Phone-Hacking Scandal (merged)

Right now, it is looking as if, after a decent interval, NOTW will be reborn as the SunOnSunday - but with government intervention.

Well done, pitchforkers! Do carry on high-fiving yourselves! All that hot air and campaigning, to make the UK press more regulated!

At last!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8627519/Rebekah-Brooks-to-be-questioned-by-police-over-phone-hacking.html

Call me cynical, but...this has been brewing for a long time.
Is it just coincidence it has blown up just before the Sky bid is finalized?


And that twitter campaign against Murdoch - anyone who thinks that was done for altruistic reasons is too naive for this wicked world.

Something is off here; I don't know what, but something is not adding up.

The timing is very, very strange, Bonny. It should have been finalized a little while back but it's still ongoing. If we were cynical, we might think it could possibly have been done on purpose? The share price has dropped so it would be a bit cheaper to buy?

Ah, just seen this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8627887/Crispin-Odey-buys-back-into-BSkyB-to-stop-Rupert-Murdoch-getting-it-on-the-cheap.html

The Telegraph can also reveal that News Corp, which this week took the radical step of shutting The News of the World, had been considering closing the title for nearly a year.

I see.

Yes, Bonny.

Look at this please. Interesting.
Yesterday’s arrest of Mr Goodman was made by detectives investigating claims that junior officers in Scotland Yard’s royalty and diplomatic protection squad received tens of thousands of pounds in secret payments from News of the World journalists.

Emails which allegedly show that Mr Coulson ‘condoned’ the bribes were passed to the Met by News International lawyers last month.

Sources confirmed that police are ready to arrest another former News of the World executive, Greg Miskiw, who is believed to be living in America, over the hacking scandal.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012747/Andy-Coulsons-10-hour-grilling-David-Cameron-says-I-right-hire-him.html#ixzz1Re5nnuL9

An excellent piece from Anna on the demise of NOTW, and a piece by a 'Murdoch insider' which appeared in the Mail on Sunday:

http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/the-gynophobic-mail/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AnnaRaccoon+%28Anna+Raccoon%29


The 'insider' seems to be most annoyed by Ms Brooks' hair...



Maybe poor old Rupert is actually scared of her, due to her getting herself arrested a few years ago for assaulting her then-husband Ross Kemp, the supposed hard man of TV?

It is now being rumoured that police officers were 'selling' info about the non-public movements of the Royal family..if that is true, it is beyond corrupt, I think we are venturing into 'treason' territory.
Whatever is at the back of this, it has to be really bad if it is WORSE than hacking the phones of murdered girls, and dead servicemen.
Can't be politicians, footballers or rock stars, they aren't held in very high regard...so it only really leaves the Royals, and then only the popular ones..

Happy Days



Picture was taken from this website with an interesting article on NOTW.
http://www.insertclevertitle.co.uk/2011/07/08/what-rebekah-brooks-did-next/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Brooks
Personal Life Rebekah Brooks

Brooks became engaged to actor Ross Kemp (best known as Grant Mitchell in EastEnders) in 1996, and married him in June 2002 in Las Vegas; she did not take Kemp's surname.[31] On 3 November 2005, it was reported that Brooks had been arrested following an alleged assault on her husband. She was later released without charge and the police took no further action.[31] The Sun had been running a campaign against domestic violence at the time.[6] From this point on, Brooks was referred to in Private Eye as "the slapper" (a pejorative word for a woman of loose morals in Britain, and a pun on the act of slapping). The couple had spent the previous evening in the company of the former Cabinet Minister David Blunkett, who had resigned for the second time on that day.[32]

Private Eye and The Independent[33] reported that the couple had separated; this was not widely reported in the remainder of the British press. The 7 March 2008 issue of Private Eye refers to her "paramour", former racehorse trainer and author Charlie Brooks. The Guardian reported on 5 June 2009 that she would marry Brooks.[34] The Independent reported that Brooks and her fiancé had married in a lakeside ceremony in June 2009;[35] she took his surname.

Brooks is a friend of Sheryl Gascoigne, the ex-wife of footballer Paul Gascoigne.[9] She also attended the Prince of Wales' 50th birthday party.[5]

Brooks lives in Chipping Norton.[36]


=====

Against all odds...and support of Murdoch & Co., I don't think Brooks will survive and keep her job.
Nope.

The Guardian

News International papers targeted Gordon Brown

Newspapers obtained details from the former prime minister's bank account and legal file and his family's medical records




Police investigating phone hacking have found mentions of Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah in notebooks seized from Glenn Mulcaire. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Journalists from across News International repeatedly targeted the former prime minister Gordon Brown, attempting to access his voicemail and obtaining information from his bank account, his legal file as well as his family's medical records.

