19 Apr 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Rupert and James Murdoch are set to give evidence at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards next week.
Two days have been set aside for Rupert Murdoch’s long-awaited appearance, as the Inquiry moves into its third module, looking at the relationship between press and politicians.
The media mogul is likely to be quizzed about his closeness to the British political establishment when he appears on Wednesday and Thursday.
Rupert Murdoch closed News International title the News of the World last July in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that engulfed the tabloid.
His son James, set to appear on Tuesday, resigned as chairman of BSkyB, whose parent company News Corporation was founded by his father. He also stood down as chairman of the newspaper publisher, News International, earlier this year.
Evgeny Lebedev of the Independent and Evening Standard, and Telegraph Media Group chairman Aidan Barclay, will both appear on Monday.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
14 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
The former legal manager at the News of the World has denied a “culture of cover-up” at the paper in settling a phone hacking claim in 2008.
Tom Crone told the Leveson Inquiry today that News International’s payout to Professional Footballers Association boss Gordon Taylor over a phone hacking claim was made to avoid “reputational damage” from bad publicity. Taylor was eventually paid over £700,000 by NI in 2008, in payment authorised by News Corp boss James Murdoch.
Crone also reiterated his assertion that Murdoch was made aware of “direct and hard evidence” that phone hacking went beyond “one rogue reporter”, saying he had shown Murdoch a copy of the “damning email” that implicated other News of the World reporters in the practice at a 2008 meeting.
Yet, in a letter to MPs released yesterday, Murdoch said he had not read a key email sent to him in June of the same year by former editor Colin Myler that indicated the practice was not limited to one journalist.
When asked by Lord Justice Leveson if the hacking allegations raised concerns about how NI approached ethical compliance, Crone replied that, in alerting Murdoch, he had notified the highest levels of the company.
“I didn’t see corporate compliance as really within my role,” Crone said, adding that ultimate responsibility lay with Murdoch.
However, former director of legal affairs at News International, Jonathan Chapman, told the Inquiry he believed compliance was within Crone’s remit and “would have been picked up by lawyers on the editorial side”.
Reiterating his tesimony from yesterday, Crone also denied knowing that Derek Webb, who was hired by the News of the World in 2010 to survey two lawyers for phone hacking victims, was a private detective. While he admitted he knew Webb was a former policeman, he repeated he was under the impression he was an accredited freelance journalist, with the paper urging Webb to join the National Union of Journalists.
Crone argued surveillance was standard practice in journalism, arguing that “there’s not a newspaper in the country that doesn’t occasionally or regularly watch people.”
It was also revealed that in one email from former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner, Webb was referred to as “silent shadow”, though Crone denied that this indicated Webb was an investigator.
This afternoon the Inquiry heard from former editor Colin Myler, who joined the tabloid in 2007 after the resignation of Andy Coulson in the wake of the 2006 phone hacking scandal. In a lengthy back-and-forth with counsel to the Inquiry, Robert Jay QC, Myler reiterated the steps he took to “change” the culture of the paper, which he described as “laddish”. Upon joining the paper he ordered all cash payments be recorded and have a “compelling justification”, and notified staff that the use of private investigators was only permitted in exceptional circumstances.
“Whatever acts that individuals took part in, the full force of the law should take care of them,” Myler said.
He added that he did not recognise the picture painted of the tabloid by Paul McMullan as one where blagging, phone hacking and “doing rather disagreeable things” was rife.
Yet Jay was keen to remind him of some of the paper’s questionable coverage under his editorship, namely the paper’s 2008 splash on Max Mosley, in which the ex-Formula 1 boss was accused of partaking in a Nazi-themed orgy. To Lord Justice Leveson’s amazement, Myler defended publishing the Mosley video on the paper’s website, arguing it was “custom” and not playing to “prurient interest”.
He conceded, however, that he should have reprimanded chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck over contentious emails sent at news editor Ian Edmonson’s request to two women involved in the orgy about a follow-up story. In agreement with Leveson, Myler said the messages were “totally inappropriate”.
He was also pressed about the paper’s 2008 publication of Kate McCann’s dairies on her missing daughter, Madeleine. Asked why he did not seek the McCanns’ consent before publishing, Myler said he was assured Edmonson had made the family’s spokesman aware of the story. Had she known, Myler said, he would not have published. “I felt very bad that she didn’t know,” he said.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with further evidence from Myler, as well as private investigator Derek Webb and Daniel Sanderson, a former News of the World reporter whose name appeared on the story about McCann’s diaries.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
10 Nov 2011 | Uncategorized
James Murdoch was accused of being a “mafia boss” as he gave further evidence today to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee about the phone hacking scandal.
During the two-and-a-half hours of questioning, Murdoch trod a fine line between appearing blissfully unaware of the extent of phone-hacking at the News of the World, and attempting to convince the committee that he supervised his company appropriately.
