Last week we discussed the phone hacking scandal from the Murdoch-run tabloid The News Of The World. Since last week things have been unraveling very fast. In the middle of last week, Murdoch announced that NOTW would run its last edition on Sunday. Almost 200 people were put out of work. A former editor of the paper, who was David Cameron’s aide, was arrested and may face jail time. The paper’s editor at the time, Rebekah Brooks, still has her job. Things are about to get worse for Murdoch because it’s now being reported that NOTW hacked the phones of 9/11 victims.
A source said: ‘This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives.
‘His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.
‘The investigator said the journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.’
The News of the World was shut after 11,000 documents seized from a private investigator revealed the ugly truth behind many of its scoops.
One police source said: ‘These documents show the hacking was not just one or two attempts at accessing voicemails. More than 4,000 people had their phone hacked. This was hacking on an industrial scale.’
This could get really ugly. Will it effect the rest of Murdoch’s empire, like Fox News? One of the editors of NOTW during this period is now with the Wall Street Journal. I think it’s clear now that there was a culture at NOTW that let this behavior flourish.
Just for kicks, check out this 2009 column from News of the World denying that they had hacked thousands of phones and accusing The Guardian of shoddy journalism.
So let us be clear. Neither the police, nor our own internal investigations, has found any evidence to support allegations that News of the World journalists have accessed voicemails of any individuals.
Nor instructed private investigators or other third parties to access voicemails of any individual.
Nor found that there was any systemic corporate illegality by any executive to suppress evidence to the contrary.
If the police, or ourselves, had uncovered such evidence, charges would have been brought.
…
The News of the World has a long and distinguished tradition. But we also accept that there have been times in our 165-year history when, like the rest of the media, we have made mistakes.
When we have done so, we have admitted to them.
No newspaper, least of all the Guardian, is perfect. Nor is our craft a perfect science.
Its practitioners are human. They misbehave and make mistakes for which they – rightly – pay a heavy price.
That editorial has a certain “bring it on” tone, doesn’t it? The title of the editorial, by the way was “No inquiries, No charges, No evidence.” I guess they will have plenty of inquiries now.