monday were aimed at The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, two papers belonging to Associated Newspapers that are among the best selling in Britain; they had previously been untainted by the phone-hacking scandal.

Mr. Grant said he could not “for the life of me think of any conceivable source” for an article in The Mail on Sunday in 2007 that claimed that his relationship with the socialite Jemima Khan was imperiled by late-night conversations with a “plummy-voiced” British-born film executive, “other than the voice mails that were on my mobile telephone.” He sued and won damages, he said, because the claim of any intimate relationship was false.

In a statement issued shortly after his testimony on Monday, The Mail on Sunday strongly denied hacking his phone and said its information had come instead from a freelance journalist who spoke to a source close to Ms. Khan. “Mr. Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media,” the paper said.

At the inquiry, Mr. Grant, 51, insisted that he was not pursuing a vendetta against the press over coverage of a 1995 scandal, when the police in Los Angeles caught Mr. Grant in a car with a prostitute he picked up on Sunset Boulevard and he was fined $1,180.

“I totally expected there to be a press storm” after that, he said, and he saw the matter as fair game. “I’m the man who was arrested with a prostitute,” he said later, noting wryly that his career survived the humiliation.

But he saw no fairness in what happened next: Mr. Grant said that in the aftermath of the prostitution scandal, the door to his London apartment was taken off its hinges and his apartment broken into. Nothing was taken, he said, but details of his interior furnishings were published a few days later, an episode he said was the work of a cynically intrusive tabloid press ready to break the law in pursuit of scoops and profits, not of truth.

He described a more recent episode in which the grandmother of his infant daughter was “menaced” by a paparazzi photographer who was staking out her home: when she snapped a picture of the photographer, Mr. Grant said, the photographer drove his car straight at her in the street outside her home.

Mr. Grant said he suspected that his medical records had been illegally obtained for at least two articles in different newspapers, and that the police were tipping off journalists about calls from celebrities. “A photographer or a journalist would show up on your doorstep before a policeman,” he said.

The judge heading the inquiry, Sir Brian Leveson, has said that one of his main tasks will be to consider whether there should be tighter regulation and stronger penalties for newspapers that use abusive techniques.

Mr. Grant said he is a strong supporter of a freewheeling press as fundamental to democracy, but is opposed to the “privacy-stealing industry” that the tabloids had become. “I’m the reverse of a muzzler,” he said, “but I personally feel that the license the British tabloid press has used to expropriate the right to privacy is a scandal that weak governments have allowed to continue for too long.”

Britain, he said, has a long national history of standing up to bullies, and the phone-hacking scandal had given the country the chance to rein in a bullying tabloid culture that he and fellow celebrities saw as the worst in the world. “I just think a section of the press has been allowed to become toxic,” he said.

Referring to the journalists and private investigators implicated in the scandal at The News of the World, he said, “It’s highly unlikely they were practicing dark arts for only one title.”

The inquiry also heard from the parents of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered in 2002. The News of the World has admitted hacking into her voice mail in the days before her body was discovered, and deleting messages when her in-box was full to make room for more.

Her mother, Sally, told the inquiry on Monday that discovering the deletions had given her what proved to be painfully false hope that her daughter was still alive and checking her voice mail. She called on Mr. Murdoch to use the scandal “as an opportunity to put things right in future, and have some decent standards, and uphold them.”

The inquiry has revealed startling statistics about the practice of voice mail interceptions, based on 11,000 pages of notes seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator employed by The News of the World. Mr. Mulcaire received 2,266 requests for interceptions from 28 journalists, his notes suggest. At least 16 former News of the World employees have been arrested in the matter so far.

The Dowlers and Mr. Grant are among the movie stars, bereaved families, former intelligence officials and soccer players, among others, who are scheduled to testify in the coming days on the “culture, practice and ethics of the press,” the subject of the inquiry. The actors Steve Coogan and Sienna Miller, the author J. K. Rowling and the father of another missing child, Madeleine McCann, are among those expected to testify.

At the outset of the hearing, the presiding judge denied a request from a lawyer for a British newspaper group to question the witnesses. He said he would afford the witnesses something they said the press had denied them: “a right of reply.”

