Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of the Murdoch Empire - John Lisners - Страница 6
CAUGHT
ОглавлениеNew York, Friday, 11 March 2011. Rupert Murdoch’s 80th birthday. Breaking news carried reports of a major disaster. Japan’s most powerful earthquake ever recorded had struck the country’s north-east coast, triggering a massive tsunami destroying everything in its path. More than 20,000 people were dead or missing and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was in meltdown.
A cataclysmic event of this magnitude was a heady reminder to take stock of one’s own situation. For Murdoch, it was an unwelcome portent of dangerous times ahead, just as he was planning a multi-billion takeover in Britain and putting finishing touches to dynastic strategies for the Murdoch family. The last thing he needed was a tsunami affecting his own empire.
News Corporation dominated the world, as the largest and most successful multimedia organisation. It owns the most prestigious newspapers and magazines on three continents. Its TV stations and satellite broadcasters reach nearly every nation on Earth. Among its subsidiaries are film companies, movie studios and book publishers. Its tentacles are legion. Rupert Murdoch, a visionary and business genius, had laid the foundations of his empire in Adelaide, Australia, more than 50 years ago and is now one of the most powerful men on the planet. He is widely admired as a corporate giant, yet has many detractors who have condemned his tabloid newspapers and the influence he wields among politicians worldwide. Left-of-centre politicians have been particularly scathing of his modus operandi and neo-conservative leanings.
Murdoch created a unique culture within News Corporation and its international subsidiaries. The prime objective for his executives has been to embrace the corporation’s ambitious drive for success. Murdoch’s DNA is shared by a large number of executives among his 52,000-strong global work force. To succeed, they have to follow the corporation’s aim of beating the competition at all costs. Colleagues must be part of the cult of the ‘Mini-Me’, a cloned version of Rupert Murdoch. For their dedication, staff receive generous salaries but the corporation’s political philosophies and morality have always been dictated by need. And the major needs have been growth and capital. Bedtime reading for the boss is the bottom line of the company’s income statement.
In the UK, News International is the most powerful media group bar none. It is the largest single shareholder in British Sky Broadcasting and its subsidiaries include the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun, and until its dramatic closure in July 2011, the News of the World. The Sun on Sunday has now replaced its toxic predecessor to take up the slack that left News International presses idle for more than seven months. Annual profits from BSkyB alone have topped £1 billion and it wasn’t until the phone hacking scandal broke big in the summer of 2011 that Murdoch dropped his bid for all of its shares. The family had wanted full control of this satellite goldmine. With all six of his children by three different wives already on their way to becoming billionaires, adding BSkyB to their portfolio would have assured their fabulous status quo in perpetuity.
But the cracks in the Murdoch empire had begun to show as early as 2000. Eventually they would open wide enough to form a devastating condemnation of News International and threaten the foundations of its far-reaching empire. Murdoch’s own tsunami was dangerously imminent.
When Murdoch won his battle for the News of the World in 1968, few people were aware of the true nature of the man. To many, the young Australian millionaire appeared to be a rank outsider. A gambler looked upon as unsophisticated and brash, showing little respect for the establishment or British royalty and without pretensions or social aspirations. But social climbing was hardly an issue. Murdoch had been born into privilege. He stood to inherit wealth, influence, and a first class pedigree among the Australian elite. When Murdoch eventually appeared before parliament at Westminster in July 2011, he stated that his father was not a wealthy man. By comparison to his own wealth, now counted in billions, there was some truth in that. But his father was far from average either in terms of wealth, social standing or political influence.
Sir Keith Murdoch had been head of the Melbourne Herald Group of newspapers and owned the Adelaide News (inherited by Rupert on his father’s death) and the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Murdoch’s mother Elisabeth was a Dame, having been honoured by the Queen for her charity work. The family lived in the wealthy Melbourne suburb of Toorak and owned a country estate, Cruden, and famous works of art. Sir Keith had himself been able to wield considerable political influence with Australian politicians, including prime ministers who had provided introductions to political leaders and newspaper magnates in England and America.
Young Rupert was sent to Geelong Grammar, an independent school whose alumni included Prince Charles, the King of Malaysia and John Gorton, a former Australian prime minister. He completed his education at Oxford. But the steely resolve Murdoch possessed was inspired by an admirable quality possessed by many down to earth Aussies – an egalitarian and courageous spirit which refused to be held back by social convention or conservatism. Murdoch was born with bags of this spirit. Despite his background, or perhaps because of it, he cared little about the class system in Britain and even less for the royal family. But that lack of interest in itself would be a contradiction. The royal family in Britain is one of the most successful dynasties ever created and the hereditary principle is one that Murdoch has perpetuated with his own family.