There is also evidence that a private investigator used a serving police officer to trawl the police national computer for information about him.

That investigator also targeted another Labour MP who was the subject of hostile inquiries by the News of the World, but it has not confirmed whether News International was specifically involved in trawling police computers for information on Brown.

Separately, Brown's tax paperwork was taken from his accountant's office apparently by hacking into the firm's computer. This was passed to another newspaper.

Brown was targeted during a period of more than 10 years, both as chancellor of the exchequer and as prime minister. Some of the activity clearly was illegal. Other incidents breached his privacy but not the law. An investigation by the Guardian has found that:

• Scotland Yard has discovered references to both Brown and his wife, Sarah, in paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who specialised in phone hacking for the News of the World;

• Abbey National bank found evidence suggesting that a "blagger" acting for the Sunday Times on six occasions posed as Brown and gained details from his account;

• Brown's London lawyers, Allen & Overy, were tricked into handing over details from his file by a conman working for the Sunday Times;

• Details from his infant son's medical records were obtained by the Sun, who published a story about the child's serious illness.

Brown joins a long list of Labour politicians who are known to have been targeted by private investigators working for News International, including the former prime minister Tony Blair and his media adviser Alastair Campbell, the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and his political adviser Joan Hammell, Peter Mandelson as trade secretary, Jack Straw and David Blunkett as home secretaries, Tessa Jowell as media secretary and her special adviser Bill Bush, and Chris Bryant as minister for Europe.

The sheer scale of the data assault on Brown is unusual, with evidence of attempts to obtain his legal, financial, tax, medical and police records as well as to listen to his voicemail. All of these incidents are linked to media organisations. In many cases, there is evidence of a link to News International.

Scotland Yard recently wrote separately to Brown and to his wife to tell them that their details had been found in evidence collected by Operation Weeting, the special inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. It is believed that this refers to handwritten notes kept by Mulcaire, which were seized by police in August 2006 and never previously investigated. Brown last year asked Scotland Yard if there was evidence that he had been targeted by the private investigator and was told there was none.

Journalists who have worked at News International say they believe that Brown's personal bank account was accessed on several occasions when he was chancellor of the exchequer. An internal inquiry by Abbey National's fraud department found that during January 2000, somebody acting on behalf of the Sunday Times contacted their Bradford call centre six times, posing as Brown, and succeeded in extracting details from his account.

Abbey National's senior lawyer sent a summary of their findings to the editor of the Sunday Times, John Witherow, concluding: "On the basis of these facts and inquiries, I am drawn to the conclusion that someone from the Sunday Times or acting on its behalf has masqueraded as Mr Brown for the purpose of obtaining information from Abbey National by deception."

Abbey National were not able to identify the bogus caller who tricked their staff. It is a matter of public record that a Sunday Times reporter frequently used the services of a former actor, John Ford, who specialised in "blagging" confidential data from banks, phone companies and the Inland Revenue (now HM Revenue & Customs).

Also in January 2000, one of the paper's reporters used a conman named Barry Beardall, who was subsequently jailed for fraud, to trick staff at Brown's solicitors, Allen & Overy, into handing over details from his personal file. A tape made by Beardall at the time reveals that he claimed to be an accountant from the "Dealson group of companies" and that they were interested in buying Brown's flat. Beardall also practised trickery in an attempt to provide Sunday Times stories about Blair, the then prime minister, and Labour's candidate for the mayor of London, Frank Dobson.


On the Sun's website it claims it 'set the news agenda' by 'breaking the sad news that Gordon Brown's baby boy Fraser has Cystic Fibrosis'.

Confidential health records for Brown's family have reached the media on two different occasions. In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed that the boy was suffering from cystic fibrosis. This appears to have been a clear breach of the Data Protection Act, which would allow such a disclosure only if it was in the public interest. Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed. The Sun published the story.

Five years earlier, when their first child, Jennifer, was born on 28 December 2001, a small group of specialist doctors and nurses was aware that she had suffered a brain haemorrhage and was dying. By some means which has not been discovered, this highly sensitive information was obtained by news organisations, who published it over the weekend before Jennifer died, on Monday 6 January 2002.

In 2003, Devon and Cornwall police discovered that one of their junior officers was providing information from the police national computer to a network of private investigators. The Guardian has established that one of these investigators, Glen Lawson of Abbey Investigations in Newcastle upon Tyne, used this contact to commission a search of police records for information about Brown on 16 November 2000. Lawson also commissioned searches related to two other Labour MPs – Nick Brown and Martin Salter.

