Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (57 page)

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2012

Copyright © Tom Watson and Martin Hickman, 2012

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

Cover by Olly Moss

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-24-196105-6

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A variety of US laws restrict ownership or control of US media companies to US citizens. Rupert Murdoch took on US citizenship in 1985.

*
During the 1992 general election campaign, the
Sun
campaigned vigorously against Labour leader Neil Kinnock. On polling day it superimposed his head on a front-page picture of a lightbulb with the warning: ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ How far such attacks (or endorsements) actually affect the behaviour of voters is uncertain, but politicians of all parties believe that they do.

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On 1 March 2003, giving evidence to a media inquiry by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Wade painted a picture of a responsible newsgathering operation that abided by the law and journalism’s code of practice. But a glimpse of the truth slipped from her lips when Chris Bryant, a committee member, asked her whether News International paid police for information. A fellow backbencher in a Commons tearoom had told Bryant that after losing his wallet at a London restaurant, the
News of the World
had run an innuendo-laden piece about an MP losing money late at night in Soho, a red-light district. To the surprise of the Committee members, Wade replied: ‘We have paid the police for information in the past.’ In his diaries, the editor of the rival
Mirror,
Piers Morgan, remarked: ‘Rebekah excelled herself by virtually admitting she’s been illegally paying police for information. I called her to thank her for dropping the tabloid baton. She said: “That’s why I should never be seen or heard in public.”
⁶

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Begley went home and later rang in sick with stress. After a couple of days to-ing and fro-ing with executives, Miskiw came on the line at Begley’s home. Begley taped and transcribed the conversation, as reported in the
Daily Telegraph
:

‘I don’t think I can make a final decision on my future right now,’ Begley told Miskiw.

‘I’m not forcing you into a decision,’ Miskiw said. ‘I’m telling you something that will benefit you.’

‘I’m so wound up about this.’

‘Charles, Charles, Charles, let me tell you something. This is not a business for prima donnas. You know that and I know that.’

‘I’m disillusioned,’ Begley said.

‘I’ve told you that this isn’t going to be held against you. Charles, you should think very seriously about coming in on Tuesday.’

‘Well, to be frank Greg, as far as my future at News International is concerned, I haven’t toed the line for the editor’s pet project. I didn’t prance around while the World Trade Center was being bombed for her personal amusement. I can’t just stroll in.’

‘Why not?’ Greg urged him. ‘Charles, this is what we do – we go out and destroy other people’s lives.’

*
In this book, Scotland Yard is used synonymously for the Metropolitan Police; similarly, Fleet Street stands, somewhat anachronistically, for the national newspaper industry, and Wapping for News International.

*
Although slowly losing sales throughout the 2000s, the
Sun
and the
News of the World
were still making pre-tax profits of £93 million in 2003 and £147 million in 2004.

*
In 2011, when Driscoll made his comments, Sir Alex declined to respond to them.

*
The Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the press was set up by the government in July 2011. Presided over by Lord Justice Leveson, an Appeal Court judge, its assessors were: Sir David Bell, non-executive director of the
Economist
and former chairman of the
Fnancial Times
; Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty; Lord Currie, founding chairman of the media regulator Ofcom; Elinor Goodman, former Channel 4 political editor; George Jones, former political editor of the
Daily Telegraph
; and Sir Paul Scott-Lee, former Chief Constable of the West Midlands.

*
By April, SO13 had been merged with another unit to form SO15. For continuity, we will continue to refer to it as SO13.

*
He later told the Leveson Inquiry this was meant only as ‘an indicative number’.
⁹

*
At the inquiry, News International denied that Hinton had required its editors to write the editorials. Under close questioning from its counsel, Rhodri Davies, Thomas appeared to distance himself from his earlier comments. Asked about the supposed proprietorial influence, he told Davies: ‘That is absolutely how I saw it at the time. I thought: “Gosh, this is very surprising and strange.” Just forty-eight hours or less than that after I’d met the most senior person person at News International, here suddenly I’m appearing in a leading article, the lead editorial in
The Sunday Times
, on something which is not part of the public debate at the moment.’ He added: ‘I’ve now seen the witness statements from the editor at the time and also from [News International’s lawyer] Mr Linklater, and they say categorically they were not directed by Mr Hinton. I have absolutely no reason to challenge or disagree with that. All I’ve said was at the time to me, and to others around me, it looked strange.’

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Names have been redacted at the request of the Metropolitan Police to avoid prejudicing criminal trials.

*
Jules Stenson was features editor of the
News of the World
.

*
The incident in July 2005 when Taylor had caught a
News of the World
photographer taking pictures of him and Jo Armstrong now made sense. Lewis explained that Armstrong had been thanking Taylor for delivering the eulogy at her father’s funeral.

