Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media

[Douglas Caddy]

9/11 phone-hacking claims: families to meet US attorney general

Top law official agrees to discuss progress of FBI investigation into allegations against journalists working for News Corp

By Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 27 July 2011 23.30

Relatives of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York are to meet with America's top law enforcement official to discuss allegations that journalists working for News Corporation tried to gain access to the phone records of the dead.

The US attorney general Eric Holder has agreed to see a group of family members and their legal representative on 24 August to discuss the progress of an FBI investigation. The agreement to hold the meeting is a sign of how seriously the inquiry is being taken.

Norman Siegel, a New York-based lawyer who represents 20 families who lost loved ones on 11 September 2001, confirmed the meeting and said he intended to take as many of the relatives as possible to see Holder in Washington. "We are hoping the allegations of hacking prove to be untrue but we want a thorough investigation to determine what happened," he said.

The allegation that News of the World reporters attempted to gain unauthorised access to victims' voicemails was made in an article in the Mirror earlier this month. The paper said the journalists had approached a former New York police officer working as a private detective and asked him to do the hacking, which he declined to do.

So far no evidence has emerged to corroborate the Mirror's story but, should the allegations firm up, News Corp could face a rash of civil litigation from family members. Lawyers have begun preliminary discussions with relatives pointing out their legal options.

"If there is something to the story, then there are a number of different claims that people could file," said Mark Vlasic, a Washington-based lawyer and professor at Georgetown University.

Vlasic said one possible legal recourse open to families would be to sue under the electronic communications and privacy act. Title 18 USC section 2701, which carries a minimum fine of $1,000 (£612) for every event proved, makes it unlawful to obtain unauthorised access to stored communications, including voicemail.

Title 18 USC section 1030, barring unauthorised access to protected computers, could also be invoked in relation to the mainframe computers on which the phone companies store voicemails.

Siegel said that he had pointed out to the families he represents that civil legal action could be open to them. Any attempt by News of the World reporters to gain access to voicemails, even if such an attempt were unsuccessful, could be liable to penalties.

But Siegel said that the priority at this stage was to find out whether the allegations were true. "Family members are painfully going back to the period of 9/11 and trying to recall whether there were articles about their loved ones that could only have been written on the basis of hacking of calls or computers."

Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son Christian at the World Trade Centre, said families were adopting a wait-and-see policy: "We just want to know what's happening with the investigation."

Another victim's relative, who asked not to be named, said she had been talking to a lawyer about a possible lawsuit. "Between Osama bin Laden's death and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in September, this is a very stressful time for us. If the phone-hacking allegations turn out to be true it would be very upsetting for us – it would be such a violation."

During his testimony to the UK parliament earlier this month Rupert Murdoch referred to the 9/11 phone-hacking claim and said "we have seen no evidence at all and as far as we know the FBI haven't either". But he added that he did not know whether News of the World employees or the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire could have taken it upon themselves to do the hacking.

On Wednesday Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, denied for the second time in a week that he printed stories obtained through phone hacking.

CNN, which employs him as a chatshow host, issued the latest denial over comments Morgan made when he was on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

[Douglas Caddy]

No 10 refuses to disclose Coulson's access to top-secret information

Questions remain as to how many knew former director of communications had not undergone developed vetting

By Robert Booth and Vikram Dodd

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 27 July 2011 19.50 BST

Downing Street is refusing to say whether Andy Coulson attended any meetings as David Cameron's head of communications in which he had access to sensitive information on counter-terrorism, Afghanistan and foreign affairs that would have been in breach of his relatively limited security clearance.

But it did admit that Coulson's level of security clearance meant he would have access to certain secret papers.

The Guardian on Tuesday night sent Downing Street a list of 14 questions about the vetting process for Coulson and asked about meetings the former News of the World editor may have attended with the prime minister.

The prime minister's office was asked if Coulson saw documents or attended briefings about the printer bomb terrorism scare at East Midlands airport in October 2010 for which he did not have appropriate security clearance; if White House or US state department officials were informed he had not completed "developed vetting" when he accompanied Cameron on his visit to Washington in July 2010; and if he ever attended a meeting relating to Afghanistan, UK military matters or counter-terrorism at which intelligence was discussed.

Downing Street had admitted he had not undergone the rigorous security vetting process that was applied to both his successor and several of his predecessors.

Coulson, who has been arrested and bailed by police investigating phone hacking and illegal payments to the police, did not undergo developed vetting which involves rigorous cross-examination and background checks by trained investigators to uncover anything in a person's background that could make them vulnerable to blackmail. Once cleared, it allows unsupervised access to top-secret material and previous senior Downing Street media officials, including Alastair Campbell, have claimed it would be very difficult to do the job properly without it.

"These queries seem to misunderstand the nature of vetting," a spokesman said. "Andy Coulson was security clearance [a lower level of vetting] cleared, which allowed him access to secret papers.

"Developed vetting is not an employability test, it is about access to papers. It is required for those who need frequent access to the highest classification of material. This is a small minority and is not a standard vetting even for special advisers and senior officials in Downing Street.

"In Andy Coulson's case, there is no suggestion he was sent papers incorrectly. Nor, as the PM has said, have there been complaints or assertions that he broke the rules in his employment at Downing Street."

He added that it was decided that Coulson should undergo DV after the East Midlands airport scare owing to the "importance of communications in handling specific terrorist incidents".

Downing Street also refused to say which ministers or officials were informed of the decision not to subject Coulson to the DV process when he started working in government in May 2010. It declined to comment on the level of screening applied to Coulson when he started working for the Conservative party which is thought to have been carried out by Control Risks Screening, which offered standard checks for £150.40.

"I don't intend to go into further detailed questions," the spokesman said. "To repeat, vetting is about access to paperwork, not meetings and I think the explanation above, the Cabinet Secretary's letters and assurances set out the facts well."

[Douglas Caddy]

Read academics' letter of complaint over Times cartoon

Read the letter claiming Peter Brookes's 'cynical' cartoon in the Times tried to deflect attention from the phone-hacking row

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 27 July 2011 17.27 BST

Sir,

At a time when News International is being investigated for alleged unethical media practices, we write to object in the strongest possible terms to a recent cartoon by Peter Brookes in the Times (21 July 2011). It features three emaciated African children with distended stomachs, holding begging bowls, with a caption reading 'I've had a bellyful of phone-hacking'.

Many have noted how coverage of the phone-hacking scandal has shunted equally, if not more, important news items from the front pages: the humanitarian crisis in Somalia; the reforms intent on privatising the NHS and English universities; the huge cuts in the UK to legal aid and benefits budgets.

Yet for one of Murdoch's newspapers to use racist caricatures in an attempt to deflect attention from legitimate public scrutiny of its actions is wholly unacceptable. The cartoon is cynical and repugnant, a blatant piece of propaganda that demonstrates precisely the self-serving irresponsibility for which News International is being criticised.

At best hypocritical, since Murdoch's publications do little to support aid to Somalia or other African countries at times of crisis, at worst, inhuman, it is clear to us that nobody who genuinely cares about the lives of men, women and children, in a country subject to worsening conflict, drought and famine, could fail to react to this cartoon with anything but shock and anger.

Tom Akehurst (University of Sussex)

Graham Askew (University of Cambridge)

Mark Bergfeld (NUS)

Cuneyt Cakirlar (UCL)

Jennifer Cooke (Loughborough University)

Sam Cooper (University of Sussex)

Simon Englert (University of Sussex)

Priyamvada Gopal (University of Cambridge)

Stella Hawkins (Hounslow Library Network)

Ben Highmore (University of Sussex)

Chris Kempshall (University of Sussex)

Laleh Khalili (SOAS)

Slawek Krolak (University of Warsaw)

Chris McCabe (Cambridge)

William McEvoy (University of Sussex)

Shamira Meghani (University of Sussex)

Vincent Quinn (University of Sussex)

Lucy Robinson (University of Sussex)

Tessa Roynon (University of Oxford)

Matthew Smith (Kingston GMB)

Aaron Winter (University of Abertay)

[Douglas Caddy]

Morgan defiant as enemies try to implicate him in hacking scandal

The Independent

By Ian Burrell, Media Editor

Thursday, 28 July 2011

The former British newspaper editor Piers Morgan yesterday took steps to protect his high-profile job at CNN, and his six-figure salary, as he issued a statement to deny a series of accusations that he was implicated in the phone-hacking scandal.

Morgan, a former editor of the News of the World and a friend and former colleague of Andy Coulson, refuted claims that his previous comments on the matter were evidence of culpability. James Hipwell, who worked on the Daily Mirror when Morgan was editing that paper, has told The Independent that hacking was "endemic" and that it was "inconceivable" that the editor did not know about it.

The accusations and insinuations have gathered pace. The blog Huffpost UK published a transcript of Morgan's appearance on the BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs in 2009, when he discussed tabloid practices. He told Kirsty Young: "A lot of it was done by third parties. That's not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work. I'm quite happy to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to. I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the newspaper market."

The political blogger Guido Fawkes quoted a 2006 article Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail, in which he referred to a phone message left by Sir Paul McCartney for Heather Mills. "I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heart-breaking.

"The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India and Paul was pleading with her to come back." Fawkes, real name Paul Staines, asked: "How can Piers say he never authorised phone hacking when he admits to listening to recordings of the voicemail of a distressed old man and his soon-to-be ex-wife?"

The Guardian republished a piece from GQ magazine in 2007, when Morgan told Naomi Campbell that hacking was "a very widespread practice". He said: "It was pretty well known that it if you didn't change your pin code when you were a celebrity who bought a new phone, then reporters could ring your mobile, tap in a standard factory setting number and hear your messages."

Morgan yesterday rubbished the claims. "I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone," his statement said. Of Desert Island Discs, he said: "Millions of people heard these comments when I first made them in 2009, and none deduced that I was admitting to or condoning illegal activity." Morgan used his Twitter account to label his detractors as liars, druggie ex-bankrupts and con men.

Morgan's tweets yesterday

* "I don't mind being wrongly smeared with all this #Hackgate stuff, I'd just rather it wasn't done by liars, druggie ex-bankrupts and conmen."

* "For those who don't know who @GuidoFawkes is, here's his biog: http://t.co/3TJEX4k Not exactly Woodward/Bernstein is it?"

* "And as for 'Professor' @GreensladeR in today's Guardian, he admitted faking Spot The Ball for Robert Maxwell so no Mirror reader could win."

* "I'll be making no further comment on #Hackgate. But important for everyone to know who these lying smearers are."

[Douglas Caddy]

Phone-hacking inquiry may need more time, says Lord Justice Leveson

Judge appointed by David Cameron to look into phone-hacking scandal says terms of inquiry have expanded considerably

By Patrick Wintour, political editor

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 28 July 2011 11.57 BST

Lord Justice Leveson, appointed by David Cameron to look into the fall-out from the phone-hacking scandal, has warned that the expansion of the terms of reference of his inquiry has been so broadened that he may not be able to complete the first part of the inquiry within the planned timescale of a year.

He was speaking as his inquiry team met for the first time in London to discuss how it would proceed.

He said "in the first instance the inquiry will focus primarily on what I am calling the relationship between the press and the public and the related issue of press regulation".

He said he would have powers to compel named witnesses to attend and would be discussing with the DPP the extent to which he will be able to look at the scale of specific media wrongdoing before the criminal inquiries have been completed.

In a prepared statement, he said: "It may be tempting for a number of people to close ranks and suggest that the problem is or was local to a group of journalists then operating at the News of the World but I would encourage all to take a wider picture of the public good and help grapple with the width and depth of the problem."

He said it was critical that the inquiry concentrated on "the central and most important issue", adding the "focus of the inquiry is the culture practices and ethics of the press in the context of the latter's relationship with the public, the police and politicians."

He said in September he would be holding in the first instance "a series of seminars on the ethics of journalism and the practices and pressures of investigative journalism". He added: "At some stage there needs to be a discussion of what amounts to the public good, to what extent the public interest should be taken into account and by whom".

He added he would later hold seminars on press relationships with the police, politicians and the political process.

In one of his few specific commitments he said one aspect of the inquiry may look into why "no action was taken in 2006 following a report by the information commissioner" into the use of private detectives and eavesdropping.

He stressed the 2005 Inquiries Act under which he is operating gave him powers to require witnesses to attend and provide documentation.

He said he would not at this stage be seeking to invite editors or proprietors to provide files on which they had based stories into "the utterly inappropriate behaviour of small sections of the press".

Leveson's aides stressed that the Lord Justice of Appeal's repeated references to the press in his statement should not be taken to mean that he would be ignoring the role of broadcasters or social media. The terms of reference were widened by a group of select committee chairmen determined to look at the role of the BBC in seeking to dominate the broadcasting and websites .

Leveson also addressed concerns that he may be seen as close to News International due to the fact that he has attended two parties at the home of Matthew Freud, the publicist and husband of Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of News Corps chairman, Rupert Murdoch.

He said he had met Freud by chance at a dinner in February 2010 when Freud had offered to do some work free of charge on the issue of public confidence in sentencing. Leveson is chair of the Sentencing Council.

With the knowledge of the Lord Chief Justice, Leveson attended two large evening events at Freud's London home in London in July 2010 and January 2011 to discuss these issues. He said he had not spoken with anyone from Freud Communications since January 2011.

Another inquiry member Lord Currie said although he was a past chairman of Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, that did not mean he favoured statutory regulation. In a statement he said: "That is not the case. I believe self regulation with good governance in place, can be superior. Each case needs to be judged on it merits

[Douglas Caddy]

Warning over Boris Johnson phone hacking denial

The Independent

By Sam Marsden

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Boris Johnson would have been attempting to pervert the course of justice if he knew police were actively investigating phone hacking when he described fresh allegations as "codswallop", it was claimed today.

The London Mayor's deputy for policing, Kit Malthouse, was informed on September 10, 2010 that Scotland Yard detectives were looking into claims made in a New York Times article.

Five days later Mr Johnson publicly dismissed questions about the new hacking allegations as "a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour Party" at Mayor's Question Time.

Members of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), which oversees Scotland Yard's work, today quizzed Mr Malthouse on whether he discussed the fact that police were investigating the New York Times claims with Mr Johnson between September 10 and 15.

Mr Malthouse, chairman of the MPA, replied: "It think it is probably unlikely that we did but I cannot recall precisely."

Green Party MPA member Jenny Jones suggested that the mayor must have known there was an active police investigation when he made his "codswallop" comments.

She told the meeting at London's City Hall: "If he did know, he was attempting to pervert the course of justice."

Asked about Mr Johnson's choice of words, Mr Malthouse said: "The mayor is a personality who likes to express himself in particular ways."

Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin, who took over running Scotland Yard on Monday after Sir Paul Stephenson resigned as Commissioner, declined to comment on the Mayor's words.

Mr Malthouse confirmed today that former Met assistant commissioner John Yates briefed him on September 10 last year that police were considering whether there was any new evidence in the New York Times report and that a team of officers might fly to the US to conduct interviews.

Asked about phone hacking at Mayor's Question Time five days later, Mr Johnson said: "I am almost in continuous conversations with my deputy mayor for policing (Mr Malthouse) about this and other matters.

"It would be fair to say that he and I have discussed this. The conclusion of our conversation would be obvious from what I have said.

"In other words, this is a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour Party and that we do not intend to get involved with it."

[Douglas Caddy]

News of the World targeted phone of Sarah Payne's mother

Evidence found in private detective's notes believed to relate to phone which Rebekah Brooks gave to Sara Payne as gift

By Nick Davies and Amelia Hill

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 28 July 2011 16.08 BST

Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.

Police had earlier told her correctly that her name was not among those recorded in Mulcaire's notes, but on Tuesday officers from Operation Weeting told her they had found her personal details among the investigator's notes. These had previously been thought to refer to a different target.

Friends of Payne have told the Guardian that she is "absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed" at the disclosure. Her cause had been championed by the News of the World, and in particular by its former editor, Rebekah Brooks. Believing that she had not been a target for hacking, Payne wrote a farewell column for the paper's final edition on 10 July, referring to its staff as "my good and trusted friends".

The evidence that police have found in Mulcaire's notes is believed to relate to a phone given to Payne by Brooks as a gift to help her stay in touch with her supporters.

One of Payne's close colleagues said: "We are all appalled and disgusted. Sara is in bits about it."

