Metgate – time to open the doors and let the stink out

17 Jan 11 | Uncategorized

The phone hacking scandal has entered a new phase and a number of very powerful people, up to and including David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch, should now be very worried. Glenn Mulcaire’s reported confirmation that a senior News of the World news editor, Ian Edmonson, commissioned him to hack phones elevates a nagging problem into a national political crisis.

The problem is most acute at the Murdoch press, which must now defend itself against the charge that its staff hacked phones with the blessing of management. It also has to explain why it has insisted for four years that the management didn’t even know. The senior executives who need to justify positions which they have previously adopted in public but which now look very dubious indeed include Les Hinton, now the CEO of Murdoch’s US press empire, Rebekah Brookes, chief executive of News International, Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, News International’s legal affairs boss.

Of course Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s press adviser, is also in what we might call a delicate position, which means the David Cameron himself is tainted. Why did Cameron appoint this man, trust him and stand by him? It now looks like a gross and stubborn misjudgement by a man who is supposed to get things right.

Rupert and James Murdoch are in the same position. What did they know? Did they tolerate this? Are they responsible for creating the conditions in which it happened? Why were they not more energetic in pursuing the problem to its source, once it was exposed? Remember that James Murdoch is currently pressing to buy the big slice of BSkyB he doesn’t own. Is he fit to do that?

The Metropolitan Police Service, the largest and most important police force in the country, is dreadfully compromised. They said that this stopped with one man at the News of the World and refused to follow any further leads. For reasons unknown, they tiptoed around the paper’s newsroom. Senior detectives should now have to account for that. The Director of Public Prosecutions, too, has failed to cover himself in glory, having repeatedly endorsed the Met’s stance.

The mobile phone industry also needs to be challenged. How was Mulcaire able to get phone numbers and PINs so systematically? It beggars belief that he picked them up one at a time. Who helped him?

And finally, the rest of the national press is on the brink of disgrace. With few exceptions they have deliberately ignored and belittled a scandal which, if they cared about honest journalism, they would have investigated with passionate vigour. Why, for example, did the Daily Mail not report this story properly? Paul Dacre should have to answer that.

Forget the idea of a paltry evidence review by the Director of Public Prosecutions. As the New York Times implied months ago, this affair makes Britain look like Berlusconi’s Italy. Let’s demand a full public inquiry or a Royal Commission to open the doors and let the stink out.

Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. Follown him on Twitter @BrianCathcart

Andy Coulson will not face new charges, but this isn't the end

10 Dec 10 | Uncategorized

So the CPS will not press new charges in the News of the World phone hacking case. We shouldn’t be surprised. They won’t be surprised at News International either.

The Metropolitan Police was never the right body to reinvestigate a case it has already made a mess of once. What motivation did it have? Had the CPS found grounds for a prosecution, after all, it would have been the same as saying that the Met got it all wrong first time.

For the sake of credibility alone, the Independent Police Complaints Commission or HM Inspector of Constabulary should have managed the reinvestigation. We know, in fact, that the Inspectorate wanted to, but the pass was sold. So establishing why no one stepped in is just another in the pile of seriously worrying questions associated with this affair.

Of course the scandal of tabloid phone hacking is not over. The 23 legal actions that are either current or in the pipeline will see to that. And it is instructive, if you are in any doubt about the moral questions involved, that many of these cases are being held up because convicted hacker and former News of the World employee Glen Mulcaire is challenging a High Court order telling him he must reveal the names of the people at the paper who gave him his orders.

Think that through: the issue is not whether he was given the orders but whether he has to say who gave them. His argument, to cap it all, is that by revealing the names he might incriminate himself. The News of the World and its former employee are that far from the moral high ground.

We will have to wait until the new year, I understand, to hear the result.

So far it has been worth at least £2m to News International to settle cases in this affair and prevent the facts coming out. That includes a settlement with Gordon Taylor and two of his associates. It also includes Max Clifford, who landed a seven-figure deal with News International at the just the moment he dropped his case against them. It includes, too, the pay-offs made to convicted hackers Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire.

Most of those now engaged in legal proceedings know, or have strong grounds to believe, that they were hacked. They have the indignation of crime victims and of people whose privacy has been violated. Nor, in most cases, are they nobodies — Andy Gray, Steve Coogan, Chris Tarrant…

They also know that News International is paying these large sums in the effort to hush up the affair. It is a perfect legal storm.

And beyond the pending cases, dozens and even hundreds more could follow. The Met is under very strong legal pressure — from Lord Prescott among others — to reveal the identities of more of those named in the papers it seized from Mulcaire’s office and home. For some reason it has been very reluctant indeed to do so — potential victims of crime they may be, but they don’t seem to have a right to know it, in the Met’s eyes. Again, the courts will be the judge of that.

No, it’s not over, by a long shot.

Read more Brian Cathcart on Metgate here and here