How to control the superficially powerful

[Jan Klimkowski]

Guardian exclusive: News of the World phone-hacking
Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

• News of the World stories led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor
• Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved
• News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case

Guardian exclusive: News of the World phone-hacking
Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

• News of the World stories led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor
• Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved
• News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case

*
Comments (7)
* Buzz up!
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* Nick Davies
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 July 2009 17.33 BST
* Article history


Rupert Murdoch's News Group has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them.

The evidence also poses difficult questions for:

• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts

• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public

• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel

• The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation but failed to uncover any evidence of illegal activity.

The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of News of the World reporter Clive Goodman for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had been acting without their knowledge.

However, one senior source at the Metropolitan police told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers had found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets. News International has always maintained that it has no knowledge of phone hacking by anybody acting on its behalf.

A private investigator who had been working on contract for News Group, Glenn Mulcaire, was also jailed in January 2007. He admitted hacking into the phones of five other targets, including Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association. Among those phones Mulcaire hacked into were the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, celebrity PR Max Clifford, model Elle MacPherson and football agent Sky Andrew. News Group denied all knowledge of the hacking, but Taylor last year sued them on the basis that they must have known about it.

In documents initially submitted to the high court, News Group executives said the company had not been involved in any way in Mulcaire's hacking of Taylor's phone. They specifically denied keeping any recording or notes of intercepted messages and claimed they had not even been aware of the hacking. However, at the request of Taylor's lawyers, the court ordered the production of detailed evidence from Scotland Yard's inquiry in the Goodman case and also from a separate inquiry by the Information Commissioner into journalists who dishonestly obtain confidential personal records.

The Scotland Yard files included paperwork which revealed that, contrary to News Group's initial denial, Mulcaire had provided a recording of the messages on Taylor's phone to a News of the World journalist who had transcribed them and emailed them to a senior reporter; and that a News of the World executive had offered Mulcaire a substantial bonus payment for a story specifically related to the intercepted messages. Several famous figures from the world of football are among those whose messages which were intercepted. Andy Coulson was editing the paper at this time. He told the Guardian this week that he knew nothing about Taylor's legal action, which began after he resigned from the paper.

The paperwork from the Information Commission revealed the names of 31 journalists working for the News of the World and the Sun, together with the precise details of government agencies, banks, phone companies and others who were conned into handing over confidential information on politicians, actors, sportsmen and women, musicians and television presenters, all of whom are named in the paperwork. This is an offence under the Data Protection Act unless it is justified by public interest. Senior editors are among the journalists who are implicated. This activity occurred before the mobile phone hacking, at a time when Andy Coulson was deputy, and the editor was Rebekah Wade, now due to become chief executive of News International. The extent of their personal knowledge, if any, is not clear: the News of the World has always insisted that it would not break the law and would use subterfuge only if essential in the public interest.

Faced with this evidence, News International changed their position, started offering huge cash payments to settle the case out of court, and finally paid out £700,000 in legal costs and damages on the condition that Taylor signed a gagging clause to prevent him speaking about the case. The payment is believed to have included more than £400,000 in damages, dwarfing the largest previous payment for breach of privacy in the UK, the £60,000 paid by the News of the World for filming Max Mosley naked with prostitutes. News Group then persuaded the court to seal the file on Taylor's case to prevent all public access, even though it contained prima facie evidence of criminal activity.

The Scotland Yard paperwork also provided evidence that the News of the World had been involved with Glenn Mulcaire in his hacking the mobile phones of at least two other figures from the world of football. They, too, filed complaints, which were settled earlier this year when News International paid a total of more than £300,000 in damages and costs on condition that they, too, signed gagging clauses.

The Guardian's understanding is that the paperwork disclosed by Scotland Yard to Taylor is only a fraction of the total material they gathered on News Group's involvement with Glenn Mulcaire. And it is a matter of record that the Information Commission has refused to release paperwork which implicates national newspaper journalists in thousands of apparently illegal acts.

The secrecy around the cases continues. Gordon Taylor declined to make any comment. Clive Goodman, now out of prison, said: "I'm not going to talk. My comment is not even 'no comment'." A spokesman for News International suggested the case did not exist: "This particular case means nothing to anyone here, and I've talked to all the people who would be involved." However, the Information Commission confirms that it disclosed material for the case, and the Guardian has pieced together a detailed account of the evidence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul...ne-hacking

[Jan Klimkowski]

Where are the cops?

Stupid me - Murdoch's goons must have been bugging their phones for those dirty lil secrets...

