McCanns At Phone Hacking Hearing

**bb1** Tue Sep 06, 2011 1:03 pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/06/phone-hacking-levseon-inquiry-live

Phone hacking and Leveson inquiry - live

[i]Full coverage as the culture select committee questions four former News of the World executives including Colin Myler and Tom Crone, plus the Leveson inquiry's first hearing.

11.43am: Meanwhile over at the Leveson inquiry, my colleague Josh Halliday reports public figures including Madeleine McCann's parents are queuing up to give evidence.

I wonder if the antics of Hater Hero Laffin with Clarence Mitchell's phone are going to get a mention?

**bb1** Tue Sep 06, 2011 1:39 pm

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/07/07/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-madeleine-mccann-and-danielle-jones-are-latest-cases-probed-115875-23252845/

News of the World phone hacking: Madeleine McCann and Danielle Jones are latest cases probed

The News of the World was yesterday accused of being morally obscene after more grieving families were named as alleged phone-hacking victims.

In the latest revelations, people linked to missing Madeleine McCann and murdered schoolgirl Danielle Jones are said to have had their mobile messages broken into by the Sunday tabloid’s journalists.

Police have also contacted families of victims of the July 7 bombings to warn them their phones may have been accessed in the days following the 2005 terrorist attacks.

It comes just a day after claims that the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and Soham victims Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had their phones targeted

Tearing into the News of the World in the Commons, Labour MP Chris Bryant said: “They are the immoral and almost certainly criminal deeds of an organisation that was appallingly led and had completely lost sight of any idea of decency.”

The News of the World has been accused of hacking on an “industrial scale”.

Notebooks seized from former employee Glenn Mulcaire – the private investigator at the centre of the scandal who was jailed in 2007 – revealed 11,000 pages of documents and several thousand names of targets.

Police are now examining every high-profile case involving the murder and abduction of children since 2001.

They include 15-year-old Danielle Jones, who was killed in East Tilbury, Essex, in 2001 by her uncle Stuart Campbell.

It also emerged Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was murdered by Roy Whiting in 2000, believes her phone messages were illegally accessed and plans to sue.

Danielle’s mother Linda Jones said: “The police have promised to investigate on our behalf and we’re waiting to hear back. If we have been targeted then obviously we think we deserve to be told exactly why it was allowed to happen, when it happened and who was responsible. This has come out of the blue for us and caused me so much stress. There has to be transparency and there needs to be answers.”

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, confirmed he has met with police investigating the scandal after attempts were made to access his mobile. Mr Mitchell has previously discussed his suspicions he may have been a victim of phonehacking attempts when the case involving the couple’s missing daughter Madeleine was at its height. He said he has been interviewed by police officers from Operation Weeting – the current inquiry into alleged hacking by the News of the World – and is due to meet with them a second time.

The father of a victim of the July 7 bombings has also spoken of his horror after being told he may have had his phone messages intercepted.

Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the attack at Edgware Road tube station, said: “It fills me with horror. We were in a very dark place.

“You think it’s as dark as it can get and then you realise there’s someone out there who can make it darker.”

Recalling the days after his death in 2005, he added: “My wife and I were kind of all over the place, we were chatting to friends on the phone, in a very personal and deeply emotional context – and the thought that somebody may have been listening to that just looking for a cheap headline is just horrendous.”

Scotland Yard is contacting other bereaved families to warn them they too may have been victims.

News International yesterday claimed to be very close to identifying which executive at the News of the World authorised the hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone as David Cameron announced an inquiry into the scandal.

The deepening row yesterday put further pressure on News International chief Rebekah Brooks to quit.

But her boss Rupert Murdoch took the unusual step of issuing an official public statement backing her. Mr Murdoch, who is chairman and boss of News International’s parent company News Corporation, said: “Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable.

“I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively co-operate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks’ leadership.

“We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again.”

Metropolitan police chief Sir Paul Stephenson said any officer found to have received inappropriate payments from News International will be disciplined. He said the Met was sent documents from the company which allegedly show officers received cash.

They are believed to include emails allegedly showing officers were paid tens of thousands of pounds.

The editor of the News of the World described the phone-hacking allegations as “the most devastating breach of journalistic ethics imaginable” in a private meeting with senior staff. Colin Myler also warned them they face a difficult period where they will have to “atone for the wrongs of our predecessors”.

It came as the lawyer representing Milly Dowler’s killer Levi Bellfield said the allegations could mean his client’s conviction last month is unsafe.