[Douglas Caddy]

Leveson inquiry: Coogan claims Andy Coulson set him up in 'sting'

Actor says former News of the World editor published details about affair despite assurances from showbiz columnist

By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 22 November 2011 11.40 EST

[Link to video]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/22/leveson-inquiry-coogan-coulson-sting

Steve Coogan has claimed at the Leveson inquiry that "lurid" details of his private life were revealed by the News of the World after he was set up in a "sociopathic sting" by former editor Andy Coulson and the paper's ex showbiz columnist.

The actor and comedian told Lord Justice Leveson at London's high court on Tuesday that Rav Singh, the former News of the World showbiz columnist, agreed not to publish explicit details about Coogan's extra-marital affair in April 2004 if he would confirm less salacious details.

"I begged him not to put in some of the more lurid details of the story, and he said if I confirmed certain aspects of the story in return he would guarantee that the more lurid details would be left out of the story," Coogan said.

"I confirmed certain details for him and he gave me his word that the more embarrassing part of the story which I knew would upset my then wife's family would be omitted."

However, Coogan then claimed that Coulson got in touch and said the NoW would publish all the details in the next Sunday's newspaper.

"After that my manager received a phone call from Coulson that they were going to put everything in the paper," Coogan said.

Coogan said that two years earlier he had received another phone call from Singh, who warned the actor he was about to be the subject of a NoW sting.

"[singh told Coogan that] I was about to receive a phone call which would come from Andy Coulson's office," Coogan said. "There was a girl in Andy Coulson's office who was going to speak to me on the phone, the phone call would be recorded and she would try to entice me into talking about intimate details of her and my life."

Coogan said that Singh told him to purposefully "obfuscate" on the phone, because he knew that Coulson would allegedly be listening, and no story was published.

In just under two hours of testimony, Coogan told how his life had been laid bare by the tabloid newspapers over the years.

"My closet is empty of skeletons as a result of the press, so unwittingly they have made me immune in some ways," he said

Edited November 22, 2011 by Douglas Caddy

[John Simkin]

Australian police are investigating a former senator's allegations that an executive from Rupert Murdoch's News Limited offered him favourable newspaper coverage and "a special relationship" in return for voting against government legislation.

Bill O'Chee made the allegations in a nine-page statement to police and they were published Wednesday by Fairfax Media newspapers, rivals of News Corp's Australian subsidiary.

The newspapers reported that an unnamed executive of News Ltd asked O'Chee during a lunch on 13 June 1998 to vote against his conservative government's legislation on the creation of digital TV in Australia. The News group stood to profit from the legislation failing.

The Australian federal police said in a statement on Wednesday that O'Chee's allegations had been under investigation since 4 November. "As this matter is ongoing it would not be appropriate to comment any further," the statement said.

Offering a senator a bribe or inducement to influence a vote is an offence punishable by up to six months in prison.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/23/murdoch-news-corp-senator-bribe

[Douglas Caddy]

James Murdoch departures 'may herald his exit from papers'

Evening Standard (U.K.)

By Gideon Spanier

23 Nov 2011

James Murdoch has dramatically quit as director of the companies that publish the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times and analysts said he could soon sever all ties with the troubled newspaper group.

The surprise move, which has seen Rupert Murdoch's son resign a string of directorships at News International, also raises questions about parent company News Corporation's commitment to its newspapers.

Companies House filings show James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of both News Group Newspapers Limited - publisher of the Sun - and Times Newspapers Limited, which operates The Times and Sunday Times. NGN used to operate the News of the World and remains embroiled in legal action over phone hacking. NI insisted that James Murdoch was not walking away from the UK newspaper arm.

A spokesman said: "James Murdoch doesn't step back from NI. He remains chairman." He is also still a director of key holding company NI Group Limited and of Times Newspapers Holdings - the editorial board set up in 1981 to ensure the independence of the paper when Rupert Murdoch bought it.

However, those close to Murdoch say he now has a more hands-off role.

Claire Enders, analyst at Enders Analysis, said: "It may well be there's no further good from having James Murdoch as chairman of News International. "It's been clearly flagged up by John Whittingdale that the Culture, Media and Sport select committee is not satisfied by the explanations of James Murdoch even though they don't think he's been mendacious."