Lawson made these searches on behalf of journalists, a previously unreported court hearing was told. Transcripts obtained by the Guardian show that the search on Martin Salter was made at a time when the News of the World, then edited by Brooks, was attacking him for refusing to support the paper's notorious "Sarah's law" campaign to name paedophiles. Lawson currently refuses to name the journalists who commissioned him.

An attempt to prosecute this network was blocked by a West Country judge, Paul Darlow, who shocked police by ruling that it would be a misuse of public money to pursue the case. However, Devon and Cornwall police contacted the office of the then chancellor to warn him that he had been a victim, as they also did with his two Labour colleagues.

Brown's tax paperwork was obtained from the offices of his accountants, Auerbach Hope, in late 1998. The first sign that the records had been taken came when a journalist from the now defunct Sunday Business called the accountants to say that they had been passed a copy of the records, including a schedule of Brown's income for the most recent year.

The journalist acknowledged that the paperwork showed no sign of any kind of wrongdoing on Brown's part but wanted to do a story about the fact that it had been stolen.

Police came and found no sign of any break-in. The originals of the documents were still in Brown's file, which ruled out the possibility that they had been taken from the firm's dustbins. Auerbach Hope discounted theft by an insider on the grounds that they would have stolen paperwork which showed wrongdoing and thus had greater media value. They concluded that the most likely explanation was that somebody had hacked into their computer systems, specifically targeting Gordon Brown.

Senior Labour figures also strongly suspect that a news organisation broke the law to obtain the emails that led to the resignation in April 2009 of Brown's close aide Damian McBride. The emails, which disclosed a scheme to smear Tory MPs, had been exchanged between McBride and a Labour party activist, Derek Draper. The Labour figures believe that the emails were hacked from Draper's computer and that their contents were then sent to the political blogger Guido Fawkes, whose stories were then followed by Fleet Street.

Thanks, Chicane - what a mess!

I am puzzled as to why action was not taken when the medical records of Gordon Brown's family were accessed - that beggars belief.

I am not sure that this is as simple as Murdoch bad - everyone else good; party politics are starting to come into it.

What this could - theoretically - lead to is Cameron having to resign, with Brown and co being seen as the victims.

And now the Sunday Times has been dragged into it; I would suggest all those cheering on the apparent fall of Murdoch look beyond the smoke and noise and ask themselves:

Do I like the idea of a Labour government which has been allowed to take control of the press?

This post on Anna's blog explains it better:

http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/the-fight-is-on/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AnnaRaccoon+%28Anna+Raccoon%29

We know what they want from new regulators. We also know what the BBC and Guardian will want. Most of all we know what the politicians of all parties will want. But it’s not their disparate agendas that are the problem, it’s what they have in common. That is a desire for working people to have neither ready access to anti-statist views, nor regular evidence of the moral corruption of the British ruling elite and its luvvie running dogs.

We don’t need to like Mr Murdoch to recognize this. His employees’ disgraceful misconduct has given our elites their greatest chance for decades to undermine that sturdy contempt or the powerful that makes us free men.

I am not a political animal, but what I would like to know is - what did Tony Blair promise Murdock that made him 'change sides' in 1994 and back Labour? What promise wasn't met that made Murdock dump Gordon Brown in 2010 and back the Tories? I do not see why Cameron should resign, most of this did not happen on his watch. As for the company one keeps (ie him knowing Brooks etc); in public service one gets to meet very shady characters - and I admit to having been fooled two times by people who were not what they seemed. We cannot really pontificate on all this until the true reasons for what the NOTW did are finally out in the open. And yes, bonny, I think you should be afeared by the idea of Labour controlling the press. No politician should do that, but equally no press baron should control the government. And before Milliband opens his mouth again, I sugget he takes a long, hard look at the actions of his own party between 1994 and 2010, because I don't believe they didn't have a good idea of what was going on. The Tories had no real influence, they were the Opposition and so were automatically sidelined. As I said I am not at all political so please don't jump on me! LL

As if, LL! That's a very good question - most of this happened when Labour was in power, so why was nothing done then?
They knew - of course they did, it tends to get noticed when the PM's medical records are hacked.
I'm not taking ANYTHING at face value in this.

And don't anyone tell me Murdock, his son and that Brooks bint didn't know what was going on! I reckon the dismissed reporters are going to get a hefty severance package in the hope they keep their mouths shut! LL

Not to mention a job on the Sunday Sun, or whatever it gets called...

