17 May 11 | Uncategorized
Sienna Miller’s decision to settle with News International in her phone hacking case, though not unexpected, certainly changes the picture in the phone hacking scandal. Not only does it set a precedent of a hacking victim accepting Rupert Murdoch’s pay-off in this phase of the affair, but the sum involved, of £100,000 (plus costs), may well prove a benchmark for other settlements. (more…)
20 Apr 11 | Uncategorized
The reporting of phone hacking victims tends to concentrate on celebrities such as Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Paul Gascoigne, which is inevitable in 2011 but which also serves the interests of the News of the World in a way that we should probably be concerned about.
Whether we like it or not, (again, this being 2011) if the public perceives this as a problem affecting the rich and famous they will feel less sympathy and outrage than they would otherwise, and that is surely what Rupert Murdoch’s paper must want as it seeks to buy its way out of trouble.
So it is worth remembering that already most of the victims we know of are not rich and famous by any definition, and that as the numbers continue to rise (it was once a handful, then it was 12, then 24, then 91 and now way beyond that the proportion of famous and/or rich people among them is certain to shrink to the point where it is a modest fraction.
Most of the known or suspected victims are family members, friends and colleagues of the newspaper’s principal targets — the collateral damage, if you like, of the newspaper’s bombing. They will include people such as Sienna Miller’s mother, Lesley Ash’s children, Jude Law’s personal assistant, colleagues of PR man Max Clifford, a legal adviser to Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
These are blameless members of the public whose right to privacy no responsible person would dispute, and yet they have grounds to believe that employees of a national newspaper have listened to voicemails they have received or left. And remember, the listening was inevitably indiscriminate — the eavesdroppers heard the personal with the trivial, the businesslike with the intimate. And it may have gone on for a year and a half.
One case in preparation, according to a legal source, involves a woman who was assistant to a famous personality. Because of damaging stories about that personality which appeared in the News of the World, she will allege, she was fired — her employer was convinced that only she could have been responsible. She had a nervous breakdown and struggled to find other work. Now she has grounds to believe the source was her hacked voicemails. She is not rich and not a celebrity.
Besides the collateral damage there is another non-celebrity category: the politicians. It may be fashionable to dislike them (and again, the News of the World is happy if you do), but they too are entitled to privacy. Just as important, though, are the anti-democratic character of what has been done, and the national security implications. The supposedly secure personal communications of democratically elected representatives have been illegally intercepted by an important private corporation with no conceivable public interest justification. Not just one but a least several and perhaps dozens of MPs; not just wacky backbenchers but the Cabinet minister in charge of media affairs and the deputy leader of the LibDems, not to mention, it seems likely, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Deputy Prime Minister too. And these are not, by and large, rich people, nor necessarily that well known.
And there is a third category, still small and possibly never to be fully revealed, represented by a young woman who aroused the interest of the News of the World because she told police she was raped by a professional footballer. On that basis, she has grounds to believe, her private communications were illegally intercepted. She has no connection to fame, therefore, except as a victim of alleged crime. How many people like her are entitled to compensation, an apology and a day in court will be very difficult to establish.
So it is not “just” about celebrities — though it should also be said, first, that celebrities too have rights to privacy and, second, that we are indebted to Miller, Coogan, Chris Tarrant, Andy Gray and others for forcing the scandal into the open over the past year — and forcing News International into its confession.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London and Tweets at @BrianCathcart
11 Apr 11 | Uncategorized
Solicitor Mark Lewis has accused Press Complaints Commission chair Baroness Buscombe of being in “complete denial” over the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
In a scathing letter to Buscombe, Lewis says:
As recently as your [2 February] appearance on the Media show you remained in complete denial. The PCC’s role as an independent regulator of the press is meaningless. You tried to explain your actions by saying “we just don;t know” what the facts are. Well they are out there now. Even the News of the World has conceded that there have been more examples of hacking. Whilst their “mea culpa” in the inside cover of yesterday’s paper was partial and largely hidden, it made a concession that demonstrated that your report of 7 November 2009 was not worth the paper it was written on.
He goes on:
I would be very surprised if you were unaware of the latest developments and the admission by the News of the World about the extent of “hacking”. Yet our silence has been breathtaking. If it assists, your report concluded that you had not been “materially misled” by them then, and then chose to mislead yourself a second time. now is the time for you and the PCC to come out and condemn the News of the World in a robust and unequivocal way.
