Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (33 page)

Soon after 3 p.m. on 6 July, inside Wapping, the
News of the World’
s editor, Colin Myler, told shell-shocked staff he was ‘appalled’ by the allegations, but assured them that their newspaper was not the same as the one in the headlines. Staff at all titles felt under attack. ‘There were some people who were not just disgusted by the
News of the World
but wanted to express that anger in any way they could,’
The Times
editor James Harding said later. ‘We saw small numbers of people cancelling their print subscriptions.’ The
Times
was estimated to have lost 20,000.
The Times
journalist Giles Coren tweeted that he had been criticized in a butcher’s shop, merely for working for News International.

At 4.30 p.m., as the public and businesses were swinging violently against the
NoW
, Rupert Murdoch made his first public statement since the story had broken forty-eight hours previously, saying that ‘Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the
News of the World
are deplorable and unacceptable.’ He announced that his faithful board member, Joel Klein, and an independent director, Viet Dinh, would manage its response. Worried about the damage to its reputation, and the possibility that the contagion could spread to its other businesses, News Corp had begun to take control of News International. Murdoch said: ‘I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively cooperate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks’s leadership.’ For now, therefore, Brooks remained in charge. The media commentator Roy Greenslade described the statement as further proof that his old boss Murdoch had ‘lost his marbles’, blogging: ‘He has allowed himself to be seduced by Brooks’s formidable charms. I cannot imagine him doing anything like this when at the height of his powers.’
¹⁰

Another Wapping favourite, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, demanded the Independent Police Complaints Commission oversee the Met’s inquiry into the bribery allegations. Under Johnson’s watch, Scotland Yard had failed to re-investigate hacking properly, and in September 2010 he had dismissed the scandal as ‘codswallop’. Now, he said: ‘If some police officers were indeed paid as part of this process, there is only one word for this, corruption. It doesn’t matter that this happened many years ago, under a different commissioner and indeed mayoralty.’
¹¹

As detectives redoubled their efforts to inform prominent victims, they visited George Osborne, whose name and home phone number had appeared in Mulcaire’s notes. The Chancellor of the Exchequer – who was thought to have been targeted around the time the
News of the World
was hacking ‘Mistress Pain’ Natalie Rowe’s phone – did not wish to make a fuss about the news. His spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest his voicemail had actually been hacked, and that he was very grateful to the police: ‘Frankly he thinks there are far more serious allegations surrounding the whole hacking affair and fully supports the police in their investigations.’

By coincidence, that evening had been scheduled for the launch in the House of Lords of a campaign for a public inquiry into the scandal, which was backed by John Pilger, the Australian journalist, Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, the lawyer Charlotte Harris and Lord Fowler. Hugh Grant, the best-known supporter of ‘Hacked Off’, gave media interviews on College Green opposite Parliament denouncing Murdoch. In an interview earlier on Wednesday with the American broadcaster CBS, he said: ‘This is a watershed moment when, finally, the public starts to see and feel, above all, just how low and disgusting this particular newspaper’s methods were. And what will emerge shortly is that it wasn’t just this newspaper.’ BSkyB shares fell 18p to 827p, while in the US, News Corp stock tumbled by 3.6 per cent.

On Thursday 7 July, the
Independent
splashed on ‘Murdoch empire in crisis’ and the
Guardian
‘The day the prime minister was forced to act on phone hacking’. The
Daily Telegraph
and
Daily Mail
splashed on suspicions that the
NoW
had eavesdropped the phone messages of the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rose Gentle, whose son Fusilier Gordon Gentle was killed in Iraq in 2004, described the possibility that her messages had been hacked as ‘a living nightmare’. The potential targeting of soldiers’ families was particularly embarrassing for News International, whose
Sun
vigorously supported the British Army and championed the cause of rank and file soldiers in award-winning campaigns. Wapping said in a statement: ‘News International’s record as a friend of the armed services and of our servicemen and servicewomen is impeccable. If these allegations are true, we are absolutely appalled and horrified.’ The Royal British Legion dropped the
News of the World
as its partner for the ‘Justice for the Brave’ campaign, and began reviewing its advertising with News International, saying it had been ‘shocked to the core’ by the disclosures, which had affected hundreds of families.

The Times
sought to focus attention on the police: ‘Parliament puts press and police in the dock over hacking scandal’. The
Sun
found space on its front page for a twenty-three-word story by its political editor Tom Newton Dunn, which read: ‘PM David Cameron ordered a public inquiry into newspaper phone hacking yesterday. He said illegal practices by ALL British media must be tackled.’

Despite Wapping’s best efforts, the story was out of control – and becoming increasingly serious for David Cameron. His friendliness with Brooks and Murdoch was criticized by usually supportive figures. Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP for Clacton-on-Sea, tweeted: ‘“I don’t think Maggie Thatcher would employ someone like that Andy Coulson”, remarked my constituent. Me neither.’ The
Telegraph’
s Peter Oborne, who had presented a Channel 4
Dispatches
programme on phone hacking in October, said that like John Major in 1992 after Britain was forced to drop out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the Prime Minister faced a crisis from which he might never recover.

At 8.30 a.m., Ed Miliband described his disgust at the hacking of the families of dead soldiers, saying: ‘It is grotesque beyond belief that these actions are alleged to have been committed on behalf of a news organization committed to the military covenant.’ Politicians had ‘lessons to learn’ about their relationships with Rupert Murdoch, he added, renewing his call for Brooks to quit. ‘The only people in the world who seem to think that Rebekah Brooks should carry on in her position are Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron.’