The departures come as James Murdoch faces calls to quit as chairman of BSkyB at next week's AGM. His decision means no member of the Murdoch family now sits on the boards of the flagship UK papers. Rupert Murdoch used to be a director of NGN and TNL but stepped down after his son took over as NI executive chairman in 2007. James Murdoch has also quit at least one other subsidiary, News International Holdings.

Tom Mockridge, former boss of Sky Italia who replaced Rebekah Brooks as NI chief executive in July, has taken over from him at NGN and TNL.

Enders said Murdoch still faces intense pressure as the police investigate hacking at the News of the World. "He can step down from all these positions but he won't stop any of the other issues surrounding his stewardship," she said.

Enders dismissed talk News Corp would sell the UK papers.

[Douglas Caddy]

Poster's note: As a lawyer, I view this move by James Murdoch, orchestrated by his father, as part of a late in the game scheme to forestall/avoid criminal prosecution in the U.K. However, it appears to be increasingly likely that there will be some form of criminal charges ultimately filed in the U.S. against certain persons and segments of the Murdoch empire. Viewed as a whole, the Murdoch empire has been revealed publicly to have all the earmarks of an organized criminal conspiratorial enterprise. Unless there is criminal prosecution of some type against it, there is great fear that the Murdoch empire will at some time in the near future revert to its ancestral habits.

-------------------------------------------------------

James Murdoch resigns from Sun and Times boards

James Murdoch remains executive chairman of News International but leaves board of NGN, the firm subject to civil lawsuits over phone hacking

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 23 November 2011 09.37 EST

James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of the immediate parent companies of the Sun and the Times, one of which is the business named as a defendant in all the phone-hacking civil lawsuits brought against the News of the World.

It emerged on Wednesday that the 38-year-old resigned in September as director of News Group Newspapers – owners of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World, and Times Newspapers Ltd, home to the Times and Sunday Times – as he relocates from London to New York.

News Group Newspapers is the company subject of a string of lawsuits for alleged breaches of privacy stemming from phone hacking, and it is the business unit that anybody wanting to sue either the Sun or News of the World would have to cite as a defendant in a legal case.

News Corporation, the ultimate parent company, said James Murdoch's departure from the boards was essentially a tidying up exercise. It added that the son of Rupert Murdoch remains as executive chairman of News International, which is the operation that runs the company's three British newspapers.

Insiders said that "nobody should read too much into the changes". They noted that James Murdoch remains on the board of a holding company NI Group Ltd and the Times editorial board whose function it is to approve the appointment of new editors of that newspaper.

James Murdoch took over as executive chairman of News International in late 2007, and has been called to give evidence to parliament twice to explain why the company did not find out that phone hacking at the News of the World was more widespread in the period running up to the arrest of Glenn Mulcaire in 2006. Mulcaire carried out hacking on behalf of the newspaper.

[Douglas Caddy]

Kate McCann felt 'violated' by newspaper

By Sam Marsden, Rosa Silverman, Catherine Wylie

The Independent

Wednesday 23 November 2011

[View video]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/editor-berated-madeleine-mccanns-parents-6266466.html#

Kate McCann told the Leveson Inquiry today that she felt like "climbing into a hole and not coming out" when the News of the World printed her intensely personal diary.

She described feeling "violated" by the paper's publication of the leaked journal, which she began after her daughter Madeleine disappeared on holiday in Portugal in 2007.

Mrs McCann, 43, said the diary - which was so private she did not even show it to her husband Gerry - was her only way of communicating with her missing daughter.

She had just returned from church on Sunday September 14 2008 when she received a text message from a friend which read "Saw your diary in the newspapers, heartbreaking. I hope you're all right", the press standards inquiry heard.

Mrs McCann recalled that this came "totally out of the blue" and left her with a "horribly panicky feeling".

The News of the World had apparently obtained a translation of her diary from the Portuguese police and published it without her permission, the inquiry was told.

Mrs McCann said: "I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine.

"There was absolutely no respect shown for me as a grieving mother or a human being or to my daughter.

"It made me feel very vulnerable and small, and I just couldn't believe it.