Read the full letter below
lewis-buscombe-letter
UPDATE: Jonathan Collett of the Press Complaints Commission has contacted Index to point us to this statement released by the PCC on Friday:
Statement from the PCC’s Phone Hacking Review Committee (8/4/2011)
The PCC’s Phone Hacking Review Committee has noted today’s statement by News International.
The newspaper has now admitted its own internal investigations have not been sufficiently robust. This raises serious questions about its previous conduct in regard to this issue. Our Committee will need a detailed explanation for this, along with other answers we will be seeking from executives. We have already made clear that we require and expect full co-operation from News International.
The PCC, through this Committee, is committed to holding the News of the World properly to account regarding concerns about phone hacking. It will also work to ensure that situations such as this do not arise in the future. Our findings will be made public.
Phone hacking among journalists, even in the past, raises clear issues about journalistic ethics. The PCC will play its part in acting vigorously to deal with it, in regard to both the News of the World and the industry as a whole.
The Committee is conscious that there is an ongoing police investigation, as well as active legal proceedings. Its own review process must not interfere with them. It will not be commenting further at this stage.
05 Apr 11 | Uncategorized
The arrest, on suspicion of conspiracy to intercept voicemails, of the chief reporter and the former news editor of the News of the World occurred, with a certain elegance, on one of those days when the press gathers to congratulate itself at a “glittering gala dinner”.
The annual press awards of the Society of Editors even held out the prospect of a run-off for the top prize involving both the News of the World and its nemesis, the Guardian.
Among the obvious questions to be aired among the guests — many of whom have been insisting for years, with a most unjournalistic scepticism, that the phone hacking story would never go anywhere — was how the press might report this interesting and important legal development.
After all, the Sun, the Mirror, the Star, the Express and the Mail have all tried their best to keep the hacking story from their readers ever since it first broke in 2006. And when other papers have reported the affair — as the Guardian, the FT and the Independent all have — they have been dismissed as misguided or (hah!) politically motivated.
Now, it must be said, with people under arrest, tabloid editors have the option of abiding closely by the contempt of court restrictions — restrictions which when it suits them they so often interpret in the most flexible manner. So we are set to witness a rare example of the press glimpsing what it might be like to be its own victim, and acting accordingly.
I’m not about to break the contempt law here either, but it is clear by now that those restrictions alone will not be enough to keep the scandal, in its widest sense, under wraps. The same day, after all, saw a remarkable new twist in the dispute between the Metropolitan Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions over — essentially — who was to blame for prematurely burying the hacking affair in 2007. The DPP, Kier Starmer, released a long and detailed letter which appeared to contradict directly the claims on this point of Acting Deputy Commissioner John Yates.
As if that were not enough, the Met also appears to be heading towards an awkward libel trial over its assertion that a solicitor, Mark Lewis, had wrongly attributed to a police officer a claim that there may have been 6,000 phone hacking victims.
And perhaps most sensationally, the private legal actions for breach of privacy against the News of the World by the likes of Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan are not only growing in number, but are moving forward in a way that surely should alarm Rupert Murdoch’s London henchmen. All such cases are now to be dealt with by one judge, Mr Justice Vos, and he has thus far shown little sympathy for the newspaper.
In interim rulings last month Vos appeared to sweep aside a number of key points in the defence offered by the News of the World. To the suggestion that there was no concrete evidence to show private investigator Glenn Muclaire actually hacked the phones of Andy Gray (though he had accumulated all the means to do so, and had apparently tried), Vos replied that he was satisfied that “interception of Mr Gray’s voicemails was something that Mr Mulcaire was undertaking regularly”. As for the proposition that there was nothing to link the paper to these activities, the judge announced bluntly that he disagreed, and that Mulcaire was effectively a News of the World employee.
A few days ago we learned that James Murdoch was leaving London to move to the heart of his father’s empire in New York. Young James was at the helm of News International here from early 2008, so he carries the ultimate responsibility for sustaining over two years the claim that hacking was all a finished affair involving just one rogue reporter. If the time comes to hold James accountable — say, before a public inquiry — we can look forward to his return.
Listen to Brian Cathcart’s podcast on the phone hacking affair here
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. He Tweets at @BrianCathcart