The government’s enthusiasm for the BSkyB bid was waning. At 11.37 a.m., Labour’s leader in the Lords, Lady Royall, demanded its suspension because of the loss of public and commercial confidence in News International. A government whip, Lady Rawlings, said that Jeremy Hunt was satisfied there were ‘sufficient safeguards’ to protect Sky News’ independence, but added he would need time to respond to the public consultation. ‘The Secretary of State will not be rushed, he will be fair,’ she said, indicating for the first time that a judge would preside over the public inquiry. The government was not changing its mind about the BSkyB bid but was, seemingly, delaying the timetable.

A few newsagents stopped selling the
News of the World
. Nav Aggarwal, owner of five convenience stores in East Anglia, said he acted because one of his shops, at Ely station, was close to Soham. A Budgens franchise operator, Andrew Thornton, who banned the paper from his two stores in north London, said: ‘Their actions have affected people in our community and communities around the country and there must be consequences for the complete lack of morality that seems to be part of the paper’s culture.’ In morning trading, BSkyB shares fell again, to 805p. Shortly before 11 a.m., the first of the big supermarkets, the lifeblood of national newspaper advertising, pulled out of the
Screws
: Sainsbury’s would not advertise with the title until the end of the police investigation ‘due to the rising concerns of our customers’. Asda and Boots shortly followed.
*

Shortly before 2 p.m., the BBC’s Robert Peston tweeted that the government had received 100,000 submissions to the consultation on News Corp’s bid, adding – apparently with inside information from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – ‘Culture Sec won’t give final decision on bid till Sept at earliest.’

Scotland Yard announced that to allay ‘significant public and political concern’, the Independent Police Complaints Commission would indeed oversee its corruption inquiry. Sue Akers explained why it was taking the Met so long to notify all the victims: there were simply so many of them. ‘We are going through approximately 11,000 pages of material containing almost 4,000 names. In addition, we have been contacted by hundreds of people who believe that they may have been affected.’

The
Evening Standard
hit London’s streets with further details of News International’s corruption of the city’s police force. Officers in sensitive positions with access to confidential information had received more than £100,000 in bribes from journalists. One unidentified source was quoted as saying: ‘They were running a criminal enterprise at the
News of the World
. Serious crimes have been found.’
News of the World
columnists began to notice the public mood. The comedian Dave Gorman quit his column and the personal finance writer Martin Lewis – the cousin of the lawyer Mark Lewis – cancelled his column that week. The
Match of the Day
presenter Gary Lineker privately considered whether to continue writing for the paper. One well-known
News of the World
journalist sought to calm the furore by repeating Colin Myler’s point about the change of staff at the paper. While ‘sickened’ by the stories about the ‘alleged hacking’ of Milly Dowler, the showbiz editor Dan Wooton blogged to readers: ‘What I have to stress to you is this: I do NOT work for the newspaper you are reading about.’

Shortly after 4 p.m.,
News of the World
staff were called to a meeting with Rebekah Brooks. The last time such a big meeting had been called Andy Coulson had resigned: was Brooks about to go?

Staff on other titles were reading a 968-word email from James Murdoch. It started slowly. The
News of the World
was 168 years old, read by more people than any other English language newspaper and had a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrongdoing and regularly setting the news agenda – but, sadly, it had failed to hold itself to account. Murdoch wrote:

Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued. As a result, the
News of the World
and News International wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter. We now have voluntarily given evidence to the police that I believe will prove that this was untrue and those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.

This was not the only fault. The paper had made statements to Parliament without being in the full possession of the facts. This was wrong.

The company paid out-of-court settlements approved by me. I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret.

Humiliatingly, James Murdoch was finally admitting that the firm he chaired had misled Parliament. But he was careful to say that he had not known about the extent of the wrongdoing when he authorized the hush payments to Gordon Taylor (and unspecified others). At this stage, the internal documents detailing his involvement with the settlements had not been released.

Murdoch outlined the action he was taking to resolve the problems: NI was cooperating with the police, had admitted liability in civil cases, set up the Management and Standards Committee and a compensation scheme, and hired Olswang solicitors to examine past failings and recommend new systems and practices. Finally, he got to the big news. ‘Having consulted senior colleagues, I have decided that we must take further decisive action with respect to the paper. This Sunday will be the last issue of the
News of the World
. Colin Myler will edit the final edition of the paper.’

This was a bombshell: the UK’s top-selling Sunday newspaper was to close. All revenue from its final edition that Sunday would go to good causes. The company hoped to find jobs for many of the paper’s 250 staff. Murdoch added: ‘I can understand how unfair these decisions may feel. Particularly, for colleagues who will leave the company.’

One of the first journalists in
The Times
to get to the end of the email exclaimed: ‘Fucking hell!’

In the
Screws
newsroom – where the IT department had disabled email and the Internet – staff were still listening to Rebekah Brooks. After rambling for several minutes, she suddenly announced the closure of the paper. She offered to take questions, but Colin Myler said: ‘No, Rebekah, I think it’s best if you leave the floor.’

The journalists were dazed. They headed for the pub, along with a contingent of
Sun
sub-editors. The
News of the World,
which was as British as fish and chips and which George Orwell had written about, was about to disappear.

As reporters left Wapping’s gates, some were interviewed on live TV, their fate still hanging in the balance. Publicly, they seemed more disappointed than angry. Features editor Jules Stenson said staff showed ‘quiet pride’ when the announcement was made. ‘There was shock, bewilderment, there were a few gasps, there were lots of tears from the staff. It’s been reported that there was a lynch mob mentality which is completely untrue; there was none of that.’