*
In a speech to the Society of Editors in Bristol on 10 November 2008, Paul Dacre, editor of the
Daily Mail,
welcomed the end of the proposal – which he described as ‘truly frightening’ – and disclosed that he, Les Hinton, and Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of the
Daily Telegraph
, had raised concerns about it at a lunch with Gordon Brown the previous year. Dacre said: ‘This legislation would have made Britain the only country in the free world to jail journalists and could have had a considerable chilling effect on good journalism. The Prime Minister – I don’t think it is breaking any confidences to reveal – was hugely sympathetic to the industry’s case.’

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Courts assess the reasonableness of the victor’s costs and sometimes reduce them. In this case, the High Court reduced the portion of Mosley’s legal bill of £510,000 which News International had to pay to £420,000, leaving Mosley to find the remaining £90,000.

*
Davies has never disclosed his ‘multiple sources’ for the Gordon Taylor story.

*
At the time,
The Times
was covering up its own newsgathering scandal. Its reporter Patrick Foster had hacked into the emails of a Lancashire Detective Constable, Richard Horton, to identify him as the anonymous police blogger ‘Nightjack’, but it had misled the High Court by giving the false impression that it had obtained the story honestly.
The Times
stayed quiet about the incident for two years. In 2010 its editor, James Harding, promoted Foster to media editor (see Chapter 22).

†
Hayman, who enjoyed champagne dinners with
News of the
World
journalists, had racked up £19,000 on his Scotland Yard Amex credit card in two years. He strenuously denied he had misused his expenses. In April 2008, an independent report by Gwent’s Chief Constable Mike Tongue, overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, cleared Hayman of any misconduct.

*
Blair has denied this.
¹²
Gordon Brown cannot remember the phone call to Watson.

*
The names of operations were chosen at random; they have no particular significance.

*
At the time of going to press, the names of the individuals who had commissioned the hacking cannot be published, to avoid prejudicing ongoing legal cases.

*
In a meeting with Llewellyn at the Conservative Party conference in October, the
Guardian
’s deputy editor, Ian Katz, again directly raised Andy Coulson’s record at the
News of the World
and his employment of Jonathan Rees, whose murder trial at the Old Bailey had become bogged down in legal argument and whose story could not at that time be told.

†
In July 2011, when the hacking scandal exploded, the reason for the non-answer became clear: Coulson had not undergone ‘Developed Vetting’ (which would have involved checks of police and security services files), which meant that, unlike his Labour predecessors, he was forbidden from attending cabinet meetings or viewing Top Secret government documents – an unusual position for one of the Prime Minister’s closest aides.

*
At the time of going to press, the senior executive cannot be named for legal reasons.

*
In the autumn of 2010, the
News of the World
moved from its offices in St Katherine’s Dock to a nearby tower block, Thomas More Square. During the move News International smashed up reporters’ computers on the grounds that they had new ones at their new home. News International said it was a routine technical upgrade.

*
John Yates eventually responded, on 22 October, saying blandly it was ‘inappropriate’ for the force to comment on the cases of Brian Paddick, Chris Bryant and Brendan Montague (a freelance journalist, whose phone had been hacked by the
News of the World
in an apparent attempt to steal his stories), since they were the subject of judicial review proceedings; that it could not comment on the cases of third parties since it owed them a duty of confidence and that the hacking of MPs was being considered by the Commons (see
p. 131
this chapter). He concluded:

Finally you raise a number of other issues about the Metropolitan Police Service’s (MPS) handling of this investigation. All I can say on this point is what we have said in public statements, namely that the MPS has a duty to ensure that any inquiries are lawful, proportionate and involve an appropriate use of police resources. We worked closely with both the CPS and Leading Counsel throughout and they had oversight of all aspects of the case and sight of all material. As you also know, the DPP has conducted his own review and considered that the case was handled appropriately.

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In an interview with him in August 2008,
Broadcast
magazine described Hunt as a ‘cheerleader for Rupert Murdoch’s contribution to the health of British television’. Asked if Murdoch should be allowed to own two TV news channels, Hunt told the magazine: ‘Rather than worry about Rupert Murdoch owning another TV channel, what we should recognize is that he has done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person because of his huge investment in setting up Sky TV which, at one point, was losing several million pounds a day.’ Hunt’s own website quoted
Broadcast’
s verdict: ‘Like all good Conservatives Hunt is a cheerleader for Rupert Murdoch’s contribution to the health of British television.’ Before he knew he would be taking the decision on the bid, Hunt told the
Financial Times
on 15 June: ‘It does seem to me that News Corp do control Sky already, so it isn’t clear to me that in terms of media plurality there is a substantive change, but I don’t want to second guess what regulators might decide.’

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Mulcaire did later provide a list to the lawyers of the civil litigants, but it has not been publicly disclosed so as not to prejudice any possible criminal trials.