19 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A former News of the World sports reporter who received a bullying compensation settlement worth almost £800,000 has said his choice to take on his bosses “finished” his career.
Matt Driscoll, who was diagnosed with severe depression in 2006, told the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon he could not “imagine any editor wanting to snap me up tomorrow.”
“I am the guy who has taken on the bosses,” he said.
Driscoll worked on the paper’s sports desk from 1997 to 2007, when he was sacked. An employment tribunal found in 2009 that the paper had discriminated against him on grounds of his disability and that the editor had presided over a culture of bullying at the redtop. He was awarded £792,736 in compensation.
He said his illness was “entirely” due to the treatment of the News of the World, and noted his doctor had advised he “distance” himself from the paper. Driscoll described receiving daily calls from the paper and being told his pay would be stalled if he sought advice from an independent doctor rather than a company nurse.
Driscoll had received a tip that Arsenal football club would play in a claret-coloured strip, though the team dismissed the claim. Some months later the story appeared in the Sun. “I received a phone call from my sports editor to say ‘we’re dead’,” Driscoll said.
He said “power corrupts” some editors, with their egos allowed to “run wild” and that some had “lost touch with reality”.
“Editors were under even more pressure than proprietors to make sure their readership stayed at a certain level,” he added. “That pressure passed down.”
Of journalism, he said, “you work at a certain level of stress but you are almost at saturation point.”
He said he had no direct involvement with phone hacking, but added that “it was known throughout the whole of Fleet Street that news reporters or feature writers could obtain mobile phone messages.”
He said any suggestion of stories being fabricated at the paper were “absolutely crazy”, claiming the litigation costs would be too high to risk.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, and will include evidence from Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror and the News of the World, who’ll be appearing via satellite; the paper’s former TV editor Sharron Marshall; Farrer & Co partner Julian Pike, and Steve Turner, who represented Matt Driscoll during his tribunal.
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19 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The older brother of ex-News of the World reporter Sean Hoare has told the Leveson Inquiry that phone hacking was taken from the Sun to the now defunct tabloid.
Stuart Hoare said he had exchanged a series of emails with his late brother in which he had revealed practice was “routine” at the Sun before being “taken” to its Sunday equivalent, where it occurred “more daily”.
“The idea that it was a secret had him [Sean] rocking in his chair,” Hoare said. “Everyone was at it.”
Sean Hoare, who died in July, was interviewed by the New York Times in 2010 about phone hacking at the News of the World.
Also speaking today, deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday James Hanning said that Sean Hoare had told him he had hacked phones “numerous times”, as had several of his colleagues at the News of the World.
“Sean didn’t realise at the time he was probably doing wrong,” Hoare said. “He got carried away like a lot of journalists, and was certainly under a lot of pressure from seniors to deliver.”
Hanning disagreed with Stuart Hoare’s assertion that the paper’s newsdesk was out of control. “It seems to me it was known what was going on.”
In his witness statement Hoare said his brother had regarded drug taking as “part of his job” and was “easily led” into a culture of drinking. “He came close to a lot of celebrities and got a lot of information that benfited him and his employer,” he told the Inquiry.
Sean Hoare was asked by a senior member of staff to leave the News of the World in 2005. “His world fell apart,” his brother said said. “I can’t tell you how much Sean enjoyed journalism.”
He added that, in his last two years at the paper, Sean had been “struggling” due to pressure placed on him and other reporters to produce stories. “He was bringing his work home, he was drinking more,” Hoare said.
“It upsets me the amount of pressure these journalists at the News of the World were out under to deliver stories,” Hoare added. “To see the demise of my brother through this was shocking.”
Hanning also alluded to the “very tough” redtop market, noting that “if you don’t perform, you tend not to thrive.”
Hoare concluded that he “found it very difficult” not to name names, adding that those involved “know the wrong they have done.”
“I am trying to put some of the wrongs to rights on Sean’s behalf,” he said.
The inquest into Hoare’s death in November concluded he had died of natural causes, with the coroner citing alcoholic liver disease.
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15 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A former News of the World reporter whose byline appeared on a story about Kate McCann’s diary on her missing daughter has said he believed the paper had permission from the McCanns to publish the story.
“My understanding was if they didn’t give the green light the story wouldn’t be published,” Daniel Sanderson told the Leveson Inquiry today. “Seeking their permission was not in my sphere of responsibility,” he said, adding that he believed the then news editor, Ian Edmonson, had been in touch with the McCanns’ press secretary “on a daily basis.”
Testifying at the Inquiry last month, Kate McCann, mother of missing toddler Madeleine, said the News of the World’s publication of her diaries was done without her knowledge, leaving her feeling “totally violated”.
Sanderson said it was “wrong” to for the paper to publish the diaries without the McCanns’ consent, adding that he had “every intention” of apologising to the family.
He described how the diary had been “publically circulated” around Portugal, and said he had contacted a Portuguese journalist who he was told was in possession of it before liaising with Edmonson. He said he was unaware at the time that the ultimate source of the diary was the Portuguese police, who had obtained it when the McCanns’ holiday home in Praia da Luz was investigated following Madeleine’s disappearance in May 2007.
Lord Justice Leveson pressed Sanderson about the provenance of the diary, with Sanderson repeating that his understanding was publication would not go ahead without the express permission of the McCanns. He conceded that the diary was “clearly a private document” and that the “whole thing caused me concern”, adding that his writing had been taken out of the final copy, leaving the diary printed in its entirety.
He went on to describe the “high-pressure” environment of the tabloid, saying that “you have to give a certain part of your life over” to the paper in order to work there. He denied, however, that there was a culture of bullying at the redtop.
Also testifying today was private investigator Derek Webb, who was hired by the tabloid this year to monitor lawyers Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris, who both acted for phone hacking victims. A former police detective, Webb revealed he had surveyed around 150 different people at the instruction of the News of the World between 2003 and 2011, including Labour MP Tom Watson and, on one occasion, Jude Law and Sienna Miller.
He told the Inquiry how he had met with former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck around 1999 or 2000, with Thurlbeck telling him there may be surveillance work for him at the paper after his retirement. When he retired in 2003, Webb said he soon began working “full-time” for the paper, being asked by the newsdesk to follow an individual or go to a particular address.
Contrary to former editor Colin Myler’s testimony that the use of PIs was cracked down upon once he joined the paper in 2007 in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, Webb said he was carrying out the “same type of work” as he had during Andy Coulson’s reign.
He revealed it was Thurlbeck who had told him in 2009 that there had been a “hiccup” with the use of PIs after the jailing of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, and urged Webb to terminate his private investigator’s licence and join the National Union of Journalists. He was also asked to change his email address from Silent Shadow — referring to the name he had been trading under — to Derek Webb Media. It was revealed yesterday that Webb was still referred to as “silent shadow” in a July 2009 email sent by then managing editor Stuart Kuttner, although the company Silent Shadow had gone out of business at the time of Webb’s 2007 arrest.
Webb said he would not have described himself as a journalist — despite the paper’s legal chief Tom Crone being under the impression he was — noting that his main work was “surveillance”. He estimated watching MPs and celebrities made up 85 per cent of his job, with the remaining 15 per cent being drugs offences and crime.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
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14 Dec 11 | 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.
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