Andy Coulson, former ‘NOTW’ editor and Clive Goodman
 
It looks like the Murdochs and their former News of the World editor Andy Coulson are finally fucked over the ‘phone hacking scandal today, after the publication of a letter by former employee.

Clive Goodman is the former News of the World Royal Correspondent, who was arrested in August 2006, and jailed in January 2007 for illegally intercepting mobile phone messages involving members of the Royal Household. In March 2007, Goodman wrote a letter, published Tuesday, which claimed that ‘phone hacking was widely discussed by editorial staff at the tabloid, until, then editor, Andy Coulson banned any reference to it. The Guradian reports:

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World’s disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was “widely discussed” at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with “the full knowledge and support” of other senior journalists, whom he named.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman’s allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs’ own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously “hard to credit”, “self-serving” and “inaccurate and misleading”.

Goodman’s claims also raise serious questions about Rupert Murdoch’s close friend and adviser, Les Hinton, who was sent a copy of the letter but failed to pass it to police and who then led a cast of senior Murdoch personnel in telling parliament that they believed Coulson knew nothing about the interception of the voicemail of public figures and that Goodman was the only journalist involved.

The letters from Goodman and from the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis are among a cache of paperwork published by the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. One committee member, the Labour MP Tom Watson, said Goodman’s letter was “absolutely devastating”. He said: “Clive Goodman’s letter is the most significant piece of evidence that has been revealed so far. It completely removes News International’s defence. This is one of the largest cover-ups I have seen in my lifetime.”

Goodman’s letter is dated 2 March 2007, soon after he was released from a four-month prison sentence. It is addressed to News International’s director of human resources, Daniel Cloke, and registers his appeal against the decision of Hinton, the company’s then chairman, to sack him for gross misconduct after he admitted intercepting the voicemail of three members of the royal household. Goodman lists five grounds for his appeal.

He argues that the decision is perverse because he acted “with the full knowledge and support” of named senior journalists and that payments for the private investigator who assisted him, Glenn Mulcaire, were arranged by another senior journalist. The names of the journalists have been redacted from the published letter at the request of Scotland Yard, who are investigating the affair.

Goodman then claims that other members of staff at the News of the World were also hacking phones. Crucially, he adds: “This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor.” He reveals that the paper continued to consult him on stories even though they knew he was going to plead guilty to phone hacking and that the paper’s then lawyer, Tom Crone, knew all the details of the case against him.

In a particularly embarrassing allegation, he adds: “Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me.” In the event, Goodman lost his appeal. But the claim that the paper induced him to mislead the court is one that may cause further problems for News International.

Read the whole article here, and Clive Goodman’s letter here.

As MP Tom Watson explains in the video clip below, if Goodman’s letter is accurate, then the whole foundation of the James and Rupert Murdoch’s and News International’s defense collapses, and if the allegations against former NOTWeditor, Andy Coulson, are proved to be correct, then the game of bluff is over and criminal prosecutions will be inevitable.
 

 
Via the Guardian
 

 
In today’s social media connected world, when you fuck up, you can fuck up LARGE. But when you’re an international media conglomerate with a several billion-dollar market cap that a sizable portion of the European and North American populations already find to be a noxious, corrosive, evil influence on modern life, and you fuck up, you fuck up in ways that can cost your investors billions.

The Murdochs are now social pariahs in the UK. No one is going to stand up for them, no one at all. How much longer can they credibly continue to do business in Britain? Not a pretty picture for a public company to be in. Expect their shareholders to start fleeing as the holes they dug for themselves are revealed to be deeper than anyone ever imagined as deep as everyone has always suspected.

Of course, as the Murdoch/News International/NewsCorp death spiral takes new twists and turns—like today’s blockbuster revelations—we’re sure not going to hear about the company’s travails from a NewsCorp outlet, are we? But who wants that shit anyway? Problem is, Murdoch and co. own so much of the media that it’s hard to keep track of what is theirs and what’s not. A new browser plug-in called MurdochAlert will alert web surfers when then unwittingly happen upon a website owned by parent company NewsCorp or one of their subsidiaries. From the MurdochAlert free download page:

NewsCorp agents in multiple countries have been arrested for hacking into the phones and computers of at least thousands of innocent people. Since the Murdoch family controls 100+ high-traffic domains, it is difficult for average users to know which sites could potentially place them at risk.