"It didn't stop there. It's not just a one-day thing. The whole week was incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just couldn't believe the injustice.

"I just recently read through my diary entries at that point in that week, and I talk about climbing into a hole and not coming out because I just felt so worthless that we had been treated like that."

Mr McCann, 43, said his wife felt "mentally raped" by the News of the World's publication of the journal under the headline: "Kate's diary: in her own words."

[John Simkin]

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World reporter and whistleblower, died of natural causes, according to the coroner conducting the inquest into his death.

Hertfordshire coroner Edward Thomas said that Hoare, who suffered from alcoholic liver disease and whose body was found at his home in Watford on 18 July, used alcohol "as a crutch" to cope with the stress generated by the phone-hacking scandal. He is thought to have been dead for some time.

Thomas added that Hoare died of natural causes and said the journalist had used drink to help him cope with the pressure "generated by breaking the News International story".

A postmortem into Hoare's death in July found no evidence of third-party involvement and concluded that his death was non-suspicious.

However, at the time Hertfordshire police said they were waiting for the results of toxicology tests and were continuing to examine "health problems" identified during the autopsy.

Hoare was the first named journalist to allege that the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking carried out by his staff.

He worked for the Sun and News of the World with Coulson, before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems. He had spoken openly to a number of news organisations about the practice of phone hacking.

Hoare is understood to have lived in a first-floor flat in Watford with his wife, Joanne.

He returned to the spotlight at the height of the phone-hacking scandal in July, shortly before his death, after he told the New York Times that reporters at the NoW were able to use police technology to locate people via mobile phone signals in exchange for payments to officers. He said journalists were able to buy mobile-phone tracking data from police for £300.

Hoare had also given further details about "pinging" to Guardian journalists in July.

He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism "being cleaned up", and said he had decided to blow the whistle on the activities of some of his former NoW colleagues with that aim in mind.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/23/sean-hoare-news-of-the-world

[John Dolva]

''no evidence of third-party involvement''

They sure want to warn any whistleblower who in fact perform great public services. This vulnerable man should not have been subjected to such levels of stress but then that is typical Murdoch MO. The finding clearly reveals the ruling dogma.

edit typo

Edited November 24, 2011 by John Dolva

[Douglas Caddy]

J.K. Rowling chased from home by press, she says

By Richard Allen Greene,

CNN

updated 1:11 PM EST, Thu November 24, 2011

J.K. Rowling says she felt blackmailed by The Sun newspaper over a photo opportunity

The author tells British inquiry that press violated her child's privacy

CNN's Piers Morgan says he will testify before the Leveson Inquiry

London (CNN) -- Paparazzi hounded "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling so constantly after her children were born that she felt like a hostage in her own house, she told a government-backed inquiry into British press ethics and practices Thursday.

She could not go outside without being photographed for a week after the births of her second and third children, she told the Leveson Inquiry.

And it was "hard to say how I angry I was" at finding that a journalist had managed to slip a note into her 5-year-old daughter's school bag, she said.

"A child, no matter who their parents are, deserves privacy. ... It's a fairly black-and-white issue," she said, arguing that a child had no say in who their parents were or what they did.

She had to move out of an earlier house because of harassment by journalists, she said.

UK phone-hacking inquiry opens "I really was a sitting duck for anyone that wanted to find me," Rowling said of the home she bought just as her fictional boy wizard became a worldwide sensation in 1997.

Rowling then described how a manuscript of one of her books was stolen from the printers and came into the hands of The Sun newspaper after apparently being found by an unemployed man "in a field."

She had to take legal action to prevent the contents of the book being revealed pre-publication, she said, and felt The Sun was trying to turn the situation into a photo opportunity.

"I felt I was being blackmailed -- what they really wanted was a photo of me gratefully receiving back the stolen manuscript," she said.

Rowling said a "wholly untrue" Daily Express story, which claimed she had based an unpleasant character on her ex-husband, had meant she had to have a "horrible" conversation with their young daughter to explain that it was not the case.

"This episode caused real emotional hurt," she said, because her daughter had to cope with other children believing that about her father.

Rowling added: "It portrayed me as a vindictive person who would use a book to vilify anyone against whom I had a grudge."

Rowling also pointed to a story published in the Sunday Mirror, which claimed her husband had given up his job as a doctor "to be at the beck and call of his obscenely rich wife," she said.

This was "damaging misinformation" about her husband, who is not a celebrity, she said, because it led colleagues to believe he had abandoned his medical career. The paper subsequently apologized.

Defamatory articles spread like fire and are difficult to contain, she told the inquiry, but she had no "magical answer" to the problem of abuses by the press.

Actress Sienna Miller told the probe earlier Thursday it was "terrifying" to be hounded by press photographers as a young woman.

She described being a 21-year-old chased in the dark by packs of men, and she said press hounding had made her "intensely scared" and "paranoid."

"Every area of my life was under constant surveillance," the "G.I. Joe" actress said.

Miller got a £100,000 ($155,000) payout this year from the publisher of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World newspaper over phone hacking.

But she told the inquiry she had sued for information about who was hacking her, not for the money.

The parliamentary probe in which she testified was set up in response to outrage at revelations of the scale of illegal eavesdropping and police bribery on behalf of News of the World, which Murdoch's son James shut down in July over the scandal.

Police are investigating phone hacking and bribery in separate investigations, and Thursday announced their first arrest in a related probe.

London's Metropolitan Police arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of computer hacking early Thursday in Milton Keynes, outside of London, they told CNN.

Also on Thursday, the Leveson Inquiry announced that it would call former British newspaper editor Piers Morgan as a witness.

Morgan, who now hosts an interview program for CNN, "Piers Morgan Tonight," said he would appear.

Former Formula 1 motor racing boss Max Mosley took the stand at the Leveson Inquiry after Miller.

Mosley sued the News of the World after it ran a front-page article claiming he had organized a Nazi-themed orgy with multiple prostitutes. A court found in his favor, saying there was no Nazi element to the event.

Mosley said the source of the story was one of the women involved, who wore a hidden camera and was coached by a News of the World reporter to try to get Mosley to make a Nazi salute.

The Leveson Inquiry has been hearing from high-profile figures all week.

The mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann told the inquiry Wednesday that she felt "totally violated" when she saw her diary had been published in the News of the World newspaper.

"I'd written these words at a most desperate time of my life," Kate McCann said, adding that the newspaper had shown "no respect ... for me as a mother or human."

The publication of Kate McCann's diary came after the editor of the now-defunct newspaper, Colin Myler, verbally beat her and her husband, Gerry, "into submission" to make them do an interview with the newspaper, Gerry McCann said.

Tabloid newspapers published articles suggesting the parents were responsible for their daughter's death, Gerry McCann said, forcing them to sue to demand retractions.

"We could only assume they were acting for profit," he said of the newspapers, adding the articles had no basis in fact.

Madeleine McCann and her parents have been regular fodder for Britain's tabloid press since the 4-year-old disappeared more than four years ago from a resort in Portugal while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.

The girl has never been found.

Most of the inquiry's attention has focused on newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., but the McCanns described their troubles with other newspapers, including the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, which are not News Corp. titles.

News Corp. announced Wednesday that James Murdoch had stepped down in September from the boards of subsidiaries that publish The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

He remains chairman of News International, the News Corp. subsidiary that owns all three newspapers.

Police investigating phone hacking by journalists say that about 5,800 people, including celebrities, crime victims, politicians and members of the royal family, were targets of the practice by journalists in search of stories.

It involves illegally eavesdropping on voice mail by entering a PIN to access messages remotely.

[Douglas Caddy]

Max Mosley: News of the World publisher tried to destroy me

Former F1 chief tells Leveson inquiry that after he challenged paper in court, it sent video of alleged orgy to motorsport bosses

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 10.14 EST

Max Mosley, the former Formula One boss who was caught up in a News of the World video sex sting, has told the Leveson inquiry that the tabloid's publisher set out to "destroy him" for challenging what they had done.

He told Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into press standards on Thursday that after he challenged the Sunday tabloid in court, it responded by sending a film of him participating in an alleged sado-masochistic orgy to the governing body of world motorsport.

In Mosley's evidence to the inquiry, he said that News of the World publisher News International sent the "entire video" inviting the FIA to "show it to all members". It was "several hours long" and sent on behalf of the company by its lawyers, Farrers.

The News of the World video was sent to the FIA in the week after it had splashed on a story headlined "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with five hookers", which was originally published in March 2008. The tabloid released an edited version of the film on its website, without copy protection software "so the video was then copied all over the world".

Mosley subsequently launched a legal action against what he described as a "straightforward invasion of privacy" and eventually won £60,000 in damages in the high court, the largest sum ever awarded by a UK court in a privacy case.

"What they had done was so outrageous, I wanted to get these people into the witness box and prove they were liars," Mosley said, even though he knew that "by taking the matter to court, the entire private information I was complaining about would be rehearsed again in public".

The former head of the FIA repeated the circumstances of the publication of the article and the legal battle that followed it, noting initially that he had no forewarning and that the tabloid had chosen not to do so "to avoid any danger of me finding out about the article and ordering an injunction to stop it".

When the inquiry resumed after lunch Mosley found himself taking in a surreal exchange, during which he attacked Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, who had previously criticised him.

"Dacre said that I was guilty of unimaginable depravity," Mosley said. "Well first of all it reflects badly on his imagination."

He continued: "Well I have no idea what Mr Dacre's sex life is, all I know is that he has this sort of preoccupation with schoolboy smut in his website, Ms X in her bikini, Ms Y showing off her suntan … so maybe he has some sort of strange sex life but the point is it's not up to me to go into his bedroom, film him and then write about it."

[Douglas Caddy]

JK Rowling 'felt invaded' at note put by press in daughter's schoolbag

Harry Potter author describes press intrusion to Leveson inquiry and says she felt 'under siege' from paparazzi

By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 12.56 EST

Link to video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/24/jk-rowling-invaded-press

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has spoken at the Leveson inquiry of her horror at discovering a letter from a journalist inside her five-year-old daughter's schoolbag.

In a two-hour appearance before Lord Justice Leveson at the high court on Thursday, Rowling told of how she frequently felt "under siege" from photographers and gave a string of examples of alleged press intrusion.

Rowling said the most "outrageous" intrusions were when journalists targeted her children at school. "In the first burst of publicity surrounding [Harry Potter] … I unzipped her schoolbag in the evening; among the debris I found an envelope addressed to me from a journalist," Rowling added.

"It's my recollection that the letter said that he intended to ask a mother at the school to put this in my daughter's bag … I don't know how this got in my daughter's schoolbag.

"I can only say that I felt such a sense of invasion that my daughter's bag … it's very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter's school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists."

Later Rowling recalled how a journalist from the Scottish Sun had contacted the headmaster of her daughter's school, claiming that there had been complaints about her daughter from other pupils and parents.

"My daughter was being accused of some kind of bullying," she said. "There was not one word of truth in it … To approach my daughter's school was outrageous."

Rowling told the inquiry how she had routinely felt "under seige" and "held hostage" by paparazzi photographers outside her house.

The author said that she had once hid her children with blankets inside their own home to protect them from the photographers outside.

"There's a twist in the stomach as you wonder what do they want, what have they got? It feels incredibly threatening to have people watching you," she said.

Following the birth of her son, Rowling said she was unable to leave the house for a week without being photographed and added that she once gave chase to a member of the paparazzi while with her children.

"The cumulative effect becomes quite draining," she said. "On a general note, the sense of being often unable to leave your house or move freely is obviously prejudicial to a normal family life."

Rowling also told how she was unsucessfully targeted by a journalist who claimed to be a Post Office employee in order to "blag" personal details about her. A journalist purporting to be a tax worker later sucessfully blagged personal details from her husband, she claimed.

"If you lock horns with certain sections of the British press you can expect retribution pretty quickly," she said, claiming that the attitude on tabloid newspapers was "utterly cavalier, indifference, what does it matter? You're famous; you're asking for it."

