New Phone Hacking Story

[andy at handiwork]

It appears that the parents of the two girls killed by Huntley in Soham might also have had their phones listened to by the NOTW according to Newsnight.

[David Johnson]

Coulson has already resigned twice over the phone hacking story, first time when he was editor of the NOTW and then secondly when he was Cameron's director of comms.

Very nobly it must be said because he had absolutely no involvement or knowledge of phone hacking on his watch but was prepared to take responsibility. As Cameron said, he has been punished twice for an offence he knew nothing about. !wink!

If the Guardian story about Milly Dowler is true then, not only does it make Coulson even less believable, if that is possible, given he was assistant editor then, but it also makes the position of Rebekah Brooks who was NOTW editor in 2002 untenable.

As you rightly said Andy, both Labour and Tory governments have done a piss poor job of dealing with Murdoch, but perhaps this is a watershed. In the eyes of the British public, I suspect it is one thing to hack a celebrity's phone to try and find out who is shagging who, but to hack the phone of a murdered schoolgirl, right at the start of the case and potentially, harm the potential success or otherwise of that police enquiry by deleting possible evidence is on a completely different scale.

Unless Cameron finds a way of rowing back over the BSkyB takeover, then he is going to really shoot himself in the bollocks in the context of the potential seriousness of what News International are accused of now, the Tories ongoing support from the Murdoch empire and Cameron's standing by Coulson even though there seems to be nobody in the press who seems to think it possible that Coulson could not have known what was going on.

This story is just going to run and run and run. There is already talk of the Dowlers suing News International. And when you consider how distraught understandably they were at the end of the recent trial, they are going to be out to see the NOTW get their comeuppance, one way or the other.

Cheers
D

[wayne]

I hope that the media staarrt pointing out more actively what close friends "call me Dave" is with Rebekah Brooks and Andy coulson bearing in mind they helped make him the luvvy of the tory party conference.

[steve56]

Police are the last id trust in fact i dont trust anyone

[David Johnson]

I think it's worth pointing out that the actor, Hugh Grant was one of the first to break the story of the Milly Dowler phone hack when he wore a wire to talk to former NOTW journalist Paul McMullan who admitted that Dowler's phone had been hacked. A great example of the biter bit!

Today when asked whether Rebekah Brook who was the NOTW editor at the time of the Milly Dowler story, could be trusted to investigate this in 2011, Grant replied,

"It's like asking Hitler to clean up the Nazi party"

Go, Hugh!

Cheers
D

[max_tranmere]

This is a new low, even for the News Of The World. The fact that Milly Dowler's voicemail became full of messages, which were then deleted, gave the impression to Milly's family that she might have still been alive. I hope the News Of The World person who is responsible for this pays a high price for it!

[David Johnson]

Looks as if she is right in the middle of a shitstorm.

She can't have much credibility for having responsibility for investigating events during her own time as NOTW editor in 2002, at the time of Milly Dowler's murder.

According to the Guardian,
"One of Brooks's first acts on taking over as editor of the News of the World in 2000 was to bring back Greg Miskiw from New York, where he had just arrived as US correspondent, to appoint him as her assistant editor in charge of news. It was Miskiw who then hired a full-time private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who proceeded to steal confidential data and hack voicemail in order to provide stories for the paper.While Brooks was in the editor's chair, the News of the World regularly hired Steve Whittamore, the Hampshire private investigator who ran a network of specialists who stole confidential information from British Telecom, mobile phone companies and the DVLA.

Records published by the Information Commissioner's Office show that 23 journalists from the News of the World hired Whittamore a total of 228 times (including for the purchase of addresses and ex-directory numbers relating to Milly Dowler's disappearance.)

Also during Brooks's editorship, a former detective, who had been forced out of the Metropolitan police after a corruption inquiry, carried cash bribes to serving police officers on behalf of the paper, according to journalists who worked there at the time. In evidence to a Commons select committee, in March 2003, just after she left the News of the World, Brooks said: "We have paid the police for information in the past." She has since written to the committee to say she knows of no specific example."

The Guardian has seen invoices submitted by Whittamore which explicitly record apparently illegal acts.

What goes around comes around!

Cheers
D

[bernard72]

Just heard on the radio that Ford will not be taking anymore advertising space with News International until they complete their full enquiry.
Might only be a small step at the moment, but I think more companies will do the same.
If more companies do this that this will hurt News International.
I think all papers will have good and bad journalists so hopefully this will start weeding them out.

[andy at handiwork]

As was suggested by someone on the World at One (Radio 4) today, she and Coulson were either the most incompetent of editors or are both lying. You decide.

[andy at handiwork]

If, by removing advertising from the NOTW, (but sadly not other Murdoch titles), Ford start a mass boycott by advertisers, I'm sure the sackings will start in earnest down at Wapping.