MurdochAlert identifies the domains that may place users at risk for Murdoch-related hacking. MurdochAlert shows a bottom warning box whenever you visit a Murdoch-controlled sited.

Nicely! And then there is Murdoch Block, which is a bit more hardcore and will block Murdoch-owned website altogether:

Install this app to if you want to estimate News Corp’s influence on your internet life, install it to make a statement to the Murdoch empire or install it because you’ve just had enough lies.

Thousands of these plug-ins have been downloaded in the past few days.
 

 
Via News Junkie Post

 
The Guardian reports the Police have found evidence that Sara Payne, whose 8-year-old daughter was abducted and murdered in 2000, was a target of News of the World‘s investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.

Police had earlier told her correctly that her name was not among those recorded in Mulcaire’s notes, but on Tuesday officers from Operation Weeting told her they had found her personal details among the investigator’s notes. These had previously been thought to refer to a different target.

Friends of Sara Payne have told the Guardian that she is “absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed” at the disclosure. Her cause had been championed by the News of the World, and in particular by its former editor, Rebekah Brooks. Believing that she had not been a target for hacking, Payne wrote a farewell column for the paper’s final edition on 10 July, referring to its staff as “my good and trusted friends”.

The evidence that police have found in Mulcaire’s notes is believed to relate to a phone given to Sara Payne by Rebekah Brooks as a gift to help her stay in touch with her supporters

.

One of Payne’s close colleagues said: “We are all appalled and disgusted. Sara is in bits about it.”

If this is true then it’s game over for Rebekah Brooks, and one can only surmise a criminal prosecution

must

follow soon.

Read the whole article here.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Does Murdochgate spell the end of oldstream media?

Who benefits from Rupert Murdoch sacrificing the ‘News of the World’?

 
Via the Guardian
 

 
We’re just relaying it.

 
It was a splatter of foam pie rather than any humble pie that Rupert Murdoch received today. It added a surreal touch to an odd day for the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Hearing, where Rupert Murdoch at first came across as a seemingly frail Wizard of Oz. It was only his hand slamming the table in front of him that gave any hint this is a man used to getting his own way; a man who is rarely questioned, let alone cross examined by a round table of MPs, who were, let’s be fair, rather ineffectual.

Rupert was humbly evasive, while is son, James easily deflected questions, though he did admit the rather shocking news News International has been (and may still be) paying the legal fees of the phone hacking journalist Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire.

Then came the pie master, an alleged comedian called Johnnie Marbles, who may have delivered a better hit than any member of the Select Committee, but in doing so took away from the serious intent of the proceedings.
 

 
Apparently these photos were taken right after the pie incident today.

(via TDW)

 
Sean Hoare, the News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower has been found dead at his home in Watford, the Guardian reports:

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.

Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.

Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: “At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

“The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.”

Hoare first made his claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World.

He told the newspaper that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson’s insistence that he didn’t know about the practice was “a lie, it is simply a lie”.

Earlier this year, Sean Hoare contributed to a BBC documentary, “Tabloid Hacks Exposed”, which examined the extent of illegal activity perpetrated by News International employees when obtaining a story, particularly the interception of computer email communications and phone hacking.

In the program Mr Hoare said that the News of the World commissioned private investigators to access targets’ bank accounts, phone records, mortgage accounts and health records.

“Tabloid Hacks Exposed” was made for the BBC’s Panorama strand, and was first broadcast in March 2011, and is essential viewing.

Phone hacking was once dismissed by executives at News International as the illegal work of “one rogue reporter”. The defence collapsed with one journalist at the News of the World being sacked and the original police inquiry having to be re-opened.

Panorama exposes the full extent of the “dark arts” employed by journalists across the industry to get their story. The programme reveals a dishonourable history of law breaking that went beyond phone hacking and questions the police inaction that let it continue.