How ironic then that the British newspaper which had bankrolled his global buying spree and the royal family would both figure so highly in the first visible cracks of his empire. The royals had been an important source of revenue for his newspapers. Readers showed interest in every aspect of their lives and royal reporters were among the most highly paid journalists in Fleet Street. Competition for exclusive stories involving even minor royalty has been fierce, no matter how mundane the member and while their expense accounts were enviable, royal reporters were under continual pressure to produce the goods.
Clive Goodman had been the News of the World’s royal reporter for some years when he was asked to write the newspaper’s Blackadder column, previously edited by former royal spin doctor Mark Bolland. Goodman had broken a host of exclusives but could not afford to rest on his laurels. It is axiomatic among newspapers that a journalist is only as good as his or her last story and Andy Coulson, then editor of the NoW, was singularly unimpressed with past glories.
In 2005, Goodman wrote two totally bland stories about Britain’s Crown Prince William. On 6 November he reported the prince pulling a tendon in his knee and seeing his doctor. The second, published a week later, was even more trivial. It was about Prince William borrowing a television station’s editing suite from a journalist friend, Tom Bradby, who would help him edit some home movies. This was small beer for Goodman but it would prove fatal for the newspaper.
Prince William and Tom Bradby concluded that information used by the NoW was obtained through illegal means, probably by someone accessing their voicemails – the practice that in the ensuing scandals became popularly known as ‘phone hacking’ – rather than from leaks by royal courtiers. This set in train a high-powered Scotland Yard investigation conducted by an assistant deputy commissioner in counter terrorism who reported to assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, head of the specialist operations directorate responsible for royalty protection. News of the World offices at Wapping were searched during the inquiry and on 8 August 2006, Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire, a former Wimbledon footballer, were arrested under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The following day, the two men were charged under the Act for intercepting telephones and also under the Criminal Law Act 1977 for conspiring to commit the offence.
The royal family was determined to put an end to journalists snooping on them and hoped the law would make an example of the reporter. It was no coincidence that Goodman and Mulcaire were brought before the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey. It was the ideal venue for attracting maximum attention. Normally the Old Bailey tries major criminal cases. Hacking phones would in comparison be considered a minor offence, had royals not been victims.
Now Goodman appeared before the illustrious court, on 29 November 2006, for what may have seemed to him and some of his Fleet Street colleagues to have been a rather trivial misdemeanour. He and Mulcaire pleaded guilty to intercepting telephones belonging to three members of the royal household, assistants to Princes William and Harry. Mulcaire also pleaded guilty to accessing the voicemail of other people between 16 February and 16 June 2006. They included: Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat MP; Gordon Taylor, chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association; Max Clifford, the publicist; Australian model and actress Elle Macpherson and Andrew Skylet, a football agent also known as Sky Andrew.
The method used to hack phones had been quite simple. Goodman would ring the mobile phone of a royal aide and if the answer message came into play he would punch in a security code which came as standard for most mobile phones. This would normally consist of a series of four repetitive digits. Provided that the owner of the mobile had either forgotten or not bothered to change their security code (this was quite common), it would allow him to access the messages left on the phone. Goodman, the court was told, made 487 calls and Mulcaire 122. The reporter’s response was that he was driven to break the law because of pressures to perform. On 26 January 2007, Goodman was jailed for four months and Mulcaire for six months.
Mr Justice Gross told Goodman the case was not about press freedom. ‘This was low conduct, reprehensible in the extreme. It is about grave, inexcusable and illegal invasion of privacy.’ To Mulcaire, who had a contract with NoW for the considerable sum of £104,988 and who had received a further £12,300 paid in cash by Goodman, the judge said: ‘This was serious criminal conduct to which we must not become numbed. It is to my mind [of] the very first importance to the fabric of our public life that such intrusive, sustained criminal conduct should be marked by immediate loss of liberty … neither journalist or private security consultant are above the law. What you did was plainly on the wrong side of the line.’
But of greater import than the judge’s contempt for their actions was his observation made during his summing up that the hacking might not be limited to the two men he was about to jail. He said to Mulcaire: ‘As to Counts 16 to 20 [relating to the phone hacking of Max Clifford, Simon Hughes MP, Andrew Skylett, Elle Macpherson and Gordon Taylor], you had not dealt with Goodman but with others at News International.’
Lawyers’ fees for representing Goodman and Mulcaire were paid by the newspaper and Andy Coulson, accepting responsibility as editor of the NoW while denying any knowledge of what had taken place, resigned from the newspaper. Some months earlier, the editor had declared: ‘Clive Goodman’s actions were entirely wrong and I have put in place measures to ensure that they will not be repeated by any member of staff.’
With Coulson’s departure from the NoW Murdoch may have lost one of his best editors but he had not, at that time, lost one of his best men. Coulson was highly regarded among friends and foe alike and he was still very much in the Murdoch camp as a good friend of the Sun’s editor Rebekah Brooks, who held enormous sway with Murdoch. Brooks was Coulson’s predecessor at the NoW and at 32 had been the youngest editor of a national newspaper when appointed by Murdoch in 2000. Within four months Coulson would be working as an aide to the leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron MP. Brooks and Cameron had already forged a strong connection.
Brooks herself was more highly regarded for her skills as a supreme charmer and networker rather than as a journalist. She was a striking redhead with pre-Raphaelite looks and impressed Murdoch to the extent that glass ceilings were removed to ease her passage up the corporate ladder. After editing the Sun she was made chief executive of News International, a role previously entrusted only to longserving, tried and tested employees such as Murdoch’s right-hand man, Les Hinton.
Both Brooks and Coulson exuded an aura of power and influence after the fashion of their guru and boss. They were young, motivated, successful and attractive and, above all, they had Murdoch’s ear and the future Conservative prime minister’s admiration. Staff at News International were either in awe or feared making a blunder. Very little mercy would be shown to those who failed to produce. Jobs were becoming scarce in Fleet Street and well-paid journalists were expected to be on call and prepared to do everything asked of them, even if it meant dressing up in silly costumes to satisfy an editor’s whim. An epigram written by Humbert Wolfe in the 1920s rings as true for them today as for many Fleet Street reporters: ‘You cannot hope to bribe or twist/Thank God! The British journalist/But seeing what the man will do/unbribed, there’s no occasion to.’
Following Goodman’s and Mulcaire’s imprisonment, News International bosses hoped they could draw a line under the hacking and that it would soon be forgotten. Scotland Yard and the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) were also satisfied that the incident was a one-off, committed by a rogue reporter and his private investigator. If others had been involved, there was insufficient evidence to pursue them further. Police had seized a large number of documents from Mulcaire but apparently had not considered them actionable. The PCC’s own investigation conducted in 2007 concluded that ‘No evidence has emerged … of a conspiracy at the newspaper going beyond Messrs Goodman and Mulcaire to subvert the law or the PCC’s Code of Practice … and that no one else at the News of the World knew that Messrs Goodman and Mulcaire were tapping phone messages for stories.’
To a News International optimist, it would appear that the newspaper was now in the clear. But that would have been wide of the mark. The tsunami was slowly gathering strength and one of the main protagonists, the Guardian, was like a terrier refusing to let go of its bone. Unfortunately for News International, some of its activities had left it highly vulnerable and sufficiently open to criticism and attack.
Normally, one can take stock of possible threats to a company but it would virtually be impossible to predict precisely what damage could be done to a super-rich multinational with an astute visionary like Murdoch at its head. On inheriting the Adelaide News some 60 years earlier, Murdoch had steadily expanded the company by careful plotting, planning, and risk-taking. His greatest enemy was government or state regulation against which he continually battled to avoid restrictions. His constant business goal has been laissez-faire and his British newspapers have consistently campaigned against European control and the Euro. Battling against the odds and winning is what Murdoch has always done best.
In the early 1990s his conglomerate was on the brink of bankruptcy but with determination, some luck and brilliant tactics he avoided disaster. A cut-throat business like media demands constant change, innovation and incisive leadership and there is nobody better equipped than Rupert Murdoch. His own testament to this was reinforced when making a guest appearance on The Simpsons. He parodied himself to millions of viewers as that ‘Billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch’.
In 2007 it was thought that Murdoch had achieved his ultimate ambition with the successful takeover of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). It was the jewel in his crown and he had fought hard against his detractors to win. Once again, as with his battle for the UK Times, there were those who loudly voiced opposition, declaring that he was unfit to run such a prestigious and influential newspaper and that he was bound to take it downmarket. Dow Jones and its WSJ subsidiary are the largest and most influential financial information provider and newspaper in America. It is the supreme powerbase from which to assert influence with the country’s elite. Murdoch’s aggressive battle to achieve victory came at a high price. He paid more than $5 billion for the privilege but while that may have satisfied him it did not please all of his shareholders. There was considerable rumbling among a large number of News Corporation investors who considered Murdoch had paid well over the odds for a trophy at a time when the print industry was being overshadowed by digital media.
But what may seem like an unprofitable investment at first instance can very soon bring greater dividends. In monetary terms, what Murdoch loses on the swings he mostly gains on the roundabouts. This may come about in gaining a political advantage concerning regulation or by smoothing a path to a future takeover. He has proved this time and again, despite the occasional bad investment. He started The Australian, a national newspaper, in the mid-1960s and, despite years of loss-making, it proved to be a great asset considering the leverage it has given him in his country of birth. There he still controls the majority of newspapers. Murdoch’s influence on Australian politics is unbelievably powerful. He can make and break prime ministers as will be seen in a later chapter on the sacking of Gough Whitlam, a former Labour PM of Australia whom Murdoch had initially supported.
As with The Australian newspaper, Murdoch has continued to support influential loss-makers like the Times of London and the New York Post. It is a given that the proprietor of a national newspaper is granted access to politicians and governments apart from any social cachet such ownership brings.
In his 80th year, Murdoch focused on taking full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting. It was a prize Murdoch felt entitled to, in spite of a minority holding of 39.1 per cent, which gave him the controlling interest. Murdoch had nearly bankrupted News International companies through his belief in the future of Sky. His then managing director in London, Australian Bruce Matthews, urged his boss against funding Sky. Bruce, with whom I had shared many a drink in Fleet Street, told me, ‘I warned Rupert it wouldn’t work and that it could bring the whole organisation to its knees.’ And, to a degree, Matthews, who had managed the London newspapers’ move from Fleet Street to Wapping, was right. The crisis of the early 1990s came close to bankrupting the group. But Murdoch had faith in his vision and urged his shareholders to ‘hang on in there’. Those who supported Murdoch’s vision were not disappointed. By 2011 BSkyB had become a cash cow.
Bringing the whole of BSkyB into the News Corporation fold was also part of Murdoch’s dynastic planning strategy. Murdoch had always made it clear that his family would inherit his vast fortune. He had scoffed at public declarations made by Robert Maxwell, his old adversary in the battle for News of the World, who boasted he would leave nothing to his sons. True to his word, Maxwell’s toxic legacy was written in red. His sons Ian and Kevin Maxwell were left a massive company debt and endured years of agony, having to account to police and financial regulators for their father’s fraudulent stewardship of London’s Mirror Group Newspapers.
Murdoch launched his £7.8 billion bid for full control of the satellite broadcaster in June 2010, although BSkyB rejected the offer as being too low. The cost, however, would be the least of the bid’s problems. The primary considerations were EU and UK regulations and opposition to Murdoch’s dominance of the media by interested parties, including Parliament and members of the public. The first hurdle to overcome was Europe but anti-trust regulators at the European Commission in Brussels gave clearance for the bid in December 2010. The next hurdle was a possible intervention by the UK business secretary, Vince Cable. He could prove difficult and was expected to intervene on grounds of media plurality and to demand that the press regulator Ofcom investigate the bid before granting approval. In the meantime, some of Murdoch’s competitors, including the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, Trinity Mirror – whose interests include the Daily Mirror – and executives at the BBC and Channel 4 wrote to Cable urging him to block the takeover.
At this juncture good fortune smiled on Murdoch. David Cameron became prime minister in the Conservative-Liberal coalition government following the general election of 6 May 2010. His director of communications was Murdoch’s former editor Andy Coulson, who remained a close pal of Rebekah Brooks. James Murdoch, as head of News International, had given his newspapers’ backing to Cameron, as had Rebekah Brooks when she was editor of the Sun and then as chief executive officer of News International. She had by now become a member of the influential social and political circle known as the Chipping Norton set. This was made up of high fliers with country houses in the Cotswolds. Brooks was on first name terms with Cameron, as she had been with the two preceding prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Such was her political clout that both Brown and Cameron had been guests at her wedding to racehorse trainer and author Charlie Brooks who, like Cameron, had been educated at Eton. The elite circle of friends of the PM extended to Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, a successful independent TV company owner and film maker, and her PR guru husband Matthew Freud, a great-grandson of Sigmund Freud and who in earlier times had pedalled PR tidbits to the NoW. With such an astonishing power group rooting for the Murdoch takeover of Sky, business secretary Vince Cable would have to tread carefully if his intention was to stop News Corporation taking over. Whatever Cable’s private views he would have to appear neutral. In the event, what happened can only be described as media mayhem bordering on comedy, despite the seriousness of the business at hand.
The Daily Telegraph has always been a solidly conservative newspaper catering to an affluent centre-right readership. It has an enviable record for excellent news coverage. In recent years it has become more adventurous in its content and won wide acclaim for its exposé of the expenses scandal involving Westminster politicians. In the past, however, it has often looked down from its lofty perch on the red-top newspapers and their undercover operations. It was surprising, then, that the Telegraph was to write to the business secretary imploring him to reject News International’s bid and barely a week later devised a newspaper trap for the politician in the best underhand tradition of News of the World reporters.
Employing a classic scam, the Daily Telegraph sent two attractive women reporters in their twenties pretending to be concerned mothers, one blonde, the other brunette, to speak to Cable at his constituency meeting. The purpose of their sting was to elicit information on how the coalition was getting along. Cable sang like a canary. Unbelievably, the government minister felt compelled to give vent to his innermost feelings to two women who minutes previously had been complete strangers. Commenting on the state of the coalition government, he offered, ‘Well, there is a constant battle going on behind the scenes. We have a big argument going on about tax and that is party political because I am arguing with Nick Clegg [the deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader] for a very tough approach and our Conservative friends don’t want that.’
When the conversation turned to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover bid, the business secretary hurled discretion to the wind. ‘I am picking my fights, some of which you may have seen … and I don’t know if you have been following what has been happening with the Murdoch press, where I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win. Majority control [of BSkyB] would give them a massive stake. I have blocked it using the powers that I have got and they are legal powers that I have got. I can’t politicise it but from the people that know what is happening this is a big, big thing. His whole empire is now under attack…’ As if to emphasise his own might as a cabinet minister, Cable boasted of a ‘nuclear option’ available to him. ‘Can I be frank with you? And I am not expecting you to quote this outside. I have a nuclear option. It’s like fighting a war. They know I have nuclear weapons but I don’t have any conventional weapons. If they push me too far then I can walk out of the Government and bring the Government down. And they know that.’
A report of his conversation with the reporters was published in the Daily Telegraph but notably omitted his views on Murdoch. Executives at the newspaper must have been well aware that to reveal his antipathy to the takeover would have been counterproductive. Such disclosure would have resulted in Cable’s removal from the bid process – which is exactly what eventually happened. To their credit, the BBC, which also opposed the bid, nevertheless broadcast details of Cable’s diatribe against Murdoch and News Corporation leaked to them by a Telegraph employee. Cable suffered public ridicule and shame and was instantly replaced by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, an impartial colleague who was not opposed to NI. In different circumstances, Cable could quite properly have been sacked for his indiscretion but for the sake of the coalition it was expedient for him to remain, despite his offer to resign.
The method used by the Telegraph to get their story was condemned by the PCC, which ruled, ‘On this occasion, the commission was not convinced that the public interest was such as to justify this level of subterfuge.’ It said it had advised newspapers not to go on ‘fishing expeditions’ in the hope of finding stories. Daily Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher, while accepting the adjudication, said it had ‘alarming implications for the future of investigative journalism’.
Following the BBC leak, the story was published in full by the Daily Telegraph, which also released on the web the secretly recorded conversation with Cable. But the Daily Telegraph fiasco only served to give a brief respite from the very serious position NI and its parent company News Corporation faced. Financially, the company was in a strong position but problems over the acquisition of Sky were mounting and Murdoch’s dynastic plans for the future had not yet been resolved. Worst of all, the scandal over hacking and their misuse of private information would not go away.
The Data Protection Act, 1998, came into force in England on 1 March 2000 and was to have particular application to the media, especially newspapers. Section 55 of the Act makes it an offence to obtain, disclose or procure the disclosure of confidential personal information knowingly or recklessly without the consent of the organisation holding the data. The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, whose office was responsible for enforcement of the Act, published a report in 2006 entitled, ‘What price privacy? The unlawful trade in confidential personal information.’ It found, ‘records of information supplied to 305 named journalists working for a range of newspapers…’ They included the Daily Mail, the Observer, the Times, and the Daily Mirror.
The report was based in part on findings from the information commissioner office’s own investigation, Operation Motorman, which was begun in 2002 and uncovered large-scale trade in personal information. Private investigators and corrupt officials were involved, with access to personal records relating to police and vehicle ownership. The information commissioner estimated that thousands of offences had taken place that related to Section 55 outlined above and he urged for tougher penalties to face those who carried out such crimes.
In 2003, the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport inquired into privacy and media intrusion. Among those giving evidence was Murdoch’s favourite editor Rebekah Brooks (then editor of the NoW) and her deputy Andy Coulson. Curiously, it took place on 11 March 2003, Rupert Murdoch’s 72nd birthday. Had she not been such a favoured ‘daughter’ of the press magnate, it is doubtful she would have held on to her job after returning to Wapping from Westminster. Under questioning by the committee, she claimed that self-regulation under the PCC had changed the culture in Fleet Street and ‘in every single newsroom in the land’. This was so wide off the mark that one could be forgiven for thinking she was simply naive or totally delusional. Asked if she or her newspaper ever used private detectives, bugged people, paid the police or others for information, she sensibly replied that subterfuge was only ever used in the public interest. But pressed further by Chris Bryant MP on whether she ever paid the police for information, she surprisingly admitted: ‘We have paid the police for information in the past.’
Coulson, seated beside her, acted quickly to correct Brooks’ astonishingly frank admission that NI had paid police for information. Incredibly, it was tantamount to a confession that police had been suborned and surely would have led to instant dismissal by Murdoch had it been anybody else. When Brooks was asked if she would continue to pay the police in future, Coulson swiftly replied on her behalf, stating, ‘We operate within the law and if there is a clear public interest, then we will.’ However, the damage had been done, leaving the newspaper wide open to further investigation. Brooks was furious. She would not readily forget nor forgive Bryant for interrogating her and that would not augur well in the future. The Guardian had carefully noted these proceedings.
Brooks’s conduct during the questioning led some executives at NI to question whether she had been appointed as editor too early in her career or whether she was at all suitable to lead the world’s largest-selling Sunday newspaper. But she had charm and been given power and most of all, she had Rupert Murdoch’s ear. At 35 she had a good relationship with Tony Blair, the prime minister. At press charity functions, she would be one of the first to greet the PM and accompany him, arm-in-arm, during his walkabout before making his short speech to the assembled editors and journalists. On one such occasion at the Australian High Commission, I watched with amusement as Brooks and the Times political columnist Mary Ann Sieghart ‘captured’ Tony Blair, one on each side of him, arms locked as they led him around the grand reception area, closely followed by the News International chairman Les Hinton as rear guard. But even more important than the influence the editor wielded and her elevated role at the newspaper was the protection afforded her by the most powerful media baron in the world. Who would dare attack her in the face of such might?
If Rebekah Brooks lacked a certain amount of journalistic savvy, she more than made up for it with her ability to charm and network. From humble beginnings as a secretary at the News of the World magazine, she was swiftly promoted to features editor of the newspaper and then editor. She conducted a controversial campaign against paedophiles by instigating a policy of naming and shaming. The idea was to alert mothers in case they were unaware that a paedophile lived nearby. Her action provoked a lynch mob mentality among some readers and backfired when people incited by the campaign vandalised a doctor’s house after failing to understand the difference between ‘paedophile’ and ‘paediatrician’. The chief constable of Gloucestershire damned the campaign as ‘grossly irresponsible’ journalism.
During Brooks’s editorship at the NoW from 2000 to 2003, two unrelated murders of young children were to play a defining role in the future of News International. The first was the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne. On 1 July 2000, Sarah disappeared after playing with her siblings in a cornfield at Kingston Gorse, West Sussex. The child’s body was discovered on 17 July some 24 miles away. She had been murdered by Roy Whiting, a known child sex offender with previous convictions who had been listed on a sex offenders register. The case attracted national headlines and was the catalyst for Brooks’s campaign of naming and shaming under the proposed ‘Sarah’s Law’. This was modelled on the American ‘Megan’s Law’, to give parents of young children access to the sex offenders register. A limited trial of Sarah’s Law later proved successful. Brooks developed a strong relationship with the murdered girl’s mother, Sara, and the pair embarked on an effective, if controversial campaign. A close liaison continued between Sara Payne and News International until July 2011 amid the allegations that Sara’s own mobile, given to her by the newspaper, had also been hacked.
The second murder was that of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old who had gone missing on her way home from school in Surrey on 21 March 2002. Her body was found on 18 September 2002. This case received nationwide publicity and a home video of Milly ironing clothes and playing to the camera was given saturation coverage. Detectives who had worked on Sarah Payne’s case were asked for their assistance in finding her. The Sun offered a £100,000 reward for information about her disappearance. Until her body was found, her parents kept sending text messages to Milly’s mobile in the vain hope that she might still be alive. On 23 June 2011, Levi Bellfield, a serial killer, was convicted of the teenager’s murder. At the time of his arrest, he was already serving a life sentence for two other murders and one attempted murder.
By April 2008, Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers’ Association chairman, had obtained indisputable evidence that his phone had been hacked by Glenn Mulcaire and that others in the News of the World, apart from Goodman, were involved. Taylor had begun his action shortly after Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested but it had taken his legal team, led by solicitor advocate Mark Lewis, some months to obtain details from police. This was done by obtaining third-party disclosure – which meant Scotland Yard had to open the files of their original investigation into hacking and provide full details to the lawyer. In fact, the police had an Aladdin’s cave of illegally obtained information documented by the private detective, who had been a meticulous note-taker, logging thousands of entries. Later there would be a re-opening of the investigation and further arrests made but that was only after the police had been publicly criticised for limiting their enquiries to one single case of a ‘rogue’ reporter.
But News Group Newspapers now had a dilemma. The previous December, James Murdoch had been appointed News Corporation’s chief executive for operations in Europe and Asia and the Murdochs’ long-term plans appeared to be in place. James had done a good job at Sky and Brooks had settled in well as editor of the Sun and would soon become chief executive of News International. A lack of controversy would guarantee NI’s eventual takeover of BSkyB and Rupert Murdoch’s dynastic ambitions would be fulfilled. Politically, the firm was on good terms with the Labour Party and Murdoch, sharing Scottish ancestry with Gordon Brown – who had at last succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister – enjoyed cordial relations with Downing Street. Labour’s prospects for re-election looked bleak but Brooks had charmed the Tories so bets were hedged either way. Andy Coulson had also excelled in his job as the Conservative leader’s advisor and the last thing News International needed was a revival of the hacking scandal.
When Mark Lewis first set out Gordon Taylor’s case to the News of the World’s legal team in April 2008, Tom Crone, the newspaper’s legal manager, expressed surprise, saying he thought Lewis had suggested settling the case for £250,000. Yet evidence included a much discussed email with the words ‘…transcript for Neville’ [believed to refer to Neville Thurlbeck, chief reporter, although there was no proof of this] with tape transcripts concerning 35 voicemail messages to ‘GT’ (Gordon Taylor) and 17 to his advisor ‘JA’ (Jo Armstrong). They had been sent to Mulcaire by reporter Ross Hindley.
Taylor’s lawyers also presented further damning evidence of a contract between Glenn Mulcaire using the alias Paul Williams and assistant news editor Greg Miskiw agreeing that News of the World would pay a minimum of £7,000 if it printed a story about Gordon Taylor provided by Mr ‘Williams’. Scotland Yard had also provided an audiotape on which Mulcaire was heard giving instructions to a journalist, believed to be from another newspaper but moonlighting for the News of the World, on how to access Gordon Taylor’s voicemail. The clincher came when Mr Lewis applied to the High Court and successfully argued for an order that Mulcaire identify the journalist and provide further information. News International lawyers immediately contacted him to negotiate a settlement. The newspaper agreed to pay Gordon Taylor £700,000, which included his legal expenses. Additionally, two further sums were paid to his colleagues whose phones were hacked, bringing the total payout to around £1 million.
To avoid public disclosure, the settlement contained a gagging clause and it was not until a year later that news of the deal leaked out. Journalist Nick Davies broke the story in the Guardian newspaper on 8 July 2009, stating that ‘Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1 million to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.’ Putting the boot in, the article suggested, ‘…the suppressed evidence … may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group.’ That was an invitation that couldn’t be resisted.
Public relations supremo Max Clifford, who for years had been selling stories to News International on behalf of clients and had also been on Mulcaire’s list of hacking victims, immediately announced that he would sue the newspaper. The case never came to court. Clifford had lunch with Rebekah Brooks, who had been made chief executive of News International in June 2009, and a deal was sorted out in ‘no time’ at all. Clifford would be paid £1 million, in return for which he would supply exclusive stories to the newspaper for several years. Other named victims, and people who thought they might have been victims followed his example. News International set aside a multi-million pound fund to deal with individual and class actions.
With the Guardian’s disclosure, the hacking scandal resurfaced and further serious considerations arose that would prolong the agony for News Corporation and raise questions over whether its directors were fit to run a global concern. Coulson’s role as advisor and aide to David Cameron would also come under scrutiny, as would the relationship between News Group newspapers and the Metropolitan Police, including senior Scotland Yard officers. An inevitable consequence would be that NI executives would be recalled for further appearances before the parliamentary committee unimpressed with answers they had previously given.
The second report of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee session was published in February 2010. It included an assessment of the ‘persistent libelling’ of the McCann family following the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine in Portugal in May 2007; the case brought by F1 racing boss Max Mosley against the News of the World (invasion of privacy and breach of confidence); and press standards, following the Guardian allegations that the News of the World had paid over £1 million to settle three civil actions relating to the phone hacking. The latter item, the committee stated, ‘cast doubt on assurances we had been given during our 2007 inquiry … that the phone-hacking at News of the World had been limited to one “rogue reporter”, Clive Goodman.’
The committee criticised ‘the silence of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, their confidentiality settlements with the News of the World and the “collective amnesia” at the newspaper group which we encountered during our inquiry … We find … the newspaper group did not carry out a full and rigorous inquiry, as it assured us and the Press Complaints Commission it had. The circumstances of payoffs made to Messrs Goodman and Mulcaire, as well as the civil settlements with Gordon Taylor and others, also invite the conclusion that silence was effectively bought. The readiness of all concerned – News International, the police and the PCC – to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out full investigations is striking. The verdict of the PCC’s latest inquiry, announced last November, we consider to be simplistic, surprising and a further failure of self-regulation … Throughout we have repeatedly encountered unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall, and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.’
The report was good news for Andy Coulson, particularly at a crucial time with election fever gathering pace. It said that it did not see ‘evidence that Andy Coulson knew that phone hacking was taking place. However, that such hacking took place reveals a serious management failure for which as editor he bore ultimate responsibility, and we believe that he was correct to accept this and resign.’ Les Hinton had also given further evidence and told the committee: ‘There had never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one journalist. If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I was not told about it.’ Three months later, in May 2010, David Cameron was elected prime minister and rewarded Coulson’s work by appointing him to the role director of communications at No 10 Downing Street.
In the meantime, the Guardian, whose stories on the hacking had received little follow up by other UK newspapers, had been in touch with the New York Times to give their continuing investigation a wider audience. The American newspaper was happy to oblige and sent reporters to the UK to investigate the story. They interviewed some 12 former NoW staff members and alleged in their report that hacking had been widespread at NoW. Some critics argued their report was biased as they were in competition with News Corporation newspapers in New York where Murdoch owned the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch would certainly have put the NYT on his wish list of newspapers despite finding it stuffy and pompous, but it was not for sale. He had known its owners, the Sulzberger family, as a very young man when he and his father Sir Keith visited the USA. Since buying the Post in 1977 Murdoch had been a formidable competitor.
Former News of the World showbusiness journalist Sean Hoare told the New York Times and the Guardian that he had engaged in phone hacking while working for the Murdoch press. He alleged the practice was widespread and that he had been actively encouraged to do so by Andy Coulson. The then editor strongly denied his allegations. Interviewed under caution by police, Hoare refused to repeat his claim. The NYT also reported claims by Hoare that journalists would pay police officers money for locating a target by ‘pinging’ their phones to pinpoint the target’s whereabouts. Friends of Hoare described him as an old-style Fleet Street journalist who drank a lot, took drugs, but always managed to get the stories. He insisted that under Coulson he could do as he liked so long as he produced the goods. The Guardian, delighted with his ‘confession’, described Hoare as a brave and ‘courageous whistleblower’.
Hoare had moved from the Sun to the Sunday People under Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor at the Sun. He then moved to the News of the World in 2001 under Rebekah Brooks and then Andy Coulson, who sacked him in 2005 because of his drink and drug problems. It was drug-taking and excessive alcohol which led to Hoare’s chronic illness and early death in July 2011 at the age of 48. Some months before he died, he blamed his deterioration on the newspaper. He was quoted as saying, ‘I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You’re in a machine.’ Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, who had worked as a secretary at the Sun when she met Hoare, reported, ‘My friend’s benders with the stars were legendary, but his courage on the phone hacking story must be his lasting legacy.’
But was his action really so courageous? While not defending News International, which accepted phones had been hacked by its reporters, it is difficult to see Hoare as being courageous by admitting to his criminal activity years after the event. He had been sacked in 2005 but some five years had elapsed before he confessed to illegal practices for the greater part of his career. Further, he blew the whistle while terminally ill. Had he done so earlier, when he was being paid top wages and leading a life of Riley, snorting cocaine and drinking to excess, that could have been described as being courageous. He might also have saved many victims of hacking from serious stress. As for blaming the newspaper for pushing reporters to drink and drugs, that is a total nonsense. I have worked with most Fleet Street newspapers and, while over-indulgence in drink and more exotic substances was common, it was never imposed or necessarily encouraged by editors or management. That was always a matter of personal choice. There was no doubt that journalists were pushed to sometimes extraordinary lengths to get stories, but that is to be expected in the media where the ability to break an exclusive story excites passion and healthy competition.
Another colourful Fleet Street character ‘came out’ a week after Hoare’s account was published in New York. Paul McMullan, a former deputy features editor at News of the World and now the landlord of a local pub in Dover, Kent, told the Guardian that telephone hacking at the newspaper was widespread. The Guardian’s report on 8 September 2010 said, ‘Paul McMullan, a former features executive and then member of the newspaper’s investigations team, says that he personally commissioned private investigators to commit several hundred acts which could be regarded as unlawful, that use of illegal techniques was no secret at the paper … McMullan’s decision to speak publicly about illegal techniques at the paper came as the Commons speaker John Bercow paved the way for a second, powerful committee of MPs to investigate the scandal.’
The Guardian report appeared to be a little economical with the reason for McMullan’s willingness to make his confession public. In an amusing article published in The New Statesman on 6 April 2011, actor Hugh Grant revealed how he had ‘bugged the bugger’ after a chance meeting with McMullan. In a serendipitous encounter, Grant’s car broke down just as McMullan was driving past. The reporter, sensing a story, wasted no time in taking photographs of the actor, who then reluctantly accepted a lift to the nearest town. On arrival, McMullan asked Grant if he would pose for a picture with him ‘not for publication, just for the wall of the pub’. According to Grant’s account, McMullan followed the best tradition of Fleet Street insincerity and broken promises by promptly selling the picture to the Mail on Sunday for £3000. He also invited Grant to visit him at the pub and it was then that the actor decided it would be fun to bug the journalist with a hidden tape recorder. During their taped meeting McMullan, who no longer worked for the NoW, revealed he had worked as a freelance for the Guardian and had hidden in bushes to take photographs of his ex-boss Rebekah Brooks, hoping she might be out riding with David Cameron. He said the purpose of his paparazzi expedition was to show that Murdoch was backing the future prime minister.
Grant said, ‘I tell you the thing I still don’t get – if you think it was all right to do all that stuff [hacking and using private investigators] why blow the whistle on it?’
McMullan considered his answer. ‘Erm… Right. That’s interesting. I actually blew the whistle when a friend of mine at the Guardian kept hassling me for an interview. I said, “Well, if you put the name of the Castle [pub] on the front page of the Guardian, I’ll do anything you like.” So that’s how it started.’
Despite Hoare’s after-the-event whistle-blowing and McMullan’s quid pro quo interview with the Guardian, 2010 ended on a positive note for News International. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that no further charges would be brought over the News of the World hacking scandal. But any joy that might have brought for those concerned would be short lived.