Recommended reading: phone hacking denials

The Guardian has collected some of the very 'best' denials about phone hacking from News International, the police and the PCC.

For example, this News International statement from July 2009 following Nick Davies' first Guardian story on hacking:

"All of these irresponsible and unsubstantiated allegations against News of the World and other News International titles and its journalists are false."

And this from Rebekah Brooks:

"The Guardian coverage has, we believe, substantially and likley deliberately misled the British public."

'Inconceivable no-one else knew'

The News of the World phone hacking saga rumbles on.

Yesterday, several more media outlets started to report on the story including the BBC and (shock!) Sky News. However, it wasn't until 10.30pm that the Mail wrote anything about it, prioritising instead such important news as Kim Kardashian going out wearing a dress.

Questions have been raised about whether anything new has emerged. The answer is yes.

Firstly, the New York Times revealed that this year a News of the World reporter was suspended having been suspected of phone-hacking, a fact confirmed by the paper and the PCC on Thursday:

The [NYT] reported that the News of the World was conducting a new phone-hacking investigation and had suspended a reporter, after a "television personality" had been alerted by her phone company to a "possible unauthorised attempt to access her voicemail" and the number was traced back to a journalist at the paper.

It's as if the paper's insistence that phone hacking was a one-off that never happened before or since seems somehow questionable...

The Guardian reported that the journalist in question has worked for the paper since 2005. Although News of the World managing editor Bill Akass said there is an internal investigation and the allegation is subject to litigation, it's not clear if the police are involved. If not, why not?

The PCC's Director Stephen Abell said:

that the PCC was prevented from launching its own investigation because the allegation was "the subject of legal action".

Which is fair enough - for now. But we should remember what PCC Chair Baroness Buscombe said back in May:

"If there was a whiff of any continuing activity in this regard, we would be on it like a ton of bricks. I can absolutely assure you of that."

It will be interesting to see what the PCC's 'ton of bricks' turns out to be...

Mark Lewis, a lawyer who has acted/is acting for some of the targets of the hacking is not expecting much:

“The Press Complaints Commission has been consistent. Throughout it has taken no action. Excuse after excuse is offered but they have shown their true colours. The only way to get redress is through the Court.”

And from today's Guardian editorial:

The NYT article – based on first-hand research – convincingly demonstrates that the September 2009 Press Complaints Commission report into phone hacking was both feeble and wrong. The PCC must find a way of clarifying and correcting the record if it is to command respect.

Other new information came yesterday from Sean Hoare, a former News of the World reporter. He was fired from the paper for personal reasons, so has been dismissed for having a grudge, but during a BBC interview he said he hacked phones while working at the paper and that then editor Coulson 'lied' by saying he knew nothing of the practice.

The News International line that Clive Goodman, the paper's Royal Correspondent who was jailed for his role in the phone hacking, was the only journalist involved has always seemed unlikely.

After all, James Murdoch sanctioned a payment of £700,000 to former Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor to settle a privacy claim. If Goodman was the only News of the World journalist involved, why would the Royal Correspondent be interested in the phone messages of someone in football?

Or in the messages of MPs Tessa Jowell and Simon Hughes or model Elle Macpherson?

And then there's the so-called 'For Neville' email. Here's how the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee saw it:

On 29 June 2005, five months later, a reporter at the News of the World, Ross Hindley, sent an email to Glenn Mulcaire which opened with the words: "This is the transcript for Neville."[374] There followed a transcription of 35 voicemail messages. In 13 cases the recipient of message was 'GT', Gordon Taylor, and in 17 cases the recipient was 'JA', Jo Armstrong. No witness has sought to deny that these messages had been intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire, or that they had been transcribed by Mr Hindley.

[In-house lawyer Tom] Crone...asked the News of the World's IT Department to find out who else had received the email and was told that 'there was no trace of it having gone anywhere else'.[377] He also questioned the reporter:

"He had very little recollection of it […]. He does not particularly remember this job in any detail; he does not remember who asked him to do it; and he does not remember any follow-up from it. He saw the email and he accepts that he sent the transcript where the email says he sent it."[378]

415. We were unable to question the reporter, however. Mr Crone told us that Mr Hindley was in Peru: "He is on a holiday. He is going around the world. He is 20 years old."[379] "[…] about this time he had only just become a reporter; prior to that actually I think he had been a messenger and he was being trained up as a reporter,"[380] he added. We return to the veracity of this below.

416. The message above the transcript said it was 'for Neville'. In June 2005, there was only one Neville on the staff:[381] Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter. Mr Crone told us he asked Mr Hindley whether he had given him the transcript. "He said, "I can't remember." He said, "Perhaps I gave it to Neville, but I can't remember."'[382] Mr Crone said he also asked Mr Thurlbeck if he remembered receiving the transcript: 'His position is that he has never seen that email, nor had any knowledge of it.'[383]

(One of the questions for the police is why they never interviewed Thurlbeck, or indeed Hindley - if the newspaper maintains Goodman was the only one involved, how come he was transcribing phone messages?)