 
Hackgate - parody movie trailer created by Paul and Lisa at Handface.
 

“When groundbreaking television writer Dennis Potter learned he was dying of cancer, he sat down with Melvyn Bragg for a final interview. The subject of media mogul Rupert Murdoch came up.”

Yes it did! OUTSTANDING!
 

 
Thank you, Jonathan Owen!

 
In a 1995 clip from A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Brit wits Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie employ a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life to imagine a world without Rupert Murdoch.

It WOULD be a better world without that vile old vampire! If he croaked tomorrow, I’d piss on his grave.
 

 
With David Cameron washing his hands of Murdoch to save his own neck, and these incredible new developments in America, the Murdoch machine looks increasingly fucked. I normally think GOP Rep. Peter King is an idiot, but I can’t quarrel with the fact that he’s a Republican taking on Murdoch and all that this implies. Respect! (Seriously)

WHAT are the couch potato patriots who watch Fox News going to make of the fact that the FBI is investigating News Corp?!?!?! This is astonishing!

From The Guardian:

The FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation sought to hack into the phones of September 11 victims, a law enforcement official has said.

The decision to investigate was made after US Congressman Peter King, a Republican, wrote to FBI director Robert Mueller demanding an investigation, said the official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The FBI had received letters from King and other members of Congress.

News Corporation, which is based in New York, has been in crisis mode because of a scandal that forced the News of the World to close last Sunday.

The Guardian reported last week that the News of the World had hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into her disappearance.

More possible victims soon emerged: other child murder victims, 2005 London bombing victims, the families of dead soldiers and former prime minister Gordon Brown.

The FBI’s New York office did not immediately comment. There was no immediate response to a phone message left for News Corp. The US attorney’s office in Manhattan referred a call to the Department of Justice, which declined immediate comment.

On Thursday, Murdoch bowed to pressure from parliament as he and son James first declined – and then agreed – to appear next week before politicians investigating phone hacking.

Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor, became the seventh person arrested by Scotland Yard relating to the inquiry into phone hacking at the now-defunct tabloid, whose closure was seen as an attempt to keep alive a bid for the highly profitable network BSkyB.

The seventh arrest! Seventh! This gets better every hour!

 
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

This little clip of a puppet Rupert Murdoch, having an editorial with his vulturous editors, is almost as fresh today as it was twenty-five years ago, when it first aired on the satirical sketch show Spitting Image.

Is it a surprise that twenty-five years ago Murdoch was seen as a ghastly, untrustworthy, muck-raking shit?

How could anyone have forgotten?

The fact that so many did, and the fact that Murdoch became so very, very powerful over those twenty-five years, fully underlines the extent to the unhealthy and undemocratic relationship maintained by past governments with the media tycoon.

Surprising how quickly some people forget.

Let’s make sure we don’t.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Does Murdochgate Spell the End of Oldstream Media?

Who benefits by Rupert Murdoch sacrificing the ‘News of the World’

 
The News of the World/News International scandal (or Murdochgate as it has been dubbed by the UK media) continues to grow amid allegations that NI’s The Sun newspaper illegally obtained information on the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s newborn child while he was still in office.

This broadens out the problems in three ways. Firstly, while the information on Brown’s child may not have been hacked necessarily (as is being reported) it was still possibly obtained illegally, through the process of blagging, or obtaining classified information under false pretences. Ironically Brown’s Labour government introduced heavier punishment for blagging while still in power. Secondly, it brings into doubt the old red-tops’ excuse that they only investigate or dig dirt on people who “deserve it” (the argument wheeled out by Paul McMullan on Newsnight last week). As Prime Minister, Brown did deserve to be investigated of possible wrong doing, but exposing private medical details about his new born child just seems like a nasty step too far with no real journalistic purpose other than to put the PM on a Murdoch-controlled leash. 