In a statement, Brooks said the latest allegations were "abhorrent" and "particularly upsetting" because Sara Payne was a "dear friend".

Coming after the disclosure that the News of the World hacked and deleted the voicemail of the murdered Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the news will raise further questions about whether News Corporation is "fit and proper" to own TV licences and its 39% share of BSkyB.

It will also revive speculation about any possible role in phone hacking of Brooks, who was personally very closely involved in covering the aftermath of Sarah Payne's murder and has always denied any knowledge of voicemail interception. On 15 July Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International and was arrested and interviewed by police.

The Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been an outspoken critic of News International, said of the Payne revelation: "This is a new low. The last edition of the News of the World made great play of the paper's relationship with the Payne family. Brooks talked about it at the committee inquiry. Now this. I have nothing but contempt for the people that did this."

Friends of Payne said she had accepted the News of the World as a friend and ally. Journalists from the paper attended the funerals of her mother and father and visited her sick bed after she suffered a severe stroke in December 2009.

In the wake of the Guardian's disclosure on 4 July of the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, there were rumours that Payne also might have been a victim. Police from Operation Weeting, which has been investigating the News of the World's phone hacking since January, checked the names of Payne and her closest associates against its database of all the information contained in the notebooks, computer records and audio tapes seized from Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006. They found nothing.

The News of the World's sister paper, the Sun, was quick to report on its website, on 8 July, that Payne had been told there was no evidence to support the rumours. The next day the Sun quoted her paying tribute to the News of the World, whose closure had been announced by News International. "It's like a friend died. I'm so shocked," she told them.

In the paper's final edition on Sunday 10 July, Payne registered her own anger at the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone: "We have all seen the news this week and the terrible things that have happened, and I have no wish to sweep it under the carpet. Indeed, there were rumours - which turned out to be untrue - that I and my fellow Phoenix charity chiefs had our phones hacked. But today is a day to reflect, to look back and remember the passing of an old friend, the News of the World."

Since then, detectives from Weeting have searched the Mulcaire database for any reference to mobile phone numbers used by Sara Payne or her closest associates or any other personal details. They are believed to have uncovered notes made by Mulcaire which include some of these details but which had previously been thought to refer to a different target of his hacking. Police have some 11,000 pages of notes which Mulcaire made in the course of intercepting the voicemail of targets chosen by the News of the World.

Friends of Sara Payne today said that she had made no decision about whether to sue the paper and that she wanted the police to be able to finish their work before she decided.

Operation Weeting is reviewing all high-profile cases involving the murder, abduction or assault of any child since 2001 in an attempt to find out if any of those involved was the target of phone-hacking.

The statement from Brooks said: "For the benefit of the campaign for Sarah's Law, the News of the World have provided Sara with a mobile telephone for the last 11 years. It was not a personal gift.

"The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension.

"It is imperative for Sara and the other victims of crime that these allegations are investigated and those culpable brought to justice."

[Douglas Caddy]

Hacking probe shocks Sarah Payne's mum

The Independent

By Sam Marsden

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Police have told the mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne her phone may have been hacked by a private investigator used by the News of the World, a friend said today.

Sara Payne, who worked closely with the Sunday paper to campaign for better child protection laws, previously said she had not been told she was a victim of phone hacking.

But her friend Shy Keenan confirmed today that Scotland Yard has since informed her that her contact details were found on a list compiled by private detective Glenn Mulcaire.

Ms Payne was "absolutely devastated" when the news was broken to her by officers from Operation Weeting, as the Metropolitan Police's phone hacking inquiry is known, her child welfare group, The Phoenix Chief Advocates, said.

She became a tireless campaigner on child abuse issues after her eight-year-old daughter was murdered by paedophile Roy Whiting in 2000.

The Phoenix Chief Advocates - run by Ms Payne, Ms Keenan and Fiona Crook - said in a statement: "Whilst it was previously confirmed by Operation Weeting that Sara Payne's name was not on private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's list, it has now been confirmed by the Operation Weeting that Sara's details are on his list.

"Sara is absolutely devastated by this news, we're all deeply disappointed and are just working to get her through it.

"Sara will continue to work with the proper authorities regarding this matter."

It has been suggested that the evidence found in Mulcaire's files relates to a phone given to Ms Payne by former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks as a gift so she could contact her supporters, The Guardian reported today.

Ms Payne wrote a column for the final issue of the News of the World on July 10 after it was closed amid growing political and commercial pressure over the phone hacking scandal.

Describing the paper as "an old friend", she described how it became a driving force behind her campaign for a "Sarah's law" to give parents the right to find out if people with access to their children are sex offenders.

She wrote: "We did not meet under the best of circumstances. In fact, it was the worst, most horrendous time in my life. But from that moment on the News of the World and more importantly the people there became my very good and trusted friends.

"And like all good friends they have stuck with me through the good and the bad and helped me through both."

The revelation that Ms Payne's phone may have been hacked follows allegations that the News of the World illegally accessed the voicemails of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, 7/7 victims' relatives and grieving military families.

As well as resulting in the closure of the paper, the scandal has led to the resignations of Ms Brooks, two of Britain's most senior police officers and Les Hinton, one of Rupert Murdoch's most trusted lieutenants.

Ms Brooks said the latest allegations were "abhorrent" and "particularly upsetting" because Ms Payne was a "dear friend".

She said in a statement: "For the benefit of the campaign for Sarah's Law, the News of the World have provided Sara with a mobile telephone for the last 11 years. It was not a personal gift.

"The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension.