And this is what the Committee concluded from all that:

...there is no doubt that there were a significant number of people whose voice messages were intercepted, most of whom would appear to have been of little interest to the Royal correspondent of the News of the World. This adds weight to suspicions that it was not just Clive Goodman who knew about these activities...

Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking. It is unlikely, for instance, that Ross Hindley (later Hall) did not know the source of the material he was transcribing and was not acting on instruction from superiors. We cannot believe that the newspaper's newsroom was so out of control for this to be the case...

Despite this, there was no further investigation of who those "others" might be and we are concerned at the readiness of all of those involved: News International, the police and the PCC to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation at the time.

Currently, several Labour figures - Jowell, John Prescott, Chris Bryant, Alan Johnson and Tom Watson (who sits of the Select Committee) - have raised concerns about the extent of the hacking and the police investigation. As Andy Coulson is now David Cameron's Director of Communications, it has become a political issue.

But it is vitally important that this does not become the overriding issue. There are crucial questions here about the role and behaviour of journalists, and about the actions of the police. It is imperative that those questions do not get buried under the political tit-for-tat.

New York Times investigates what most of the British media won't

The New York Times has published a damning, and rather depressing, investigation into phone-hacking at the News of the World.

It repeats convincing claims that the practice was far more widespread than the paper has ever admitted and once again implicates then-editor Andy Coulson:

One former editor said Coulson talked freely with colleagues about the dark arts, including hacking. “I’ve been to dozens if not hundreds of meetings with Andy” when the subject came up, said the former editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The editor added that when Coulson would ask where a story came from, editors would reply, “We’ve pulled the phone records” or “I’ve listened to the phone messages.”

It must be said that much of the New York Times' article is based on anonymous sources, a fact that has been used by the News of the World to (surprise) dismiss the allegations.

Managing Editor Bill Akass' letter to the NYT accuses the paper of being involved in nothing more than a smear of a rival newspaper company (whereas the Times and Sun would never dream of running articles sniping at the BBC, say).

But he also claims:

Every area addressed by your questions has already been...put to, and answered by our executives during public hearings conducted by the Committee.

Anyone who saw those hearings, and heard those executives repeatedly 'answer' with 'I don't remember' and 'I don't recall' will know what nonsense that is. The Select Committee report called it 'collective amnesia':

Throughout we have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.

The NYT also makes serious allegations about the Metropolitan Police, questioning why it seemed to have severely limited its investigation and why it appeared so reluctant to inform other people that they may have been hacked. The paper points out that the police commissioner who led the investigation, Andy Hayman, is now a columnist for the Times.

But there's one other serious question raised by the article - and that is for the British media.

At the time of writing, the Guardian - who have led the way in investigating this story - and the FT have followed up on it, as have the Press Gazette, two people at the Spectator and Gary Gibbon at Channel Four News. But the rest of the mainstream media are completely ignoring it?

Why?

Proper investigative journalism

Further revelations from the Guardian today about the News of the World and their involvement with private investigators.

The admirable Nick Davies, who has been at the forefront of uncovering this story, reveals:

the newspaper employed a freelance private investigator even though he had been accused of corrupting police officers and had just been released from a seven-year prison sentence for blackmail.

The private eye was well known to the News of the World, having worked for the paper for several years before he was jailed, when Coulson was deputy editor. He was rehired when he was freed.

And, he adds, this means we now know of four 'private investigators' who worked for the News of the World who:

have since received or had criminal convictions. All four are known to have used illegal methods to gather information.

As for the News of the World's 'collective amnesia' - as it was described in the MPs' report yesterday - the Guardian has gone through Coulson's testimony to the Select Committee and found that he didn't know or couldn't remember much about anything.

'Nothing to do with me guv, I was only the Editor'.

Reactions to the 'Press standards, privacy and libel' report

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has published its long-awaited report on Press standards, privacy and libel today. (Full coverage at MediaGuardian)

It is an extremely wide-ranging report and has many very good recommendations for changing the Press Complaints Commission, including several that have been supported by this blog. (The attempt to ban newspapers from printing for a day for serious transgressions is a very poor recommendation, however).

On the issue of fines, the Committee recommends that:

in cases where a serious breach of the Code has occurred, the PCC should have the ability to impose a financial penalty.

On the placement of apologies:

Corrections and apologies should be printed on either an earlier, or the same, page as that first reference, although they need not be the same size.

That would mean front page apologies for front page stories which are wrong. This change should be implemented immediately because the 'due prominence' wording in the current Code of Practice clearly is not working.

On sacking Paul Dacre as Chair of the Code of Practice Committee:

We further recommend that there should be lay members on the Code Committee, and that one of those lay members should be Chairman of that Committee.

Absolutely. However, there is a shocking quote in the report from Dacre. He told the Committee:

"It is a matter of huge shame if an editor has an adjudication against him; it is a matter of shame for him and his paper. That is why self-regulation is the most potent form of regulation, and we buy into it. We do not want to be shamed."

Firstly: bollocks. Secondly: Dacre and the Mail have shame?

The MPs added that lay members should be a majority on the decision-making Commission, which should also include journalists, rather than just editors:

We recommend that the membership of the PCC should be rebalanced to give the lay members a two thirds majority, making it absolutely clear that the PCC is not overly influenced by the press.

This, the Committee says, would:

enhance the credibility of the PCC to the outside world.

Which is, of course, urgently needed. The MPs add:

However for confidence to be maintained, the industry regulator must actually effectively regulate, not just mediate. The powers of the PCC must be enhanced, as it is toothless compared to other regulators.

It's all pretty damning about the PCC, but things will only improve if these changes are implemented to give the regulator those much-needed teeth.

It was also highly critical of the Daily Express, which several years ago refused to pay its subscriptions to the self-regulatory system. The MPs called this action:

deplorable.

From Peter Hill and Richard Desmond, that shouldn't be surprising.

But the report was especially damning about the News of the World over their illegal phone-hacking activities. The report says these were not restricted to one 'rogue reporter':

Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking....[which] went to the heart of the British establishment, in which police, military royals and government ministers were hacked on a near industrial scale.

Moreover, the MPs are brutal in their judgements about the News of the World and News International employees who came before them:

Throughout our inquiry, too, we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World.

And:

Throughout we have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.

Ouch.

For a clear example of this amnesia, look through the oral evidence and the exchanges between Philip Davies MP, current News of the World Editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the Legal Manager at News Group Newspapers (Q.1411-1418).

Davies was trying to find out who authorised the payments to Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the bin-rummager who did the phone-hacking, which was paid after their release from prison. As if they was being paid to shut up, or something...

Q1416 Philip Davies: Just while we are on the theme, has any payment been subsequently made to Clive Goodman?

Mr Crone: I am certainly not aware of it.

Mr Myler: Again, likewise, I am not aware of any payment.

Q1417 Philip Davies: If a payment had been made, would you be aware of it?

Mr Crone: Not necessarily. Mr Kuttner would.

Q1418 Philip Davies: So this is a question for Mr Kuttner?

Mr Crone: I would say so.

And when Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World's Managing Editor, came before the Committee later that day:

Q1578 Philip Davies: We are obviously not going to make any further headway there. Have you made any payments to either Glenn Mulcaire or Clive Goodman since they were convicted of their offence?

Mr Kuttner: So far as I know agreements were made with them. I have no details at all of the substance of those agreements and so I cannot go beyond that.

Q1579 Philip Davies: Could you tell us who can because when I asked Mr Crone the same question he seemed to think that you were the person to ask.

Mr Kuttner: Well, in which case that is simply not so.

So Crone said Kuttner would know. Kuttner said he didn't know and he didn't know who would know.

Given that Kuttner has been Managing Editor of the News of the World for 22 years 'collective amnesia' seems a rather generous description.

Needless to say, News International were not happy with the report. They issued a ridiculous statement (pdf) which whined that the Committee had failed to act without:

bias or external influence.

This comes after Crone (Q.1329) had tried to get Labour MP Tom Watson kicked off the Committee (he was suing The Sun at the time - and won) and Kuttner wanted Davies removed from it too (Q.1572).

'External influence' indeed.

The statement went on to complain about the Committee's:

innuendo

and

exaggeration

and said it had

repeatedly violated public trust.

For the publishers of the Sun and the News of the World to accuse others of those things is almost beyond parody.

The Sun's article on the 167-page report ran to just five paragraphs, which consisted of how the report had been 'hijacked' by Labour MPs. Had it really? Tom Watson said not:

570 clauses agreed unanimously, 4 were voted on, 3 of them opposed by a single MP.

That's some hijacking. As if to prove they had something to hide, the Sun were not taking any comments on this story on their website.

Their editorial was equally pathetic and designed to make petty political points, categorically failing to engage with the substance of the report:


Note 'unfounded claims' by the Guardian. Well, the Guardian's exposing of the News of the World's payment to Gordon Taylor wasn't unfounded. And if News International think it's all unfounded, why not sue?

Of course, the report did include many pages of insight and recommendations on privacy, libel and the McCann case.

But because the MPs dared take on the Sun's sister paper, its work was deemed 'worthless'. How grown up.

More astonishing was the reaction of Sky, which is in the same Murdoch stable as the News of the World, and which tried to pretend nothing had happened.

Here's the BBC's teletext news headlines this morning:


Second story. And on Sky Text it was here:


Oh rather, wasn't here. Still at least Sky News had it prominently on their website:


Oh no, it wasn't in their top 15 stories by early afternoon. Surely they wouldn't just bury it below some photo gallery of a pop star and a footballer:


Ah they would.

And even then it doesn't concentrate on the libel recommendations, or the reform of the PCC or the McCanns, that the Sun was complaining about. No, they've made it deliberately party political by referring to it in terms of 'Cam's man', as former editor Andy Coulson now works for David Cameron.

And on Tuesday night, during the Sky News press review, the News International line was already clear. They were faced with this:


What to do? Journalist Mark Seddon began to talk about the inquiry and the claims against the News of the World. Sat next to him was a journalist from the Times (also owned by News International), who butted in to say the phone-hacking had been looked at over and over and it's a non-story now.

Well, if the News International people would tell the truth for once, there wouldn't need to be constant enquiries into the sordid affair.

But at this point Anna Botting, the Sky News presenter, spoke over everyone to dismiss this whole story as a 'vendetta' from a 'left-leaning' newspaper which was aimed at Andy Coulson solely because he now works for the Tories. And she made clear that was the end of that discussion. It was dreadful.

And it clearly highlights the dangers of too much media being in the hands of too few people. The biggest selling daily newspaper and one of the two main TV news channels are all owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the News of the World.

And when not claiming some mythical political plot (the Chair of the Committee, incidentally, is a Conservative MP), they have decided the stick their fingers in the ears, shut their eyes and shout 'la la la', instead of telling their viewers about some important proposals to improve the press in this country.

The Guardian reports the Mail has done a short article, mostly avoiding the phone-hacking claims. The Telegraph has written more in general, but ignored the phone-hacking stuff. The Independent has given lots of coverage to News International's pathetic sound and fury.

So today we've seen parts of the media refusing to engage in a debate or admit to their own failings, while other parts try to intimidate and smear anyone who dares criticise.

How are things ever likely to change?

Media ignores £792,000 unfair dismissal payout by News of the World to former reporter

It's not been a good week for the News of the World.

On Monday the Press Complaints Commission actually upheld a complaint (no, really) against the paper:

A man from Aberdeen complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an article headlined "Terrorised by knife thug, 7", published in the Scottish News of the World on 10 August 2008, contained inaccuracies in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) and included a photograph of his son taken without consent in breach of Clause 6 (Children) of the editors' Code of Practice.

The complaint was upheld.

One thing stands out: the article was published 15 months ago. The full adjudication implies a lengthy process of evidence gathering has gone on by both sides, but that remains an incredibly long time for the article to have gone uncorrected.

The PCC ruled:

the most serious claims about the boy's behaviour - the allegations of violence and the assertion he had been expelled from a string of schools - could not be substantiated...

The Commission was also persuaded that there was sufficient information in the article and pixellated photograph to identify the complainant's son to those in the community. In the context of unsubstantiated assertions about his behaviour, the justification for publication of the photograph was insufficient.

And the penalty? Publishing that adjudication somewhere where no one will take any notice of it.

Given all the time the family have clearly spent trying to clear their son's name, is that really sufficient?

Then today, former News of the World journalist Matt Driscoll was awarded £792,736 by an employment tribunal in Stratford for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. According to MediaGuardian, Driscoll

suffered from a culture of bullying led by former editor Andy Coulson.

Coulson, of course, was in charge of the paper when it was illegally hacking into phones and is now David Cameron's head of communications. A bullying communications supremo - who'd have thought?

As Roy Greenslade points out, the source of Coulson's hatred towards Driscoll was unbelievably insignificant:

In August 2005, Matt Driscoll was asked to stand up a tip that Arsenal were planning to play in purple shirts. He failed to do so and - horror of horrors - that very story then appeared in The Sun. From thereon Driscoll was a marked man within the office.

The tribunal judgement explains:

"The original source of the hostility towards the claimant [Driscoll] was Mr Coulson, the editor; although other senior managers either took their lead from Mr Coulson and continued with his motivation after Mr Coulson's departure; or shared his views themselves. Mr Coulson did not attend the tribunal to explain why he wanted the claimant dismissed."

Following on from his resignation, the Nick Davies articles, and Coulson's Select Committee appearance where he conveniently forgot the publication of a story in his newspaper while he was editor that appears to have come from phone hack, there may be some questions for his new employers, who have spoken out about bullying recently.

Except, who is going to ask these questions? According to Google News, apart from the Guardian and the Press Gazette, no other mainstream media outlet has reported on this payout. This despite the Guardian claiming it is the highest of its kind in the media.

Is this a kind of media omerta, where other newspapers don't cover such stories so their own transgressions are not publicised either?