Thirdly it proves, as many people had previously speculated, that the rot within NI has spread much further than simply one or two rogue investigators or even one particular publication. It’s getting harder and harder for the Murdoch organisation to claim that these incidents are isolated, as opposed to part of a broader culture at NI. As more and more salacious details leak out and more journalists, politicians and police are implicated, Murdochgate is shaping up to be he biggest scandal in British public life since the Profumo affair. News Corporation lost $3.4 billion in market capitalization yesterday, and now even the American media is interested, which is really saying something.

So, are these crimes going to be the undoing of the oldstream, printed press? Perhaps, but not fully. Yes News International are up to their necks in a sea of shit, but what is really sounding the death knell for newspapers to my ears is the fact that this is a scandal that is breaking and being consumed on the internet. I can’t remember this being the case before, but the web seems to be the only place to keep track on the ever evolving story, as more and more facts and bizarre twists emerge that prove too much to be neatly encapsulated by traditional news narratives.

Television and newspaper reportage just doesn’t seem adequate in this particular case - it took three to four days of issues being covered by a select few sources before the mainstream media deemed them newsworthy, by which time the public was already well aware of what was going on. The delay in reportage was indeed a bit of a gaffe, but more seriously it also brings up the question of media trustworthiness. Why now trust what the media says when the media themselves are directly implicated in a scandal? Press impartiality is out the window, as evidenced by the lack of coverage of Murdochgate in Murdoch’s biggest UK title The Sun.

While it’s ironic that a newspaper broke this story of press misdoings, what’s more telling is the traffic being directed not to the printed Guardian newspaper itself, but to the paper’s website. This paper’s news blog and its live feed is the premier source for keeping up with the scandal as new elements emerge. It’s also highly ironic that the story that sees internet news coverage really come into its own is the story of the major failings of the mainstream media. The author Will Self, in a slightly verbose but incisive article for the Guardian, calls this a tectonic shift in the media. I think he’s right, and I don’t see how the oldstream press can recover from these multiple knocks in confidence and consumption.

Thanks to Richard Metzger for the financial information.

 
Not only is oldstream UK media tearing itself apart right now, previously picked on figures are getting their own back too. For the benefit of non-UK readers, “mincemeat” is also known as “ground beef”, and that is exactly what comic Steve Coogan makes of former deputy features editor for News Of The World, Paul McMullan, on last night’s BBC Newsnight program’s round table discussion concerning the phone-hacking scandal, the closure of NotW by Rupert Murdoch, and his still possible takeover of the BSkyB TV network. Paul McMullan is no stranger to celebrity revenge, as a covertly-recorded pub conversation between himself and Hugh Grant, in which he admitted the extent of the NotW’s phone-hacking activities, and which was then published in the New Statesman, was responsible for reopening this whole media can of worms.
 

 
Steve Coogan has had a tussle with the tabloids before, when it was claimed he was having an affair with Courtney Love (which was denied by both parties, but which caught the public imagination). But what’s going on here is not simply revenge - as Coogan rightly points out in his very first sentence, Paul McMullan is a walking PR disaster for the tabloid press and News international. He comes across as oily, evasive, self-interested and a hypocrite - perfectly fitting the public image of everything bad about tabloid-level journalists.

Journos love to pick on politicians, but in the British public imagination they are second only to them in terms of being disliked. I’ve always wondered if they know this and pick on politicos and celebs to deflect attention from themselves, or if they genuinely, honestly, believe they are doing some kind of public service. According to McMullan it’s the latter (though I can’t believe that he is completely unaware of the level of animosity the public has for him and those in his trade).

So perhaps they really are that self-deluded, but the other thought echoing through my mind during all of this coverage is “these people work/live/breathe the media - so how can they look so bad on the TV screen?”. OK so the press seem to be trying to outdo each other to find the worst picture of Rebekah Brooks, but also take for instance News International’s Director of Corporate Affairs Simon Greenberg (interviewed here by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow) or Roger Alton, Joint Executive Editor of The Times (also owned by parent company News international). These people deal in exposé, guilt-admission and subsequent rehabilitation for a living. So why aren’t they acting humbled, the way they tell everyone else they should act?