"It is imperative for Sara and the other victims of crime that these allegations are investigated and those culpable brought to justice."

[Douglas Caddy]

BSkyB Board Backs James R. Murdoch to Stay as Chairman

The New York Times

By JULIA WERDIGIER

July 28, 2011

LONDON — James R. Murdoch won unanimous backing from British Sky Broadcasting’s board Thursday for his role as chairman of the satellite television company despite the phone hacking scandal that has roiled the News Corporation, his family’s media empire.

The board of BSkyB, as it is known, discussed James Murdoch’s role “at length” and decided he should keep the job, said a person with direct knowledge of the decision. The board planned to closely monitor developments linked to the phone hacking scandal, said the person, who declined to be identified because the meeting was private.

It was the first time BSkyB’s 14-member board had met since a public and political outcry over phone hacking at the now shuttered The News of the World tabloid forced News Corporation, the global media company controlled by James Murdoch’s father Rupert Murdoch, to withdraw its offer for the rest of BSkyB. News Corporation owns a 39 percent stake in BSkyB.

The board meeting had been initially scheduled to discuss BSkyB’s annual earnings, which are to be released on Friday, but the phone hacking scandal had forced it to also address questions about whether James Murdoch should stay on as chairman. James and Rupert Murdoch faced angry questions from British lawmakers earlier this month about how much they knew about phone hacking practices at The News of the World.

Keeping James Murdoch on the board of BSkyB, one of the best–performing and most important parts of News Corporation’s British business, is essential to the Murdoch family’s media empire, some analysts said. James Murdoch runs News Corporation’s European operations, which include the BSkyB stake and News International, the newspaper group that published The News of the World. He is also News Corporation’s deputy chief operating officer.

Pressure on James Murdoch intensified last week when two former News International executives publicly contradicted testimony he had given to a parliamentary committee. The executives said they had made Mr. Murdoch aware of evidence in 2008 that suggested phone hacking at The News of the World was more widespread. Mr. Murdoch denied he had ever been told that underlying evidence in the case implicated more than one reporter at the tabloid.

James Murdoch was appointed as chairman of BSkyB’s board, which also includes three other members that are on the News Corporation’s payroll, at the end of 2007, amid opposition from some institutional investors and pension funds. Some shareholders criticized the election process and said they would have preferred a chairman who was not linked to BSkyB’s biggest shareholder.

Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis Securities in London, said James Murdoch’s support among BSkyB’s board members did not come as a surprise. “He’s done a good job as BSkyB’s chairman and it’s innocent until proven guilty,” Ms. Tilbian said.

The phone hacking scandal might affect BSkyB in other ways. Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator, is proceeding with inquiries into whether BSkyB remains “fit and proper” to hold a broadcasting license because of the hacking scandal still unfolding at the News Corporation.

The scandal took a toll on BSkyB’s share price because some investors were concerned that new investigations into phone hacking and bribery allegations could distract management for the unforeseeable future. BSkyB’s shares slumped 16 percent from their peak earlier this month.

BSkyB’s board also discussed whether to compensate BSkyB shareholders, which includes News Corporation, for the share price drop by paying a special dividend or through a share buyback program.

[Douglas Caddy]

A mere state can't restrain a corporation like Murdoch's

Whether News Corp, banks or food giants, transnationals are not so much a state within a state as a power beyond it

By Felicity Lawrence

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 28 July 2011 18.45 BST

The deep corruption of power revealed by the phone-hacking scandal has led many to question how Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation could establish "a state within a state". MPs have trumpeted their determination to make sure it never happens again. They will struggle.

As if to rub the point in, BSkyB's board announced it was back to business as usual on Thursday. Despite parliament's question mark over the integrity of its chairman, James Murdoch, the rest of the board said they fully supported him. A few hours later the Guardian reported a new low in the saga – allegations that Sarah Payne's mother's phone may have been hacked. But the corporation marches on.

The fact is that the modern globalised corporation is not a state within a state so much as a power above and beyond the state. International development experts stopped talking about multinationals years ago, preferring instead the tag of transnational corporations (TNCs), because these companies now transcend national authorities.

Developing countries, dealing with corporations whose revenue often exceeds their own GDPs, have long been aware of their own lack of power. They are familiar with the way world trade rules have been written to benefit corporations and limit what any one country can impose on them. They know about the transnationals' tendency to oligopoly; and their ability to penetrate the heart of government with lobbying. For an affluent country like the UK, it has come as more of a shock.

While traditional multinationals identified with a national home, TNCs have no such loyalty. Territorial borders are no longer important. This had been the whole thrust of World Trade Organisation treaties in the past decades. Transnationals can now take advantage of the free movement of capital and the ease of shifting production from country to country to choose the regulatory framework that suits them best. If restrained by legitimate legislative authorities, they can appeal to WTO rules to enforce their rights, as the tobacco company Philip Morris has threatened recently. It says it will sue the Australian government for billions of dollars for violating its intellectual property rights if it goes ahead with its plan to ban branding on cigarette packets.

TNCs can and do locate their profits offshore to thwart any individual country's efforts to take revenue from them. The ability to raise taxes to provide services is a core function of democratic government, yet governments have been reduced to supplicants, cutting their tax rates further and further to woo corporates. Meanwhile, as the Rowntree visionary Geoff Tansey has pointed out, transnationals have used patents and intellectual property rights to create their own system of private taxation.