[quote="bb1"]

I am puzzled as to why action was not taken when the medical records of Gordon Brown's family were accessed - that beggars belief.

We don't know. Maybe action was taken but it was settled behind the screen?
No courtcase, no publicity, just a gentlemen-agreement?

I am not sure that this is as simple as Murdoch bad - everyone else good; party politics are starting to come into it.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.

What this could - theoretically - lead to is Cameron having to resign, with Brown and co being seen as the victims.

I was thinking in the same direction, but not yet.. the Guardian sits on a pile of, explosive, news, there is more to come, I'm sure, so what looks like an interlude will end up in Cameron forced to resign.

Wow...Uk is shaking on its grounds...

All this did NOT start on Cameron's watch, it has been going on for years. Nick Davies, in his book 'Flat Earth News' told the true story of the bribery etc that was running through Fleet Street, and the bribes that were paid to the police. Why should Cameron resign? He would appear to have inherited a can of worms from Brown and Blair. And we know Blair is a liar, remember WMDs? What one really needs to know is, as I said earlier, what bribe did Blair give Murdock to get him to change sides, and what did'nt Murdock get, that he expected, that caused him to change sides again? LL

From the Guardian:

Senior Labour figures also strongly suspect that a news organisation broke the law to obtain the emails that led to the resignation in April 2009 of Brown's close aide Damian McBride. The emails, which disclosed a scheme to smear Tory MPs, had been exchanged between McBride and a Labour party activist, Derek Draper. The Labour figures believe that the emails were hacked from Draper's computer and that their contents were then sent to the political blogger Guido Fawkes, whose stories were then followed by Fleet Street.

Al Jazeer's 'Inside Story' programme on the hacking scandal:

What are the ethical boundaries for tabloids?

As Rupert Murdoch's News of the World closes over a phone-hacking scandal, we ask what it means for the media industry.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/07/20117810628486892.html

I have to admit to being somewhat amused by the hypocrisy in certain quarters over this business of the Brown family medical records.

Remind me, which group of people was it who obtained Madeleine McCann's birth certificate?

Which group is it that is never done inventing illnesses for the child to have?

Which group is forever whining because, happily, they do not have access to the McCann family's medical and financial records?

Why, it is the same people who are currently making outraged noises about people who behave exactly as they do....

More on the subject from Al Jazeera:

The rise and fall of a global media baron?
As News of the World newspaper shuts down, analysts speculate on the future of its billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 10 Jul 2011 15:28

Rupert Murdoch has been accused of using his media empire to further his right-wing political goals.

When the last issue of News of the World newspaper went to press on Sunday, media analysts were left to wonder if the demise of Britain's most popular tabloid marks the beginning of the end for its billionaire owner or just a bump in the road to full spectrum global media dominance.

Known for reporting lurid details of sex scandals faced by footballers and politicians, the 168-year-old paper stopped the presses over a phone hacking scandal, drawing ire from the police and political elites who once sought favour from its owner, Rupert Murdoch CEO of News Corporation, one of the world's largest news conglomerates.

"In global reach, there are no comparable figures to Murdoch," said Ivor Gaber, a professor of Political Journalism at City University London. "He has a reach in US, UK, Australia and even China. He is a press baron like none other in the world. In terms of his domination of the media in the UK, there is no comparison," Gaber told Al Jazeera.

In the UK alone, Murdoch media properties include several leading newspapers including establishment paper The Times and The Sunday Times, The Sun, a tabloid, along with a major stake in Sky News, a TV station. David Cameron, the British prime minister, was close with the mogul. Andy Coulson who was recently arrested in connection with phone hacking allegations, was Cameron's former spokesman, and the editor of News of the World in 2007.

"The truth is, we have all been in this together -- the press, politicians and leaders of all parties -- and yes, that includes me," Cameron told reporters on Friday. He promised that "the music has stopped" on cozy relationships between the country’s media and the political elite, slamming "some illegal and utterly unacceptable practices at the News of the World and possibly elsewhere".

News business

The "practices" include allegations that reporters hacked into cellphone message systems belonging to families of UK soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the voice mail box of a murdered teenaged girl, possibly erasing messages and compromising criminal investigations.

There are also allegations that staff from the News of the World bribed police officers so they could continue with illegal activities in pursuit of readers. The UK government has promised a commission of inquiry into activities at the paper.
News of the World had been the UK's most popular paper[GALLO/GETTY]

"This is the biggest media story I can remember in 30 years of journalism," said Marie Kinsey, a journalism lecturer at the University of Sheffield. "The phone hacking has shocked a lot of people; it is not common practice."