Interestingly, Paul McMullan has had some bad things to say about his then editor Brooks (neé Wade) recently. Brooks, more than anyone, is the central figure in this row, and it is claimed that Murdoch has sacrificed the oldest running, and most widely circulated newspaper in British history, just to protect her. But McMullan is not the only disgruntled former employee of NotW willing to dish the dirt - internet hype has been building around a Twitter account that has gone online during the last couple of days called ExNOTWjourno. The account is run by a journalist who has now found herself jobless, and who intends spill the beans on life behind the scenes of NotW under Rebekah Brooks, in a new blog. According to the account there are now 16 newly unemployed journalists working on dishing the dirt (and running stories planned for the last ever publication of NotW tomorrow), and the blog is due to go online sometime this evening. This is going to get interesting…

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Who benefits by Rupert Murdoch sacrificing the ‘News Of The World’?
The phone-hacking scandal that may finish Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions

 
The demise of the News of the World, the paper at the center of the UK’s ‘phone hacking scandal, has less to do with guilt, remorse or even people power, and everything to do Rupert Murdoch’s desire for power - no matter the cost.

Tonight Murdoch’s son, James announced the end of the 168-year-old tabloid, claiming it had been “sullied by behaviour that was wrong” and that “wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad”.

He went on to say:

“Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company.

“The News Of The World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself.”

James Murdoch also echoed his father in giving his full support to the former NOTW editor, Rebekah Brooks, saying:

“She has a good standard of ethics and her leadership is the right thing for the company.”

Brooks was editor at the time when it is alleged a private detective, employed by the paper, hacked into the voice mail messages of the murdered teenager, Milly Dowler.

Brooks stated earlier this week that it was

“inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.”

In light of this week’s revelations, what is truly inconceivable is the fact Brooks has not either

a) resigned

or

b) been sacked.

If she did not know that a private detective had been employed to hack ‘phones, then she failed in her role as editor, and should be sacked.

If she did know about it, then she should resign.

Whichever way you look at it, Brooks has to go.

Instead the Murdochs have pulled together and sacrificed a best-selling tabloid to defend Ms. Brooks.

The question is: Why?

Tonight, it was also announced that another former editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned in 2007 over the NOTW ‘phone-hacking, will be arrested by the police tomorrow.

Why protect Brooks and not Coulson?

What is disturbing about the whole NOTW ‘phone hacking scandal is the glimpse it gives of Rupert Murdoch’s power.

Since the days of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, politicians have courted Murdoch as an ally to win power.

Tony Blair met with him regularly and was a guest at a major News International party in Australia prior to Labour’s victorious election in 1997. Gordon Brown went on pilgrimage once a year to Sun Valley, to court Murdoch. Now David Cameron continues this tradition of fore-lock tugging.

This may seem like something political leaders have to do, but it takes on greater significance in light of the admission of criminal activity by Brooks during a government enquiry, eight years ago. 

It is a criminal offense to pay the British Police for information.

When questioned at a Select Committee hearing in March 2003, Brooks admitted to paying police for information.

“We have paid the police for information in the past.”

When asked if she would do so in the future, she replied:

“Depends.”

Rebekah Brooks admits paying the police for information - a criminal offense - in March 2003
 
If it was known back in 2003 that Brooks and the News of the World had committed a criminal offense then why wasn’t she prosecuted?

Are Britain’s politicians too frightened, too cowed, by Murdoch and his tabloid press? And if they are, why? What imaginary power does he hold over them?

And what power does Rebekah Brooks hold over Rupert Murdoch?

The question is: Who benefits by Murdoch sacrificing the News of the World? Does it make easier for Murdoch to now own BSkyB? Does it mean News International won’t have to pay out large sums to victims of ‘phone-hacking if there is no longer a News of the World?

Who benefits?

What David Cameron must do now is initiate a judge led enquiry in to the News of the World, Brooks, Coulson and Murdoch, as the police, in light of their involvement, cannot be trusted to investigate this thoroughly.

Cameron also has to stop Murdoch’s plans to take over BSkyB.

Both are a small step towards severing Murdoch’s influence over parliament. 

To stop Murdoch’s plans to take over BSkyB sign the petition here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The phone-hacking scandal that may finish Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions