Economy
The grotesque must-read of the year
Butter wouldn’t melt … in church are Les, Rupert, Andy and Rebekah …
Former Monty Python member John Cleese said this book woke him in the night scared. Why? Because at one level, Hack Attack by Nick Davies is the fast-moving story of how the illegal phone-hacking being practised by journalists at News of the World on a mass scale was exposed. But, at an even more disturbing level, it is the map of an unholy web of influence that deformed British democracy.
What News of the World did was akin to blackmail. When I blackmail you, I ring and say: “I’ve got information on you. You pay me and I’ll keep it private”. What News of the World did was ring you and say: “We’ve got information on you. You talk to us and we’ll put a slant on the story that’s sympathetic to you:”
By getting the person in question to spill the beans, the newspaper could avoid leaving any trace that its only source for the story was an illegal phone hack. Many people submitted to this treatment and editor Andy Coulson is quoted as saying, “That’s tabloid journalism! You turn them over in the morning and in the afternoon they thank you for it”. Riding the wave of its illicit gains, News of the World won Britain’sNewspaper of the Year Award.
Davies writes that people in the power elite had reason to fear because “they had all seen what happened to the former Labour minister Clare Short. Several times she criticised the Sun’s use of topless women to sell the paper and found herself denounced to millions as ‘Killjoy Clare’, ‘fat’, ‘jealous’, ‘ugly’, ‘Short on looks’, ‘Short on brains’. At various points, the paper offered readers free car stickers (“Stop Crazy Clare”); sent half-naked women to her home; and ran a beauty contest to ask their readers whether they would prefer to see her face or the back of a bus.
“Separately, the News of the World ran two bogus stories suggesting she was involved with pornography; tried to buy old photographs of her as a 20-year-old in a nightdress; and published a smear story that attempted to link her to a West Indian gangster.”
In 2010, Labour MP Tom Watson, one of the few MPs to stand up on the issue, made a speech to the Commons. He declared …
WHAT YOU WON’T READ IN THE PAPERS: JAMES DOLEMAN’S SMART SUMMATION OF THREE SUN TRIALS SO FAR …
After reporting from the Old Bailey for over 15 months now, covering various hacking and misconduct trials, the indefatigable James Doleman ( Here ) gives a pithy insight which you might not see in mainstream media coverage …
If you only read Britain’s best selling tabloid newspaper you would think that the last 6 months of Sun journalists appearing in the criminal courts have led to a total vindication for the paper and its version of journalistic ethics.
Since August 2014 three separate trials at London’s Old Bailey have found Sun reporters not guilty on various charges. Each acquittal was greeted with banner headlines in the paper proclaiming that the ordinary people on the jury had chosen to defend free speech against the police and the courts unjustly trying to silence the press. Yet a closer look at how each reporter defended themselves in court suggests there may have been other reasons for those jury’s making their decisions.
Let’s look at the case of the Sun’s Whitehall editor Clodagh Hartley. Hartley was on trial for paying a civil servant for information from HMRC, including advance details of the 2010 budget. While she argued that stories published as a result of these payments were in the public interest that was not the main thrust of the defence. Hartley’s position, simply put, was that she didn’t know paying a civil servant was a crime.
We have all heard the phrase: “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” and it is usually true. There is however an exception, when the defendant is charged with “conspiracy.” The crime Hartley was charged with was that she had knowingly entered into an agreement with the civil servant to commit an illegal act. How, her defence said, could she be found guilty of that if she didn’t know that what the civil servant was doing was a crime? The journalist pointed out that senior staff at the paper were well aware she was paying a civil servant and no-one made any move to stop her. The stories were, she said, vetted by lawyers who also raised no objection. How could she possibly have guessed she was breaking the law?
Or take the case of another former Sun journalist Ben Ashford. He was charged in relation to taking possession of a mobile phone, stolen from a woman in Manchester. Ashford took the phone home and transcribed text messages from the device, some so personal that they were not read out in court. The reporter defended himself on the basis that he had been instructed by his news-desk to access the phone and send them the messages and had assumed that they would not have told him to do this if his actions were illegal. He was arguing that he – at least – was acting in good faith as the most junior staff member.
The same defence by another senior Sun journalist Nick Parker over payments he made to a prison officer. Parker told the court he had never been told that giving money to a public official was a problem by anyone, and was “shocked” to be charged with a crime. The Sun hailed their journalist’s acquittal for aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office. They were rather quieter about his three month suspended sentence for transcribing the contents of a mobile phone stolen from Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh.
Yet Parker had given an interesting defence on the mobile phone theft. He said he had been told by his news-desk to meet a man called Michael Ankers, who was later convicted of stealing the phone. Parker was adamant in the witness box that he was only a messenger: “It’s run by the lawyers, it’s run by the senior management, it’s nothing to do with me.” He told the court he had been told what to do by News International’s head of legal affairs, Tom Crone: “I was following the instruction of most senior lawyer at News International.” The journalist noted “He made the decisions but is not in court today.”
Of course you have to be cautious about testimony given by people defending themselves in court, they often have good reasons to try and shift the blame for their actions to others. There are also at least six further trials of Sun journalists due next year. However the evidence and testimony we have seen so far could suggest that that the management of the newspaper was either indifferent to, or unconcerned by alleged illegal actions undertaken by its reporters.
One other thing to recall the next time you see the headlines in the Sun lauding the fact that one of their employees has been found not guilty. The only reason the reporters and their sources are in court is that the Management and Standards Committee (MSC) of News Corp. handed thousands of internal emails to the police. Nigel Rumfitt QC, defending a middle ranking Sun reporter, told a jury at Kingston Crown court that in his view the MSC had been “engaged in a wholesale cover-up of the roles of the senior members of staff at the expense of the more junior.”
In English law a company is a legal person, responsible for their actions. The “controlling minds” of the business can also be held liable for the actions of their employees. Given the evidence that emerged in court in the last six months the possibility of a corporate prosecution of News UK remains very real.
Editor’s note: the trial of the Sun Six at Kingston resumes next week with the judge’s summing up. Also, on the fifth of January, another trial involving senior editorial staff at the Sun is due to begin at the Old Bailey, presided over by Mr Justice Saunders, who was the judge at the Brooks/Coulson Hacking trial last year.
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