Category Archives: media

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Phone Hacking Trial: NI security guards ‘used war film codewords’ during covert operation to hide evidence – Martin Hickman

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This latest revelation about the behaviour of News International’s security guards from the hacking trial could come from a Boys Own comic if it wasn’t such a serious matter to conceal evidence from the police. Also says something about the mentality of Rupert Murdoch’s staff!

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where-eagles-dareDay 6: Security guards working for News International used codewords from war films and the Cold War during a covert operation to hide evidence from the police, the Old Bailey heard today.

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Life too frenetic to notice reporters hacking phones – Andy Coulson’s defence

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andy coulson - too frenetic a lifestyle to notice phone hacking. Pic courtesy: Press Gazette

andy coulson – too frenetic a lifestyle to notice phone hacking. Pic courtesy: Press Gazette

Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor and David Cameron’s press secretary is to amount an extraordinary defence that life was so busy at the News of the World that he didn’t know about phone hacking.
A report by Martin Hickman on the Hacked Off website tonight reveals Coulson plans to take the stand to defend himself on all charges.
His lawyer Timothy Langdale, QC, told the jury that they had heard “only one side of the story.”
Among the extraordinary quotes he promised the former News International employee would tell the Old Bailey trial was that life was so frentic he hadn’t noticed any phone hacking nor authorised bribery payments to police officers.
His lawyer said David Cameron’s former director of communications had not taken part in any wrongdoing and would paint a picture of the frenetic pace of life inside the News of the World, when a mass of information passed his desk.
Competition inside the Sunday tabloid was “perhaps at times unhealthy” and journalists “wanted to impress”, Mr Langdale told the Old Bailey.
Referring to the claim that his client had approved royal editor Clive Goodman’s requests to pay corrupt police officers, Mr Langdale said: “He does not believe Mr Goodman had done or was doing any such thing.”
The prosecution was mistaken in its belief that if messages were hacked by Glen Mulcaire or others at the paper that the editor must have known, he added.
Amazing what little editors know about!

Phone Hacking Trial Report: Coulson cleared payments to police for Queen’s private phone book, jury hears – Martin Hickman

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Latest revelation of Coulson’s approval of corrupt £2000 cash payments to police two Royal directories – one with the Queen’s private no on it- illustrates the excesses the tabloids went to set up the hacking scandal- and they knew in internal emails they risked jail if they were found out.

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Clive-GoodmanAndy Coulson approved two corrupt payments to “palace cops” despite being warned by one of his reporters that he risked criminal charges, the phone hacking trial heard today. 

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Phone Hacking Trial: Coulson-Brooks affair assists Crown’s conspiracy claim – Martin Hickman

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At last one of Fleet Street’s best known secrets – the Coulson-Brooks affair becomes public. The 6 year affair was going on, it appears, while Milly Dowler’s phone was being hacked in 2002. This the prosecution allege is why the pair could easily conspire together to commit crimes!

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Coulson BrooksThe News of the World ordered the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone on the same day it sympathised with her distraught parents’ anguish, the phone hacking trial heard today. Milly went missing near her home in Walton on Thames, Surrey, in March 2002, sparking a large public police investigation and a parallel, covert one at the News of the World, the Old Bailey was told.

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Phone Hacking Trial Report: Brooks and Coulson would have known about phone hacking at NoTW, jury is told – Martin Hickman

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blistering report of the opening of the prosecution case against Rebekah Brooks in the great hacking trial on the Hacked Off and Inforrm blog websites.

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Rebekah Brooks personally approved payment of almost £40,000 to a civil servant in return for information, the phone hacking trial heard today. Mrs Brooks was editing the Sun newspaper when the payments were made to the official, Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, told the jury.

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Phone Hacking “Trial of the Century” begins tomorrow: eight defendants face a total of seven charges

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This is going to be very interesting as alongside Rupert Murdoch must be wondering whether his company may face corporate charges. This follows the two secret recordings of his and former chief executive Tom Mockridge released on the Exaro website over the last few weeks, particularly as Murdoch’s private views are in the hands of the Met Police.

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Brooks and CoulsonThe first phone-hacking trial begins next week before Mr Justice Saunders and a jury in Court 12 at the Central Criminal Court (the “Old Bailey”) in London on Monday 28 October 2013.  The first day or two are expected to be taken up with legal argument and the selection of the jury so the prosecution opening is not likely to begin until Tuesday or Wednesday. The trial is expected to last at least 4 months.

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Exaro Exclusive: £1bn bill for phone hacking says Murdoch ex chief exec

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Tom Mockridge Pic couretsy mediaweek.co.uk

Tom Mockridge Pic couretsy mediaweek.co.uk

In the second comprehensive leak of a meeting from the Murdoch Empire Tom Mockridge,now the former chief executive of News International, has admitted that News Corp is facing a bill of up to £1 billion just to cope with the phone hacking scandal.
He also discloses in the second transcript of a private meeting last November obtained by Exaro News that without US backing every UK paper -including the Sun and the Sunday Times – would now be closed down because of huge costs.
This is the second secret recording – the first revealed what Rupert Murdoch really thought about the hacking scandal.
In the new secret recording,Mockridge says: “There’s a shitload of just financial expense – across the civil cases,” he says. “The hacking probably, by the time it’s all over, is going to cost News Corp minimum of £500 million, if not a billion.”
On the future of NI in Britain he says: “If NI wasn’t a subsidiary to News Corporation, this company would be bankrupt now. There wouldn’t be a Sun, a Times, a Sunday Times. There’s no way this company, as a stand-alone operation, could afford to financially sustain the exposure it’s taken.”
The rest of the conversation is spiced with racy comments describing what has happened to NI as ” open heart surgery”. Lawyers who conducted the investigation into NI are described as ” bastards” and he gives the strongest commitment to saying NI will keep employing arrested journos even if found guilty in the courts.
Mr Mockridge now has a new job as chief executive of Virgin Media. News UK- the successor to News International – didn’t want to know about his comments while they employed him yesterday. A terse statement to Exaro said: “Tom Mockridge no longer works for the company”.
With a trial imminent I feel constrained from commenting except to say these figures are far higher than anything that has been revealed to shareholders and don’t include costs for other actions. However on the Inforrm blog there is a good comment piece by Michelle Stanistreet, president of the National Union of Journalists on the present situation facing journalists.

New law to protect bloggers from defamatory comments on their sites

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The government has just tabled draft regulations under the new Defamation Act to protect English and Welsh bloggers from being sued if people put up unwanted libellous comments on their websites.
I am indebted to Rupert Jones,a Birmingham barrister who specialises, among other things, in media law for drawing my attention to draft regulations which have been tabled by the Ministry of Justice. The regulations have to be debated by a committee of MPs and peers before becoming law. As far as I can see these regulations do not apply to Scottish or Northern Ireland websites.
From my reading as a journalist it allows bloggers 48 hours or two working days after a complaint has been received to contact the person who put up the comment and make a decision whether to take down the comment. It also allows – if both sides agree – for the person complaining about the comment to be put in touch with person who posted it.
For WordPress users like myself this is particularly good news. Under present arrangements I can moderate comments from new people who want to debate issues. But I cannot stop existing commentators putting up a new comment which is automatically published at the same time as I am alerted by WordPress.
Luckily all people commenting have to leave an email address – even if they are not using their real name – where they can be contacted.
The regulations also allow a ” get out” clause for websites carrying comments from people who cannot be traced – to remove the comment within 48 hours as a strong defence against anybody suing them for carrying an anonymous comment. There is also a lot of leeway for the courts to extend the 48 hour period to cover disputes.
All this is welcome news given my last report about the mad decision of the European Court of Human Rights to allow people to sue websites for comments from anonymous people even after they had taken them down.
Luckily I am told Britain does not have to follow the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights – unlike – and this has confused some people – the European Court of Justice, which is an EU institution.
These new rules – if followed by a website – will make it much more difficult for an intransigent complainer to win any libel action in the UK. And if they want to take it to the European Court of Human Rights they will have to go through the whole British justice system which will cost them a fortune.
So there is some good news to protect bloggers from comments they have never made.

Outrageous European Court ruling that bans bloggers free speech

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I am not one of those people who is by nature anti the European Court of Human Rights but a judgement reported on the authoritative Inforrm blog has made my blood boil.
Judges have made the extraordinary decision to hold news sites and blogs legally responsible for all the comments put up on their site even if they take them down after a complaint.
Effectively it means that any offended party can pursue a news organisation or blog for any defamatory comment made about them EVEN after it has been removed from the website.
The ruling follows a dispute after a said to be respected Estonian news organisation,Delfi,ran a piece about a ferry company making controversial changes to its routes. The changes to remote Estonian islands attracted widespread criticism including an attack on their owners from anonymous bloggers who put comments on the site. A major shareholder in the company took offence at the comments and decided to sue. The website took them down but the owner decided to pursue the site – not the commentators – saying it should be legally responsible for checking everything before it was published.
The report on Inforrm says: “The decision…sets a deeply worrying precedent for freedom of expression in several respects. It also displays a worrying lack of understanding of the issues surrounding intermediary liability and the way in which the Internet works. All the more disturbing is that the Court’s decision in this case was unanimous (although tellingly several judges sitting in the Chamber came from non-EU countries, namely Azerbaijan, Macedonia and Russia, and an EU-newcomer, Croatia).
I would add that Russia and Azerbaijan are not known as beacons for free expression and debate.

It adds:”The Court also made a number of worrying statements, including the suggestion that Internet news portals should realise that their articles might “cause negative reactions”, some of which might go beyond the bounds of acceptable criticism and that therefore they should be prepared to take the necessary measures to avoid liability. For anyone familiar with the way in comments online operate on news sites, this is laughable. The vast majority of public interest news will almost by definition stir debate and attract comments of all kinds, including offensive ones. While it may be appropriate for those sites to remove insulting comments upon notice in accordance with their house rules, what the Court is suggesting is that internet news portal have knowledge of illegal content on their platforms ‘by default’ and should take steps to prevent their publication or be prepared to face the consequences. Short of all out private censorship, the upshot of the Court’s judgment is that news portals should close their comment section to avoid liability.”
Can you imagine websites like Guido Fawkes which are full of lively, offensive and often insulting comments being forced to employ lawyers to check every comment before daring to publish. Or even on this blog which deals with meaty subjects like child sexual abuse and political corruption being expected to censor every view in case someone was offended.
This is extremely bad news from Estonia and Strasbourg and is a victory for countries that believe more in repression than free debate. It also I am afraid suggests that many judges are totally out of touch with the role of the internet and its role in encouraging unfettered debate. If it prevails – it can be appealed – it takes us back to the elitist old world of the printed word – where the editor just accepted a few letters for publication and all the news stories were published without anybody being able to challenge or comment.

Hating Britain with the Daily Mail: A song medley

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It is a Saturday night and the row over the Daily Mail, Ed Miliband and now Mehdi Hasan continues unabated. Here is a collection of anti Daily Mail songs. Who says satire is dead in Britain.The one below is bv Peter Bickerton The Daily Mail Song (a daily dose of hate).

I have just been sent by @BBCRadioForum another song by Amanda Palmer at the Roundhouse. Dear Daily Mail. Avert your eyes Paul Dacre, Ed Miliband and perhaps Mrs Angry from Barnet, this is a bit risque and contains female nudity.

And now Steve White has added his own song based on a Daily Mail story of an Ecstasy Death Girl. You can both listen to it and download it free here.
From Beastrabban Weblog here is a Chris Cohen number on the Daily Mail in 2009.

Finally so far – for those with long memories- here is a song from Irish band Blackthorn- on the Daily Mail’s 1920s coverage about another Sinn Fein rising. Some joker suggests they reported it from Holyhead, don’t know whether it is true.

Some And for those interested in more see Mike Sivier’s Vox Political website for ” You Hate Britain” by Mitch Benn which name checks Paul Dacre. I hope Paul Dacre has a sense of humour. Tom Baldwin, Labour’s chief media spokesman, tells me that a medley of these songs will be played at next year’s Labour Party Conference before the singing of the Red ” Ed” Flag.