If labour laws or environmental regulations become too onerous for them, they can move operations to less regulated jurisdictions. So globalised food and garment manufacturers can move to cheaper centres of production when governments introduce minimum wages or unions win workers' rights. If financial rules curb their ability to invent complex, risky new products to sell, they can set up shop elsewhere. The transnational banks have been past masters at playing off one jurisdiction against another and using the threat of relocation to resist government controls. Much of their activity still takes place in a shadow system beyond the states that have bailed them out.

Nearly three years on from the near collapse of the whole system, the structural reform that everyone agreed was needed has not materialised. Lobbying at the heart of governments in Europe and the US has seen off calls for the separation of investment banking from the retail banking that takes ordinary people's deposits.

So the banks remain too big and too interconnected to fail. Vince Cable, the business secretary, who still argued forcefully this week for that separation, is nevertheless reduced to hoping that the ringfencing of functions preferred by the big corporates will work. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel – wanting to make sure private banking corporations would share the pain for the Greek loans they made as that country hovers around default – was threatened with not just relocation but with the whole banking system being brought down again. Not surprisingly, she backed off.

The most effective checks on transnationals are as likely to come from NGOs and consumers as individual governments these days. Campaigners have found new forms of asymmetric engagement that enable them to take on corporations whose resources dwarf their own. Harnessing the same advances in technology and instant globalised communication that TNCs have used to build up their control, activists have brought together shared interest groups across borders to challenge them. So for example, direct action groups such as Greenpeace have been able to connect protesters against transnational soya traders in the Amazon, with activists across European countries in highly effective simultaneous campaigns against the brands that buy from them.

When the Murdochs initially refused to appear before parliament to account for their corporate behaviour, there was much anxious consultation of ancient rules to see if these two foreign citizens could be forced or not. In the end, it was probably the market that got them there, as the damage limitation gurus advised that a dose of humble pie would be the most effective strategy for restoring shareholder confidence. After the Milly Dowler phone-hacking revelation, it was neither our compromised elected representatives nor our law enforcers the police, but activists on Twitter that brought them down. Attacking not just the brands owned by the Murdochs but those owned by their advertisers until they withdrew from the News of the World's pages, they played by the globalised market's rulebook

[Douglas Caddy]

BSkyB could come to regret its backing of James MurdochNews Sara Payne may have had her phone hacked casts yet more doubt on James Murdoch's reputation for good governance

By Jane Martinson

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 28 July 2011 20.26 BST

Can you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? We should ask James Murdoch, for each time the head of News International overcomes one hurdle, he finds himself dragged deeper into the morass that is the phone-hacking scandal.

Fresh from winning unanimous support to continue as chairman of BSkyB, the head of the company that owned the News of the World emerged to find that the scandal engulfing his business had reached a new low, with claims that Sara Payne, the mother of a murdered schoolgirl, may also have been a hacking target. Payne had been huge supporter of the now defunct newspaper, helping a campaign that former editor Rebekah Brooks considered one of her greatest successes and writing a farewell column just a few weeks ago that spoke of her "good and trusted friends" there. She is now said to be devastated. If nothing else, this grim tale suggests that support can change with the facts, a message that surely can't have escaped James Murdoch, nor indeed the board of BSkyB.

The board of Sky, which contains a majority of nominally independent directors, insists that it will keep a "watching brief" on events. It backed James Murdoch because of his strong record at the business – the thing he is said to be most proud of in his relatively short career – and because he convinced all 14 directors that he had the time and ability to continue while at the same time as dealing with the demands of simultaneous criminal, judicial and parliamentary investigations.

Yet with each new revelation of wrongdoing, James Murdoch's own reputation for good governance and management is called further into question, rightly or wrongly. At stake is not only his stewardship of his beloved satellite business but the ability of Rupert Murdoch's youngest son to fulfil his father's wishes and take over the whole of the family firm. Less dramatically, but equally importantly for the investors and directors of BSkyB, will be the questions raised about the company's own independence after today's decision.

It only took a cup of tea at Wapping last week to convince the company's lead independent director that James Murdoch deserved support. The options open for Nicholas Ferguson were limited, of course. Let's not forget, there have been no Murdoch charges and the manifold investigations are going to take some time to come to a conclusion.

Indeed, while they play out, the chief operating officer of News Corporation as well as chairman of Sky could decide that the job he was supposed to be doing in New York from this summer was really rather onerous after all.

But no company likes to have its most senior member subject to such high-profile allegations of wilful blindness or mismanagement. Media regulator Ofcom's examination of whether News Corp and James himself can still be seen as "fit and proper" enough to own TV licences and its 39% share of BSkyB may be in the long grass of a post-criminal investigation environment, but it is still potentially lethal, not to mention humiliating.

After today's decision the entire board of BSkyB will be affected by any reputational fallout. For a start, the independence of the eight directors who call themselves so will become more of an issue. Allan Leighton, the former head of Asda and the Post Office, has been on the board for 11 years, two longer than recommended by corporate governance codes, while another director, David Evans, used to work for Rupert Murdoch. To be fair, those changes may have been made before but the abortive News Corp delayed any changes. Watch for any decision to give cash back to shareholders that increases the Murdoch 39% stake, inconceivable in the current environment.

If BSkyB is to prove itself an independent company following the collapse of News Corporation's bid, then its actions over the continuing chairmanship of James Murdoch is key. He could have been asked to stand down temporarily today while so much is going on. Only time will tell how wise that decision was

[Douglas Caddy]

July 28, 2011, 4:46 pm

Brooks Boasted of Paper’s Campaign in Murdered Girl’s Memory

The New York Times

By ROBERT MACKEY

Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Associated PressRebekah Brooks, left, in 2002 with Sara Payne, the mother of an 8-year-old girl who was murdered by a pedophile in 2000.

As my colleagues Sarah Lyall and Ravi Somaiya report, British police officials investigating the hacking of phones by News of the World journalists “have added to the list of probable victims a woman whose 8-year-old daughter was murdered by a repeat sex offender in 2000.”

The woman, Sara Payne, is known in Britain for a successful campaign she led to change British law following the death of her daughter, Sarah. Under the terms of the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme, parents are allowed to ask the police if a known sex offender lives nearby. After a trial period, the law was implemented across England and Wales last year.

Mrs. Payne fought for the law, which became known as Sarah’s Law in memory of the murdered girl. Her killer lived within five miles of the Paynes and was on Britain’s sex offender registry, and Ms. Payne was convinced that her daughter’s death could have been prevented had she known his history.

Rebekah Brooks, who was the editor of The News of the World at the time, threw her newspaper’s support behind the campaign; the tabloid even provided Mrs. Payne with a cellphone to help her with the campaign.

According to Nick Davies and Amelia Hill of The Guardian, who first reported on Thursday that the London police told Mrs. Payne that she might have been targeted, “Friends of Payne have told the Guardian that she is ‘absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed’ at the disclosure.”

In a tribute to The News of the World published in the newspaper’s final edition, Mrs. Payne wrote that she regarded the staff members as “very good and trusted friends.” She added:

It is easy to forget in these dark times that The News of the World has often been a force for good and that has more than anything to do with the people that work on it.

And it’s these people I have come to respect and it is for these people I write this piece. I do not pretend that they are perfect or always got it right but I can tell you on a personal level there have been many times when they have stayed close and stood beside me — not for the headline or public credit but just because it was the right thing to do.

In response to the news that Mrs. Payne’s voice mail might have been hacked into by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked for The News of the World, Ms. Brooks said in a statement on Thursday:

For the benefit of the campaign for Sarah’s Law, The News of the World has provided Sara with a mobile telephone for the last 11 years. It was not a personal gift. The idea that anyone on the newspaper knew that Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mr. Mulcaire is unthinkable. The idea of her being targeted is beyond my comprehension. It is imperative for Sara and the other victims of crime that these allegations are investigated and those culpable brought to justice.

Throughout the hacking scandal, Ms. Brooks — who recently resigned as the chief executive of News International, the British newspaper division of the News Corporation, owner of The News of the World — has denied ever knowing that illegally intercepted voice mail was used as a source of information by News of the World journalists. She has also repeatedly referred to her role in helping to publicize the Sarah’s Law campaign.

Earlier this month, after The Guardian reported that the voice mail of a murdered 13-year-old girl had been hacked into and deleted in 2002 by reporters working for Ms. Brooks, she wrote in a letter to employees:

I hope that you all realize it is inconceivable that I knew, or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations. I am proud of the many successful newspaper campaigns at The Sun and The News of the World under my editorship. In particular, the 10-year fight for Sarah’s Law is especially personal to me.

The battle for better protection of children from pedophiles and better rights for the families and the victims of these crimes defined my editorships.

The News of the World campaign for Sarah’s Law began in 2000, the year Ms. Brooks became the tabloid’s editor and the paper set out to ”name and shame” sex offenders. As my colleague Ms. Lyall reported in 2001:

The campaign led to lynch-mob attacks, firebombings and rioting in at least 11 communities, with vigilantes in some cases attacking people who looked like the men pictured or who had been incorrectly identified as past offenders. In one town, the home of a pediatrician was attacked when anti-pedophile campaigners got their spelling confused.

Ms. Brooks brought up her support for the Sarah’s Law campaign four times last week, during her testimony to a parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking.

Asked by one member of the panel about her newspaper’s use of private detectives, Ms. Brooks said, “In the main, my use of private investigators while I was editor of The News of the World was purely legitimate,” and used to determine the addresses and whereabouts of convicted pedophiles for Sarah’s Law.”

Pressed by another questioner about her level of involvement with the reporting on the murdered 13-year-old, Milly Dowler, whose voice mail was accessed by her paper, Ms. Brooks said:

The one thing that I would say is that under my editorship we had a series of terrible and tragic news stories, starting with Sarah Payne, Milly Dowler’s disappearance and subsequent murder. … The main focus of my editorship of The News of the World was convincing Parliament that there needed to be radical changes to the Sex Offenders Act 1997, which came to be known as Sarah’s Law. … So I suppose, if I had a particular extra involvement in any of those stories, then it would have been on the basis that I was trying to push and campaign for readers’ rights on the 10 pieces of legislation that we got through on Sarah’s Law.

Asked by another member of Parliament how the public interest might have been served by breaking the law to obtain private phone numbers, Ms. Brooks said, “Many people disagreed with the campaign, but I felt that Sarah’s Law, and the woeful Sex Offenders Act 1997 that needed to be changed to protect the public, I felt was absolutely in the public interest.”

Later in the hearing, when Ms. Brooks was asked by a fourth member of Parliament to describe her recollection of a meeting with senior London police officers, in which she was reportedly warned that her newspaper was interfering with a murder investigation, Ms. Brooks said that she remembered no such meeting. But, she added, “Because of the Sarah’s Law campaign, I had pretty regular meetings at Scotland Yard, mainly with the pedophile unit there.”

[Douglas Caddy]

Poster's note: David Cameron picked Lord Justice Leveson to orchestrate the cover-up using the tactic of delay.

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

Leading article: There must be no delay

The Independent

Friday, 29 July 2011

The man who will judge the British media laid out his stall yesterday. Lord Justice Leveson noted acidly that his terms of reference "grew substantially" after the Prime Minister's initial statement announcing the establishment of a public inquiry. This was a reference to David Cameron's decision that Leveson should examine not only the ethics and regulation of the press, but also the BBC and social media.

The upshot, according to Lord Justice Leveson, is that his report might not be delivered in 12 months as originally planned. His frustration is understandable, but Lord Justice Leveson should be in no doubt that another sprawling, Saville-style inquiry is precisely what is not required.

The hacking story is still developing. The latest revelation is that Sara Payne, the grieving mother of a murder victim who became an anti-paedophile activist, might have also been hacked. Lord Justice Leveson will plainly have a difficult job to prevent his inquiry cutting across the police investigation. That could offer another reason for delay. But that too must be resisted.

It is strongly in the public interest that the Leveson report is delivered as soon as possible, and its recommendations swiftly acted upon. Public faith in the press depends on it.

[Douglas Caddy]

Gordon Taylor urged to come clean about £725,000 payout

The Independent

By Ian Burrell, Media Editor

Friday, 29 July 2011

Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, must break his silence over phone-hacking and explain why he was paid £725,000 in damages for being targeted by the News of the World, MPs said last night.

Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has done much to uncover the scandal, said Mr Taylor must appear before the judge-led inquiry into phone hacking and demanded that the News of the World publisher News International (NI) releases the football chief from a confidentiality agreement which has prevented him from discussing the matter. The circumstances of the payment have been the source of intense dispute following claims before MPs by James Murdoch last week that the settlement was in based on advice from "outside counsel" on the scale of damages likely to be awarded against the company if it took the case to court.

Two former senior NI executives – Colin Myler, the former editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, the paper's legal manager – have challenged Mr Murdoch's evidence and said he was "mistaken" in what he told the committee, arguing that he had been shown an email containing a transcript of a hacked message. It has since been claimed that Mr Taylor was originally offered a fraction of the final settlement –about £60,000 – but the figure rose as the company was made aware of evidence obtained by his lawyers.

Mr Watson, who briefly raised the matter of Mr Taylor's confidentiality requirement with Mr Murdoch during a Commons select committee hearing last week, said the PFA chief executive must be allowed to speak freely before Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry.

"I asked James Murdoch to release Gordon Taylor from his obligations to confidentiality and he ducked the question – the time is right for him to allow this matter to be cleared up. Just what is at the heart of the Gordon Taylor case that people don't want in the public domain?" His Labour colleague, Chris Bryant, said that following NI's decision to release its lawyers Harbottle & Lewis from client confidentiality requirements there was "no reason why News International couldn't release Gordon Taylor". He said the Leveson inquiry had the powers to subpoena Mr Taylor. "The whole Gordon Taylor pay-off is key because either James Murdoch or Colin Myler is telling the truth but either way it looks like a massive pay-off and we need to know what they were buying," he said. "It's difficult to see why Sienna Miller isn't worth £700,000 but Gordon Taylor is."

Although Ms Miller was the subject of articles based on hacked messages that appeared in the NOTW, Taylor received a much larger settlement than the £100,000 paid to the actress, even though no article about him was published as a result of hacking.

Mr Watson is concerned that the confidentiality clause which Mr Taylor agreed to prevented the wider football world, including PFA members, from learning earlier about the risk of hacking. There is growing evidence that the News of the World was engaged in a concerted effort to target the football world. David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Gary Lineker and Ashley Cole are among the football figures concerned that they were hacked. Audiotape evidence disclosed by police to Mr Taylor's lawyers before his 2008 settlement included the disgraced private investigator Glenn Mulcaire briefing a journalist on how to hack voicemails and referring to a voicemail with "three messages from Tottenham".

Mr Watson also intends to challenge a decision by the Serious Fraud Office not to investigate NI's payments to Mr Taylor and others over hacking as a potential breach of company law. He questions the SFO's assertion that the money involved is insufficiently large to justify an inquiry. He argues that the hidden legal payments made by NI to various parties, including Mulcaire, merit investigation as a potential improper use of shareholders' money.

Mr Taylor did not return calls from The Independent.

[Douglas Caddy]

Glenn Mulcaire: I acted only on News of the World's orders

Private investigator at centre of phone-hacking scandal says he was 'effectively employed' by the paper from 2002 to 2007

By Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 29 July 2011 16.10 BST

Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, has said that he only ever acted on instructions from his employers.

The day after revelations that Sara Payne's phone may have been targeted by Mulcaire, who worked for the News of the World for several years before being jailed for intercepting voicemail messages in early 2007, the statement issued by his solicitors firmly pushed the spotlight back on his former News International employers.

Mulcaire said he was "effectively employed" by the News of the World from 2002 until 2007 "to carry out his role as a private investigator".

"As he accepted when he pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges of phone interception he admits that his role did include phone hacking. As an employee he acted on the instructions of others," said the statement.

"There were also occasions when he understood his instructions were from those who genuinely wished to assist in solving crimes. Any suggestion that he acted in such matters unilaterally is untrue. In the light of the ongoing police investigation, he cannot say any more."

His solicitors added that he "already expressed his sincere regret to those who have been hurt and affected by his activities and he repeats that apology most sincerely".

It is the second statement made by Mulcaire since the most serious News of the World phone-hacking allegations began to emerge in early July. He issued a public apology the day after the Guardian revealed that murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked and voice messages had been deleted.

"I want to apologise to anybody who was hurt or upset by what I have done," he said on 5 July, adding that he had worked at the NoW under "constant demand for results".