Earlier at the inquiry, the former Formula One boss Max Mosley told the inquiry how it felt like News International had been out to "destroy" him after he took the News of the World to court for breach of privacy.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Sienna Miller: News of the World stories left me paranoid

Actor tells Leveson inquiry of provocation by paparazzi, adding she accused friends and family of leaking stories to papers

By James Robinson, Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 08.14 EST

[Link to video]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/24/sienna-miller-news-world-paranoid

Sienna Miller said she was abused by photographers and became 'paranoid' when stories about her personal life appeared in the News of the World.

Sienna Miller has told the Leveson inquiry that she was "spat on" and "verbally abused" by photographers.

The actor told Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry at the high court on Thursday that photographers would go to almost any lengths "to provoke a reaction" at a time when she was the subject of intense press scrutiny.

She said she was followed every day by 10 to 15 men. Recalling that she had been chased down streets on dark nights by photographers, the actor said: "It's very intimidating [but] because they have cameras it's legal."

Miller described how a picture of her playing with a young boy at a charity event was sold to the Daily Mirror and doctored to make it appear that she was drunk. She had been photographed pretending to be shot, she said. "The Mirror cut the boy out of the photograph and said that I was drunk."

She added: "I sued, I won, they printed an apology that was minuscule … but by that point the damage is done. The fact that [newspapers] knew that they would be sued and have to pay damages was really not enough of a deterrent in certain situations within the media."

Miller said it was "frightening" being chased by paparazzi by car and said one of them had come close to hitting a pregnant woman when they pursued her by road.

She also told the inquiry into press standards, which has been hearing evidence from victims of alleged press intrusion all week, that she had become "paranoid" and "anxious" when stories about her personal life were published by the News of the World.

Miller said she accused friends and family of leaking stories to the paper. It subsequently emerged that many of them had been obtained by hacking her mobile phone. The actor sued the paper successfully and won damages of £100,000 plus costs earlier this year.

"I wanted to understand the extent of the information they had," she said. "I wanted to get to the bottom of it."

Despite the settlement, Miller said she is still waiting for "full disclosure" of documentation about the surveillance operation carried out on the publisher's behalf.

However, told the inquiry that notes seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who formerly worked for the News of the World, included all the mobile numbers she had changed over three months, pin numbers for her voicemail access, and the password for her email, which was later used to hack her computer in 2008. There was also "about 10 numbers" of friends and family.

"There was one particular very private piece of information that only four people knew about. A journalist phoned up saying they knew about it so I accused my family … of selling the story," Miller said.

"It made me really angry and I felt terrible that I would even accuse people of betraying me like that … but it seemed so intensely paranoid that your house is being bugged. It's really upsetting for them and myself that I accused them."

Miller said that it was "outrageous, unfathomable" for people to behave in that way. "The effect it had in my life was really damaging for me and for friends. It made it very difficult to leave the house … I felt constantly very scared and intensely paranoid," she added.

In her written statement submitted to the Leveson inquiry, Miller said: "It's hard to quantify in words, it's more the state of mind you are in as a result of that level of intrusion and surveillance which is just complete anxiety and paranoia. I realise there are far more serious cases than me, the Dowlers and the McCanns.

"I had to fight tooth and nail to get the freedom I have now. It was this breeding of mistrust … nobody could understand how this information was coming out. It was impossible to leave any sort of normal life at that time."

Miller's lawyer Mark Thomson, a partner at Atkins Thomson, also gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Thursday. He said he had been told his client "you've got two choices ignore, fight or move to Paris" when she "couldn't take living in England any more" because of the level of press interest. He added that the current system of press regulation is "not effective".

Thomson, who also represents Hugh Grant and Lily Allen, claimed: "In private, most newspapers don't think the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] are effective. And that's how they want it … As long as the PCC exists their current activity will continue."

He added that freelance photographers were a problem because the PCC cannot and does not regulate them. Thomson also argued that many papers stopped notifying his clients about stories deliberately to avoid injunctions that would prevent them from publishing, after the UK adopted the Human Rights Act in 2000.

"The bigger the story and perhaps the more intrusive the photographs the less likelihood there is [of notification prior to publication]," he said. "They want to sell newspapers, they don't want to be injuncted … and that's a calculation."

He claimed there was evidence that phone hacking went beyond the News of the World to other newspapers but conceded it was "inferential".

It also emerged at the hearing that former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan will be giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Douglas Caddy