News International and Phone Hacking

[Jason Thompson]

Oh, let's presume guilt on all allegations then, because that's a much more sensible and reasonable approach.

Personally I think tabloid journalism is long overdue for a review of its practices and reigning in on its methods anyway. If this is the catalyst that leads to such a review then, whatever the result of any ivestigation in this particular case, that at least will be a result worth pursuing. When freedom of the press violates the rights of individuals and, in this instance, potentially hampers police investigations and trial proceedings then that freedom should be curtailed.

[Si Hunt]

It's a few comments on a message board. Does it matter what I presume? It's not going to change anyone's world is it.

Si.

[Rob McCow]

Personally I think tabloid journalism is long overdue for a review of its practices and reigning in on its methods anyway.

I could be mean and say 'On what evidence do you base that?' - but I personally think that papers should be vetted to as high a standard as politicians, given the potential power they wield.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Si Hunt brings up a good point, if we do restrict Tabloids and what they say, they're going to claim that the internet for instance has more freedom for people to make unsupported claims & alligations etc, whilst the press is muzzled.

[Lissa]

This isn't about what the papers can and can't say - it's about whether it is right for newspapers to hack into people's voicemail and whether or not they should be held accountable when they break the law. If someone tells a paper that they've slept with a footballer it is an entirely different type of story than if the paper found out about the affair by phone hacking. One is a freedom of the press issue, the other is not.

[Jason Thompson]

It's a few comments on a message board. Does it matter what I presume? It's not going to change anyone's world is it.

Si.

One minute you're calling for people who buy these papers to question what their support of those papers says about them, the next you're abdicating responsibility for your own comments. Where you made the comments is irrelevant: the point is you said it. What do you expect people to do but respond on here?

[Si Hunt]

No, I was saying it didn't matter whether we presumed they were guilty or not.

A completely different comment to the one about questioning the morality of buying newspapers; they don't need to actually be guilty of this to make that ethically wrong. As I mentioned before, their crimes go back many, many years.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/halifax-pul...113715874.html

[Jason Thompson]

No, I was saying it didn't matter whether we presumed they were guilty or not.

In the context of a discussion which includes the hypocrisy of newspaper editors not finding out facts before baying for blood unless it's their head on the block, I think it does, somewhat. Otherwise aren't we guilty of the same?


Got to love the superb writing in that news article though:

Vauxhall also announced it had stopped placing adverts in the paper.

A spokeswoman for the motor manufacturer said: "Vauxhall has suspended advertising in the News of the World.

[Perry Vale]

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.

Nice use of 'legalese' there, if you ask me.

[Si Hunt]

Does anyone know, has the Sun/NOTW just ignored this story? Or have they actually reported on it?

Si.

[Lissa]

I don't know where it is on the print version but it's about half way down the home page of the Sun's website. Interesting phrases include

DAVID Cameron today ordered an inquiry into all illegal media practices after the phone hacking scandal deepened.

No mention of the News of the World until well into paragraph 3 of the story.

And this one -

A series of other newspapers including the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Mirror and The People have also been accused of dodgy and illegal activities while pursuing stories.

which deliberately spreads the blame and curiously makes no mention of the Sun. Indeed, apart from this snippet of fact

News International — the parent company of both the News of the World and The Sun

the News of the World gets mentioned exactly once in the entire story.

[Si Hunt]

Its akin to strikes or job cuts at the BBC, for example, which eventually has to be reported on BBC News. It always looks to me as if the news reader might suddenly do a hilarious double take, say "excuse me" then rush to check her terms of employment.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

Does RM own any of the Evening Standard per chance? Coverage today is noticably shy of mentioning NOTW by name, and the comment section contains a very clever article which winds its way from The PM needs to Act! To But it's not all Murdochs Fault! To eventually isn't Murdoch great for, amongst other things, "championing British Entrepeneureal spirit". Is Matthew D'Ancona in the employ of RM?

Si.

[Si Hunt]

Quick Google. Oh look, D'ancona is an ex RM journalist!

http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/p...bark-back.html

Good guess. Corruption everywhere.

Si.

[Alex]

Oh, let's presume guilt on all allegations then, because that's a much more sensible and reasonable approach.

I see where you're coming from, but surely The Guardian's lawyers would have checked over every detail of this story, and wouldn't have risked printing it if the case wasn't true? And I can't believe that in this day and age an Editor of a tabloid wouldn't know exactly what practices were used during the investigation of a story.

Anyway, she got away with beating up Ross Kemp because he wouldn't press charges, so she's had it coming for a long time now!

[Jason Thompson]

surely The Guardian's lawyers would have checked over every detail of this story,

Maybe, maybe not. The Guardian may not be a tabloid but it is still a newspaper with the aim of selling itself by printing good stories.

and wouldn't have risked printing it if the case wasn't true?

Let me reiterate: the story in the Guardian is that someone in the police told the Dowler family that Milly's phone had been hacked. That is not the same as printing a story that says the event did happen.

This is the point I was making right from my first post in this thread. The story as printed originally is that Milly Dowler's phone was alleged to have been hacked. That story may be perfectly true. Nothing in the Guardian story stated that the hacking did in fact occur.

That is where my whole bit about presuming guilt comes from, because so far that is all we have: presumed guilt. It is possible, and maybe even likely, but it is not yet proven.

[Alex]

Oh, I'd been lead to believe that the phone had definitely been hacked, and that messages were deleted from it. Hang on, I'll try and find a link...

Here's the 4th of July vs:

The News of the World illegally targeted the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family in March 2002, interfering with police inquiries into her disappearance, an investigation by the Guardian has established.

Scotland Yard is investigating the episode, which is likely to put new pressure on the then editor of the paper, Rebekah Brooks, now Rupert Murdoch's chief executive in the UK; and the then deputy editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned in January as the prime minister's media adviser.

The Dowlers' family lawyer, Mark Lewis, this afternoon issued a statement describing the News of the World's activities as "heinous" and "despicable". He said this afternoon the Dowler family was now pursuing a damages claim against the News of the World.

Milly Dowler disappeared at the age of 13 on her way home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March 2002.

Detectives from Scotland Yard's new inquiry into the phone hacking, Operation Weeting, are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World.

In the last four weeks the Met officers have approached Surrey police and taken formal statements from some of those involved in the original inquiry, who were concerned about how News of the World journalists intercepted – and deleted – the voicemail messages of Milly Dowler.

The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive. Police feared evidence may have been destroyed.

The Guardian investigation has shown that, within a very short time of Milly vanishing, News of the World journalists reacted by engaging in what was standard practice in their newsroom: they hired private investigators to get them a story.

Their first step was simple, albeit illegal. Paperwork seen by the Guardian reveals that they paid a Hampshire private investigator, Steve Whittamore, to obtain home addresses and, where necessary, ex-directory phone numbers for any families called Dowler in the Walton area. The three addresses Whittamore found could be obtained lawfully on the electoral register. The two ex-directory numbers, however, were "blagged" illegally from British Telecom's confidential records by one of Whittamore's associates, John Gunning, who works from a base in Wiltshire. One of the ex-directory numbers was attributed by Whittamore to Milly's family home.

Then, with the help of its own full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World started illegally intercepting mobile phone messages. Scotland Yard is now investigating evidence that the paper hacked directly into the voicemail of the missing girl's own phone. As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly's voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the paper intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which they talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper's own intervention. Sally Dowler told the paper: "If Milly walked through the door, I don't think we'd be able to speak. We'd just weep tears of joy and give her a great big hug."

The deletion of the messages also caused difficulties for the police by confusing the picture when they had few leads to pursue. It also potentially destroyed valuable evidence.

According to one senior source familiar with the Surrey police investigation: "It can happen with abduction murders that the perpetrator will leave messages, asking the missing person to get in touch, as part of their efforts at concealment. We need those messages as evidence. Anybody who destroys that evidence is seriously interfering with the course of a police investigation."

The paper made little effort to conceal the hacking from its readers. On 14 April 2002 it published a story about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly Dowler who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency: "It is thought the hoaxer even gave the agency Milly's real mobile number … the agency used the number to contact Milly when a job vacancy arose and left a message on her voicemail … it was on March 27, six days after Milly went missing, that the employment agency appears to have phoned her mobile."

The newspaper also made no effort to conceal its activity from Surrey police. After it had hacked the message from the recruitment agency on Milly's phone, the paper informed police about it.

It was Surrey detectives who established that the call was not intended for Milly Dowler. At the time, Surrey police suspected that phones belonging to detectives and to Milly's parents also were being targeted.

One of those who was involved in the original inquiry said: "We'd arrange landline calls. We didn't trust our mobiles."

However, they took no action against the News of the World, partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: "There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on." Two earlier Yard inquiries had failed to investigate the relevant notes in Mulcaire's logs.

The parts in bold seems pretty damning to me, as does the whole article, as it suggests they have actual evidence (as in the notebooks of Glenn Mulcaire).

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Nice use of 'legalese' there, if you ask me.

just sounds like really bad English to me. I assume she meant something like...

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew [about] or worse, sanctioned [any such actions as those detailed in] these appalling allegations.

[Perry Vale]

Inconceivable doesn't mean it didn't happen...

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Inconceivable

Hmmm - as the character in Princess Bride found out, sometimes you're caught out by the inconceivable ...

[Jason Thompson]

The parts in bold seems pretty damning to me, as does the whole article, as it suggests they have actual evidence (as in the notebooks of Glenn Mulcaire).

I agree. But here is the part that I noticed:

Detectives from Scotland Yard's new inquiry into the phone hacking, Operation Weeting, are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World.

It's tucked away inconspicuously in an early paragraph, but the story nonetheless goes on to present the rest of the story as if it is fact. Their use of that word right at the start of the article, however, gives their lawyers a get-out clause. If this was indeed a confirmed case at the time of that article being written, there would have been no need to have included that line.

The Guardian may not be the most sensationalist newspaper out there, but I don't see any reason to hold it up as a paragon of virtue in a world of unscrupulous reporters.

[Rob McCow]

Can I have a go at the News of The World and the other tabloids because I find their views repugnant, because their 'Anti health and safety' stance contributes to deaths in the workplace, because their 'Down with Europe' stance is self-defeating and damaging to this country, because they use young women prominently in photographs on one page while railing against paedophiles on the other, because they stifle rational debate with their hysterical headlines and because their views on blacks, gays and other minority groups are ones of grudging, patronising acceptance rather than embracing them as a part of society?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Out of interest I looked at their webpage to see their stance on this story - it's not even there - imagine that!

[Si Hunt]

If you ask me there's a lot of covering up going on. BBC Breakfast were conspicuously referring to it (VERY breifly) as "the phone hacking scandal" this morning. But why would they be trying to cover it up? Is RM this big spider with tendrils all over the media?

Si.