Murdoch, an Australian-born conservative who used his papers as cheerleading vehicles for the invasion of Iraq, "has been allowed to get dominant influence [in UK politics] and there is no doubt he has used his newspapers to get political leverage," said Richard Tait, director of the centre for journalism at Cardiff University.

In 1989, Murdoch told an audience in the UK: "Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the values of the narrow elite which controls it."

The problem of media concentration, and politically biased news, is by no means unique to the UK. Among its media holdings, News Corporation - with a market capitalisation of around $46bn - owns some 175 newspapers, Fox TV station, 20th Century Fox films in the US, Harper Collins publishing and television interests in China, Italy, Australia and beyond.

But unlike profitable TV stations or movie production companies, several of Murdoch's papers lost money. The media baron spent $5.6bn to buy Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, in 2007 just before the newspaper industry went into economic free-fall. After paying a roughly 65 per cent premium for the prized publishing brand, News Corp wrote down about half the value of the deal in 2009.

US interests

News Corp doesn't have the same information dominance in the US media market that it maintains in the UK. Yet Fox News, owned by Murdoch's firm, has spurred the rise of the Republican right, supporting first George W Bush's war in Iraq and now the conservative Tea Party movement.

"Fox news couldn't exist in the UK broadcast media, because television output is regulated by legislation," Kinsey told Al Jazeera, adding that UK newspapers don’t face similar forms of regulation. "By law, a broadcaster has to be fair and that isn’t the case in the US, where a politically slanted channel can broadcast."

Legislation aside, the business deals underpinning Fox's brand often seem at odds with Murdoch's political slant. Like many of his media interests, the tycoon personally supports Western military interventions, Israel's occupation of Palestine and free-market economic doctrine. Kingdom Holding Company, a firm controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud from Saudi Arabia's ruling dynasty, is the second biggest shareholder in News Corp, behind Murdoch’s family.

The two biggest shareholders in the media empire often have contrasting views, on politics and international relations, particularly on questions over Islam, Iraq and Israel.

"Murdoch is fundamentally a businessman, but he can't stop from being involved in politics," Gaber said. "He has allowed his politics to influence his business. He is certainly no left-winger; he runs the Sunday Times because he likes the influence the paper gives him."

The decision to close the UK's most popular paper with a weekly circulation of 2.67 million is likely linked to Murdoch's more lucrative TV interests.

As newspaper circulations decline around the western world, facing competition from internet media and other problems, TV stations have become more profitable and politically important. Prior to the scandal, Murdoch’s company had launched a $14bn bid for the remaining 61 per cent of pay-TV operator BSkyB that News Corp does not already own.

In order to take complete control of the station, News Corp's directors need to prove to regulators that they are "fit and proper" persons to run the network.

"There is no possibility any government could approach the public to say 'Mr Murdoch should own more TV stations and newspapers," Tait told Al Jazeera, in reference to alleged criminality affecting dead soldiers and murdered women. "It is just not going to happen." The government has received more than 135,000 public complaints against the BSkyB deal.

Journalists pay the price

Many of the 200 journalists who will lose their jobs on less than a week's notice had no part in the alleged phone hacking scandal. But Rebekah Brookes, chief executive of News International, who was responsible for News of the World when the alleged illegal acts took place, has not been given a pink slip, perhaps due to her personal closeness with Murdoch.

"The tragedy, in some ways, is that 200 journalists at News of the World, who had nothing to do with these alleged practices, have lost their jobs," Kinsey said.

The scandal has become a major story in the UK, linking politicians, media barons and the police in a shady web of phone hacking, cronyism and information control. The future is uncertain for one of the world's biggest news conglomerates and its larger than life owner.

Critics of Murdoch, and elite ownership of the press in general, allege that bosses tell journalists what to write and politicians how to act, if they want favorable coverage. That view isn’t quite accurate, Gaber said. "He doesn't need to be a conspirator, he isn't on the phone telling his editors what to do; they know what to do. He didn’t need to tell Tony Blair or David Cameron what to do. They knew he was against [the UK] using the Euro currency. They knew he was in favour of Israel and the Iraq war."

It is impossible, and unreasonable, to directly link the execution of these policies to Murdoch himself. Perhaps he was just one voice, helping to create international policy. Or maybe he is a man who just knows how to pick a winner.

Even so, like News Corp's stock price which dropped more than four per cent on Friday, Murdoch's star seems to be falling, fast.

Thanks Tony.

It's good that the McCanns' phones don't appear to have been targetted; I wonder if Clarrie's phone was targeted for more political reasons?

That's possible Bonny.