[Jan Klimkowski]

Former Murdoch lackey, Andy Coulson, is now David Cameron's top spin doctor.

[Magda Hassan]

Former Murdoch lackey, Andy Coulson, is now David Cameron's top spin doctor.

Tory+sleaze = a perfect match
The right man for the job. Watch where you walk.

[Magda Hassan]

UK phone hacking scandal: The News of the World didn't go far enough

From Wikileaks

July 10, 2009
This week the British paper, The News of the World, was condemned by The Guardian for hiring private investigators. The investigators were alleged to have accessed messages left on the answering machines of thousands of the UK's social and political elite. The information was used (possibly unknowingly) by the paper to develop its stories.
WIKILEAKS EDITORIAL
The News of the World didn't go far enough. Earlier this year, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone recordings of corrupt Peruvian politicians and businessmen. The revelations became the front page of every major paper in Peru and the journalists involved, such as Pablo O'Brian, became national heroes.
Europe has had its fair share of similar exposés. Italy's Prodi government was toppled by such revelations and in December 2007, Silvio Berlusconi, who was then opposition leader, was himself exposed on a phone call leaked from an anti-corruption investigation. Further revelations from Berlusconi's circle were expected later this year, but by May the Italian Prime Minister had introduced "British style" legislation to prevent the Italian press from publishing them. Berlusconi justified the new law by saying that the privacy of Italian citizens was threatened by the press.
Now in Britain, we see similar sanctimonious hand-wringing over the "privacy rights" of the British elite. These individuals, through active scheming and quiet acceptance, have turned the UK into what Privacy International now bills as an "Endemic Surveillance Society". Barely a month goes by without the government and its supporters pushing another Orwellian state surveillance scheme. But now, like Berlusconi, these elites purport a sudden interest in protecting the privacy rights of the people, not by rolling back such schemes, but by gagging the press.
Despite this, the Guardian, in seeing an opportunity to attack a journalistic and a class rival, has been doing its level best to castrate British Journalism by tut-tuting in article after article about the News' alleged sourcing improprieties; A tabloid newspaper doing investigative journalism! Journalists skirting the law to expose the truth! The long suffering of British billionaires—and the Royalty! And did we mention that the News' is owned by Rupert Murdoch?—so, um.. you know, the enemy of my enemy and all that! The Guardian's coverage is disproportionate. It is moral opportunism. It is the worst kind of snobbery. It is an excuse to mention tabloid stories in a broadsheet. And it is dangerous. The result be will a publishing climate and probably legislation aimed at keeping the British public in the dark. The implicit lionization of nanny journalism by the Guardian is shameful.
The right to freedom of speech is not short hand for the right to pontificate. We defend speech freedoms for their connection to a deeper underlying concept—the Right to Know. Without understanding the world around us we can not function. Without an informed public, democracy has no meaning and civilization is adrift. Through understanding the truth about ourselves and the world around us, we are able to advance and survive.
The News of the World should have released the tapes made by its private investigators. The elite exposed are the usual clients of such private intelligence firms. The democratic process should not be denied the same high quality information that businessmen, celebrities and oligarchs acquire on a daily basis.
The real scandal is not that some British papers used private investigators to find out what the public wants to know. It is that more did not. It is that the News' was extorted out of a million pounds because the relevant British legislation does not have an accessible public interest defense for the disclosure of telephone recordings. Until it does, despite the risks, journalists who take their fourth estate role seriously are obligated not to take the legislation seriously.
Journalism is a serious business. It starts wars and it topples kings. It does not care that Rupert Murdoch hired someone, who hired someone, who hired someone, who allegedly off their own bat, creatively went about their job of exposing Britain's pretenders by pressing 1234 into their voice mail.
The actions of major newspapers are "voted on" every day by their readers. Whatever their faults, popular newspapers remain the most visible and the most democratically accountable institutions in the country. Their mandate to inform the public vastly exceeds that granted to the unelected and the rarely elected at Westminister, who are nonetheless quick to grant themselves a blanket exemption from all censorship.
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he stated, "If forced to choose between government without the press and the press without government, I would surely choose the latter."
(Julian Assange)
(see the News of the World's riposté here.)

[Jan Klimkowski]

Tory leader David Cameron's Head of Propaganda, aka chief spin doctor, reflects on the involvement of the newspaper he edited in using private investigators to hack into the phones of politicians, celebrities, other spin doctors, etc:

My emphasis.

Coulson 'didn't condone hacking'

Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson has told MPs he did not "condone or use" phone hacking when he was editor of the News of the World.