Jeremy Moore, from Carter Moore Solicitors, said he was waiting to hear more details about the allegation before deciding whether it could be grounds to appeal last month’s conviction.

**bb1** Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:35 pm

A classic from MM:

Forgive me but I'm just not getting this? (Again! ) If they HAD been hacked and the hacking showed them in a not too good light, why would they want to bring attention to this by appearing in front of the panel?
Like you say, malena, it can't be about phone hacking, surely?

See, it's almost got it - if the hater can just take one step further and realise the McCanns have no idea what happened to their daughter, no involvement in her disappearance, they will be surprised how it all starts to make sense...

**muratfan** Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:57 pm

And why would they want to appear in front of people, who could say, "Yes we hacked your phone and we know what happened and what you did"

Do we really have to keep telling the Anti's how thick they really are?

**bb1** Wed Oct 12, 2011 7:19 pm

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/editor-accuses-government-hypocrisy-hacking-143244152.html

Editors turn on government over hacking probe

By Kate Holton | Reuters – 25 minutes ago

LONDON (Reuters) - Two of the most influential media figures in Britain on Wednesday accused the government of using a scandal over journalists hacking phones as an excuse to clamp down on the press and prevent it from probing the misdeeds of the powerful.
Showing much of the anger often evident in his tabloid, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre said the calls for a clampdown on the industry were being led by a government that had until recently indulged in "sickening genuflections" before Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
"Am I alone in detecting the rank smells of hypocrisy and revenge in the political class's current moral indignation over a press that dared to expose their greed and corruption," he told an inquiry into press standards called by the government after the scandal.
Britain's highly competitive press is under intense scrutiny in the wake of revelations that people working for Murdoch's hugely popular News of the World tabloid had hacked the phones of thousands to generate stories.
The scandal caused a wave of public anger which ultimately brought about the closure of the tabloid and shook the political establishment. Prime Minister David Cameron was also damaged by his decision to hire former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief in 2007.
Kelvin MacKenzie, a long-time former editor of Murdoch's Sun newspaper, said the press did not need further regulation and said the "ludicrous" inquiry was a mere smokescreen to hide Cameron's embarrassment over his failings.
"This is the way in which our prime minister is hopeful he can escape his own personal lack of judgement," he said in a typically aggressive speech, while relaying how Cameron's politicians used to line up to "kiss the rear end" of Murdoch.
He said politicians should accept the scandal was simply a moment "when low-grade criminality took over a newspaper," and not an indication of a need for widespread change.

MacKenzie said former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown had once threatened to "destroy" Murdoch and his News Corp company after the Sun called for its readers to back Cameron over Brown in the 2010 election.
Dacre said he condemned the hacking but thought the politicians were now going too far in their reaction.
"Let's keep it in proportion," he said. "Britain's cities weren't looted as a result. No one died. The banks didn't collapse because of the News of the World."
Parliament's response to the scandal, Dacre said, was "a judicial inquiry with greater powers than those possessed by the public inquiry into the Iraq war" with a panel of experts "who have not the faintest clue on how mass-selling newspapers operate."
THE 'LIBERAL' PROBLEM
Dacre's anger was directed across the board, at the police, judges, the Prime Minister and also the Guardian which led much of the coverage that eventually brought down the News of the World.
Dacre questioned whether "liberals" should be allowed to decide what a working class man or woman reads.
"The problem is that Britain's liberal class, the people that know best and really run this country, by and large hate all popular press," he said.
"The Hampstead liberal with his gilded lifestyle understandably enjoys the Guardian. But does he have any right to deny someone who works 10 hours a day ... and lives for football, the right to buy a paper that reveals the sexual peccadilloes of one of his team's millionaire married players?"
Dacre, who wields huge political influence through a newspaper that often claims to lead the charge against moral decay, also suggested that the more scandalous elements of newspapers were required to draw readers in, allowing the press to then fund coverage of more serious matters such as politics.

Like MacKenzie, Dacre said the current system of self regulation led by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was adequate but he said it could be beefed up with the appointment of an ombudsman with the power to impose fines.
Another speaker to support the press was Mary-Ellen Field, an Australian hacking victim who lost her job working for the model Elle Macpherson, because Macpherson thought Field had leaked private information to the press.
"I don't want the press muzzled," she said. "I want to see you doing your job and that's to be vigilant and to protect democracy. I was not a victim of the freedom of the press ... or self regulation. I was a victim of criminal behaviour."
(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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