He also explicitly blamed the paper’s legal adviser Tom Crone and former editor Colin Myler for misleading the select committee, noting that their previous testimony was “economical”, “inconsistent” and full of “supposition”.
Murdoch repeated his previous claim that he had not received “evidence of widespread criminality” at the News of the World in meetings in May and June 2008 with Crone and Myler.
However, this contradicts evidence given by the pair, who told the committee in September that they had discussed with Murdoch the infamous “for Neville” email during said meetings. The email contained transcripts of hacked voicemails on the phone of Gordon Taylor, who was then suing the paper for breach of privacy. It is seen as a key indicator that hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman, the paper’s Royal correspondent who had been jailed in 2007 for hacking the phones of members of the Royal family.
He also maintained the pair had never discussed with him the significance of Michael Silverleaf QC’s legal opinion from 3 June 2008, which warned of “a culture of illegal information access” at News International that involved “at least three” of its reporters.
The News Corp boss was scrutinised in light of Silverleaf’s opinion, which also advised the newspaper to settle its case against Taylor. Murdoch insisted that he had no knowledge of the memo prior to his authorising a £750,000 payout made to Taylor in August of the same year. Again, he blamed Crone and Myler, arguing they “should have told me the whole story”.
Yet why Murdoch did not scrutinise the details of the Taylor payout, as well as his apparent ignorance of the scale of criminal activity at News International, raised issues of his competence as an executive. The committee asked, “which is worse? Willful blindness or incompetence by not knowing what was going on?”
Murdoch responded that News International was a “small piece of the News Corporation cake” and that it was “impossible” to manage every detail.
“I can’t believe your organisation has been so successful by being so cavalier with money,” Philip Davies MP added later.
Paul Farrelly said,
The one thing that shows us and any 10-year-old that the News of the World did not stack up is that Gordon Taylor was not a royal or a member of the royal household.”
Did [Murdoch] not ask “how come this man [Mulcaire] had hacked this phone when he [Taylor] is not royal?”
Did you not ask “Who the hell else had Mulcaire been hacking?”
Murdoch promised that lessons had been learnt, claiming his intention was for News Corp to be “as transparent as possible” in the future.
The riveting moment came when Labour MP Tom Watson revealed he had met former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck immediately prior to the committee hearing. Watson said Thurlbeck told him that Crone had intended to show Murdoch the “for Neville” email in May 2008.
Watson quoted Thurlbeck as saying:
This is not some vague memory, I was absolutely on a knife edge. Tom [Crone] took it to him. The following week I said “did you show him the email?” He said “yes I did”. Now he can’t remember whether he showed it to Mr Murdoch or not. He said “it’s alright, it’s fine, it’s settled.”
Murdoch again denied all knowledge of the email, after which Watson accused the News Corp executive of being “the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise.”
Murdoch told Watson his comment was “inappropriate”.
Reasserting his executive position, Murdoch also refused to rule out closing The Sun if evidence of phone hacking at the paper were to emerge. He said the recent arrest of Sun reporter Jamie Pyatt in connection with payments made to police officers was a “matter of great concern”, while Steve Rotheram MP told the committee that the words “the Sun” appeared in notes seized from the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Murdoch also condemned the revelations this week of surveillance of hacking victims’ lawyers, calling it “appalling” and “unacceptable.”
Wrapping up the hearing, John Whittingdale MP said it was “unlikely” there would be future sessions.
The challenge now is for the committee to weigh up the contradictions between Murdoch’s account and those of Crone, Myler and Thurlbeck.
2 Nov 2011 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
Further evidence in the News of the World phone hacking scandal published yesterday by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee has revealed that senior executives at the paper were in 2008 alerted to “a culture of illegal information access” at News International that involved “at least three” of its reporters.
A legal opinion sent on 3 June 2008 by News Group Newspapers’ counsel, Michael Silverleaf QC, to the paper’s chief lawyer, Tom Crone, also advised the newspaper to settle its case against Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, who was suing the paper for breach of privacy.
In addition, internal correspondence published by the Committee revealed that Crone had privately told former editor Colin Myler in the same year about a “damning email” that showed the tabloid had made use of “extremely private voicemails” left on Taylor’s phone in 2005. This contradicts the accounts given by Myler and Crone to the committee in 2009, in which they said there was was no evidence that other journalists were involved in phone hacking.
The revelations will heap further pressure on James Murdoch, who is due to face the committee on 10 November, to explain his role in handling the scandal. He told MPs in July this year that he was unaware that other News of the World journalists were implicated in the illegal practice before he paid Taylor a £750,000 settlement in 2008.
However both Crone and Myler told the committee in September that they had made Murdoch aware in June 2008 that phone hacking was not restricted to a single reporter. MPs are likely to question Murdoch about what he was told in his meetings with Myler and Crone, as well as whether he had been made aware of Silverleaf’s advice.
Detailed reports on yesterday’s revelations can be found here and here. Click here for the full evidence released by the committee yesterday.