Mr Coulson quit as the editor after a reporter was jailed for hacking.

Although he said he had not known about it, he told the culture committee he regretted things going "badly wrong" and had taken responsibility by going.

(snip)

He went on: "I gave the reporters freedom as professional journalists to make their own judgments and I also gave them plenty of resources.

"We spent money in pursuit of stories at the News of the World, more money than most newspapers, and I make no secret of the fact."

He added: "Things went badly wrong under my editorship of the News of the World.

"I deeply regret it. I suspect I always will. I take the blame because ultimately it was my responsibility. I am not looking for sympathy and I am unlikely to get any today.

"But when I resigned I gave up a 20 year career with News International and in the process everything I worked towards from the age of 18. But I think it's right that when people make mistakes, they take responsibility and that is why I resigned."

Job 'safe'

He said he had not "micro-managed" every story but he accepted financial controls at the newspaper could have been tighter during his time as editor.

He said he reacted to the news of Royal reporter Clive Goodman's arrest with "surprise and anger"

But he added: "If a rogue reporter decides to behave in that fashion, I am not sure there is an awful lot more I could have done."

He said stories about phone hacking had been "in the ether" during his 20 year career as a journalist but he had never been involved in such activities.

He also said he had not commissioned and had no knowledge of any story about Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers' Association, who received a £700,000 out-of-court payment from News International over phone tapping allegations.

He said he had first learned about the Taylor litigation "when I read about in The Guardian".

'Judge and jury'

Quizzed about his role as Tory leader David Cameron's communications chief, he told the committee: "I have done my best to work in as upright and as proper a fashion as I possibly can" but said ultimately it was "for others to judge".

Asked about his relations with Buckingham Palace, he said: "There is no problem my end."

Speaking after the hearing, a Tory spokeswoman said: "There is no doubt about David Cameron's confidence in Andy Coulson. Andy Coulson's job is safe."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8160433.stm

The UK has incredibly restrictive libel laws.

Therefore my on the record response to Coulson is:

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[David Guyatt]

The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel.

Where are the cops indeed.

Just where they were when it came to the infamous multiple TV broadcasters cases of fraud, er, TV dial-in shows -- nowhere to be seen. I even had personal correspondence with the head of the Serious Fraud Office over this whole subject (the Ministry of Justice didn't bother to reply whereas other government ministers were too busy filing their expenses claims to treat my MP's letters seriously) who couldn't find the balls to make a case of what very clearly was wholesale fraud and conspiracy to defraud. Never will there be any clearer evidence of a fraud case when it had been openly broadcast on the TV every week for years.

Instead it was left to the blue light in the boardroom of an international City based firm of accountants to conduct an investigation for the CEO of ITV3. Truly the plod had found it's niche.

Don't fuck with the media is the Bill's leading enforceable law these days.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel.

Where are the cops indeed.

Just where they were when it came to the infamous multiple TV broadcasters cases of fraud, er, TV dial-in shows -- nowhere to be seen. I even had personal correspondence with the head of the Serious Fraud Office over this whole subject (the Ministry of Justice didn't bother to reply whereas other government ministers were too busy filing their expenses claims to treat my MP's letters seriously) who couldn't find the balls to make a case of what very clearly was wholesale fraud and conspiracy to defraud. Never will there be any clearer evidence of a fraud case when it had been openly broadcast on the TV every week for years.

Yes - that was outright fraud.

However, I was more disgusted by the deliberate distortion of reality by RDF head honcho Stephen Lambert, in creating conflict where none existed in the Leibovitz/Queengate affair.

In producing and directing over 25 hours of broadcast network television, I was regularly told to sex reality up, to make it more exciting. Which is fine, so far as it goes. However, this injunction routinely leads to the editing of rushes to create conflict when in reality there was none at all.

The only reason Lambert & RDF were called to account on l'affair Leibovitz was because they stitched up Her Maj.

Frankly I care far more about the routine stitching up of ordinary folk, which happens many times every day of the week on broadcast TV.

It's one of the reasons I no longer work for these supposed blue chip, gold standard, companies and organisations.

On topic, I know several tabloid journalists. They are under huge pressure from their employers to "get the scoop". They have large expense accounts which require little receipt-style auditing.

They either spend these £££ on cocaine and hooker parties, or hiring Private Dicks to get the scoop. Those who blow cocaine and hookers don't last very long.

Of course their bosses know absolutely nothing about how these hacks get such fantastic inside information... :motz: