News International - Phone Hacking (part 2)

[Posting a link?]

Forum Guidelines
Posting a link? Read This!

Forgot your password? Need help?
Click Here To Contact Us

Mudflats Merchandise
AKMuckraker Amazon Store
Support AKM Merchandise

Download it here!

[Sirenoftitan]

A long, detailed article in the New York Times this weekend effectively questions whether the prime minister's press secretary is a liar. Three veteran reporters (with four Pulitzer prizes between them) spent many weeks in London crawling over the evidence relating to Andy Coulson's time as editor of the News of the World. It was on his watch that a reporter, Clive Goodman, went to jail after admitting conspiring with a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the mobile phone messages of the royal family. Mr Coulson has always insisted that Mr Goodman was a solitary rotten apple and that he knew nothing of such practices. The NYT reporters interviewed a dozen former reporters and executives at the NoW who tell a different story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/04/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-editorial

<snip>
Former News of the World employee Sean Hoare, one of the sources for the New York Times' allegations, told the BBC that phone tapping was "endemic" within the industry and he had been personally "requested" to do it by his then editor, Mr Coulson.

But BBC political correspondent Gary O'Donoghue said No 10 "totally and utterly rejected the idea that he allowed anyone [or] asked anyone to hack into any phones".

The News of the World said the New York Times story "contained no new evidence".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11188459


Previous thread on this subject can be found here.

[Sirenoftitan]

A former senior News of the World journalist has gone public to corroborate claims that phone-hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the tabloid while the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, was deputy editor and then editor of the paper.

Paul McMullan, a former features executive and then member of the newspaper's investigations team, says that he personally commissioned private investigators to commit several hundred acts which could be regarded as unlawful, that use of illegal techniques was no secret at the paper, and that senior editors, including Coulson, were aware this was going on.

Phone hacking was rife at News of the World, claims new witness

MPs are to hold an emergency debate later to discuss the allegations of phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World.  Former staff claim the hacking was rife when No 10 communications director, Andy Coulson, was editor.  The role of Mr Coulson, who has repeatedly denied he was aware of the practice, dominated PM's questions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11230186

[pacos_gal]

Michael Wolff has some good inside contacts at News Corp and he wrote this yesterday.

News Corp. Is Freaking Out

The company has been caught as unaware, as unprepared, as incapable of responding, as on the ropes, as it ever has in its 60-year history. News Corp. only knows how to be the aggressor; now it’s on the defensive—and it has to defend itself against the very thing that it has always been, that has always protected it, that is the reason for its fundamental pride: Its newsrooms are down and dirty.

News Corp appears to have been caught by surprise with the New York Times article.  The others who have been caught by surprise and are going to be looking for some wiggle room to get out of the mess are the ones who covered up just how wide spread the wire tapping has been.
This could be really interesting.

[Forty Watt]

From pacos' link -

“You don’t get it,” a member of News Corporation’s inner circle in London told me last night, about the phone hacking scandal. “If there was a conspiracy in the company, the conspiracy was to keep Rupert from knowing.”

That is called the circle-the-wagons defense. That’s called everybody-else-is-expendable. That’s called a total freak-out.

Yes, very interesting indeed. 

[Sirenoftitan]

The police watchdog believed as far back as a year ago that it should carry out an independent review of the Metropolitan police's handling of the investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, the Guardian understands.

Senior figures at Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary decided last summer that there was sufficient public interest in the matter for it to investigate the handling of the case by the Met. The inspectorate eventually decided against undertaking a review because it did not have sufficient resources at the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/30/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-inquiry