Tag Archives: Phone Hacking

News Corp lobbyist sent 1000 texts

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LONDON

A NEWS Corp lobbyist exchanged 191 phone calls, 158 emails and more than 1000 texts with the office of secretary of state Jeremy Hunt during the company’s bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the Leveson inquiry heard last night.
But News Corp head of communications Fred Michel said he could not assess whether Mr Hunt had been supportive of the bid.
He said he had not met Mr Hunt during that time but had exchanged several text messages with him. “Nothing inappropriate never [sic] took place,” he said.
One message he sent in March 2010 congratulated Mr Hunt on his performance in the House of Commons that day.
Mr Hunt sent the French-born Mr Michel a text reply saying, “Merci! Large drink tonight.”
Mr Hunt’s job is under threat following earlier revelations at the Leveson inquiry into the press that Mr Michel wrote 164 pages of emails to his boss, James Murdoch, that seem to suggest Mr Hunt was secretly on-side with the £8 billion Murdoch bid. In one email Mr Michel reported that Mr Hunt believed a new News Corp proposal over the bid would mean “it’s almost game over for the opposition” and that “he said we would get there in the end and he shared our objectives”.
But Mr Hunt also wanted to “build some political cover with the process”, the email said: “He wants us to take the heat with him in the next two weeks.”
Mr Hunt, who is also Media Minister, was meant to be impartially overseeing the takeover proposal.
Lawyer Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Michel about an email he wrote in November 2010 telling Mr Murdoch that Mr Hunt had to pull out of a planned meeting to discuss the bid with Mr Murdoch because he had legal advice that the bid was a quasi-judicial matter, not a policy issue. The email said, “Jeremy is very frustrated about it, but the permanent secretary has now become involved.” Mr Michel told the inquiry there was “frustration on both sides” that the meeting could not take place. Mr Hunt’s former adviser Adam Smith was due to give evidence last night.First published in The Age 25 May 2012.

Mogul’s piece of humble pie

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Rupert Murdoch’s grilling has a nation transfixed, Karen Kissane reports from London.

It is not often Rupert Murdoch is backed into a corner, but it happened this week at the Leveson inquiry into press standards.
He was being questioned about a story in the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid he closed last year over the phone-hacking scandal. The then-formula one chief Max Mosley once sued the paper over an article that claimed he had taken part in a Nazi-themed orgy. Mosley contended that the orgy had no Nazi theme. In 2008 the High Court ruled he was right and awarded him damages.
Murdoch was questioned about a related issue, the paper’s posting on its website of a video of the sexual encounter. In his judgment of the case, Justice Eady wrote that the newspaper had offered to pixilate the face of one of the women in the video, and to pay her money, if she would give an interview about the incident. She was told that if she refused, her privacy would not be protected. Justice Eady said this amounted to blackmail.
Did Murdoch think his journalists had committed blackmail?
Murdoch replied, “A journalist doing a favour for someone in return for a favour back is pretty much everyday practice.”
Justice Brian Leveson pressed him, saying he found it disturbing that a woman whose actions did not touch on the public interest would be treated that way.
Murdoch insisted, “It’s a common thing in life, not just in journalism, for people to say, ‘You scratch my back and I will scratch your back … “‘
Leveson asked him to read the Mosley judgment and to make a submission about his view on the blackmail claim. Murdoch agreed.
And then, to double his trouble, lead counsel Robert Jay, QC, took the opening to ask Murdoch whether back-scratching was a part of his dealings with politicians. But on this issue of political influence Murdoch was adamant that his hands were clean, a stance he upheld all through his day and a half of questioning: “I don’t ask any politician to scratch my back.” He had never asked a prime minister for anything, he maintained.
Jay put it to him that he would never have been so “cack-handed” as to ask directly for anything; that perhaps politicians worked out what he wanted and gave it to him.
“Whether Rupert ever asked for anything or got anything is only one question,” the media analyst Steve Hewlett later told the BBC. He said Jay did “out” Murdoch on a number of issues: among them, influencing Tony Blair over the euro and buying The Times and The Sunday Times without the sale being referred to Britain’s Competition Commission.
“Once politicians believe he is essential to electability, and that’s been the case since [prime minister Margaret] Thatcher, the process is corrupted,” Hewlett said. “It’s not only what did they do in return but what didn’t they do for fear of Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers.”
Hewlett argued that the issue was not Murdoch lobbying for his commercial interests, or allowing his political interests to shape the content of his newspapers; all proprietors did that. “The problem was that he was 40 per cent of the market and way, way over-mighty. There wasn’t anything of significance that didn’t involve, ‘What did Rupert make of this?’ … for the last 30 years.”
But the appearances of James and Rupert Murdoch this week are about much more than an analysis of where the British media have gone wrong. This was the second time that Murdoch, one of the world’s richest and most powerful men, agreed to be publicly interrogated. The first time was when he appeared last year before a committee of British MPs over phone-hacking.
The Leveson inquiry asked him about phone-hacking, too, but its main focus was his relationships with politicians. He would have agreed to appear at least partly because it was in the interests of his company, News Corp, that he eat this particular humble pie with a semblance of good grace.
Because underneath all the claims and counter-claims about hacking and bribery, cover-ups and failures in corporate governance, simmers a potentially deadly question: are the Murdochs and their companies fit and proper to be holding the positions they do?
The answer to this could prove expensive, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The same day Rupert Murdoch gave evidence, news broke that Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, had asked News Group newspapers for more documents disclosed in the civil cases related to phone-hacking. This was the first confirmation that the malpractices at News of the World were important to Ofcom’s investigation into whether BSkyB is fit and proper to hold a broadcasting licence.
Worst-case scenario for the Murdochs: News Corp could be forced to reduce its 39 per cent share in BSkyB so that it would no longer be seen as having a material influence over the broadcaster.
Ofcom might also be watching with interest the 46 arrests from the two police investigations related to News-related scandals (one into phone-hacking and one into bribery of officials), as well as the work of the parliamentary select committee on the media, which is due to release its report into the phone-hacking scandal next week.
The British scandals are reverberating in the US, too. Last year, the FBI launched an investigation into News Corp after a report that employees might have attempted to hack phone conversations and voicemails of survivors of the September 11 attacks.
Separately, US authorities are considering action against News Corp under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, legislation that allows prosecution of US firms which might have bribed foreign officials. This would relate to the claims by British police that The Sun newspaper had “a culture of illegal payments” to “a network of corrupted officials” – including police.
Worst-case scenario for the Murdochs: a US court case, with a guilty verdict leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
James Murdoch has claimed he knew nothing of the extent of the phone-hacking scandal at the time the company denied it went beyond a single reporter. This week, Rupert Murdoch admitted there had been a cover-up but pointed the finger at an editor, believed to be Colin Myler, and a “smart lawyer”, believed to be News International’s former head of legal affairs, Tom Crone.
A furious Crone denied this charge as a “shameful lie”. He pointed out it was “perhaps no coincidence” that the two people Murdoch named as involved in a cover-up also happened to be the same two people who had said his son’s evidence to the parliamentary select committee last year was inaccurate.
Crone and Myler told the committee they had warned James of evidence that hacking was widespread, and he had understood what it meant. James is adamant he was not told.
Meanwhile, Britain is transfixed by the political fallout from this week’s hearings. During James’s evidence it was revealed the special adviser to the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, kept the Murdochs briefed daily on Hunt’s thinking about last year’s News Corp bid for a full takeover of BSkyB. This continued during the months Hunt was meant to be acting impartially, in a quasi-judicial role, supervising the process.
The special adviser, Adam Smith, has now walked the plank, apologising for having “gone too far” in briefing News Corp, but Labour is baying for the minister’s blood.
The Opposition Leader, Ed Miliband, said the idea Smith had acted as a “lone wolf” beggared belief. The phone-hacking Hydra continues to grow more heads.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Murdoch admits to phone-hacking ‘cover-up’

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LONDON

THE media magnate Rupert Murdoch last night admitted there had been a “cover-up” over phone hacking at News International, that he had failed and that it was a matter of deep regret.
Mr Murdoch said he was “misinformed and shielded” from what was going on at the News of the World: “I do blame one or two people for that, who perhaps I shouldn’t name, for all I know they may be arrested.
“There is no question in my mind, maybe even the editor but certainly beyond that, someone took charge of a cover-up which we were victim to and I regret [that].”
Asked where the “culture of cover-up” had come from, Mr Murdoch said:”I think from within the News of the World, there were one or two very strong characters there who I think had been there many, many, many years and were friends of the journalists, or the person I’m thinking of was a friend of the journalists and a drinking pal and a clever lawyer, and forbade them … this person forbade people to go and report to Mrs [Rebekah] Brooks [chief executive of News International] or to James [Murdoch].”
“That’s not to excuse it on our behalf at all. I take it extremely seriously that that situation had arisen … I also have to say that I failed, and I’m sorry about it.”
Mr Murdoch said he was guilty of not having paid enough attention to the News of the World all the time he had owned it. “All I can do is apologise to a lot of people including all the innocent people at the News of the World who have lost their jobs as a result of that.”
Mr Murdoch said he thought he had never met Jeremy Hunt, the minister under fire following leaks from his office while he was arbitrating the Murdoch bid for the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
“I don’t believe I ever met him. I am not sure whether he came to a dinner once a couple of years ago, but no, I certainly didn’t discuss [the bid with him].” He said he did not discuss with his son, James, whether Mr Hunt would be favourable towards the bid.
Asked about the 163 pages of emails between Mr Hunt’s office and the office of Fred Michel, the public affairs adviser to News International, Mr Murdoch said he thought Mr Michel might have exaggerated.
Mr Murdoch said the company would have achieved the Sky takeover had it not been caught up in the phone-hacking scandal.
He stood by his previous evidence that the former prime minister Gordon Brown had “declared war” on his media empire when it switched its endorsement to the Conservatives and he appeared to be “unbalanced” at the time.
Mr Murdoch said he gave his evidence under oath, “and I stand by every word of it”.
Meanwhile, fallout continued from earlier evidence given by James Murdoch, whose testimony on Tuesday revealed News International had received detailed leaks from the office of the Secretary of State, Mr Hunt, while Mr Hunt was overseeing the Murdoch bid for BSkyB.
The Opposition Leader, Ed Miliband, continued to ramp up the pressure on Mr Hunt, refusing to accept the resignation of his special adviser, Adam Smith, was enough. Mr Smith said he had “gone too far” when dealing with News International.
But Mr Miliband said the idea that Mr Smith had acted as a “lone wolf” beggared belief: “To believe Mr Hunt should stay in his job you have to believe that his special adviser was acting for six months with text messages and daily email exchanges … and that the secretary of state had no idea this was going on …
“I believe the reason Jeremy Hunt is being kept in his post is because [Prime Minister David] Cameron knows questions will move to him, his meetings with Mr Murdoch … what he said to James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks about the bid News Corp was making for BSkyB.”First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Rupert Murdoch denies receiving political favours

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LONDON

”I HAVE never asked a prime minister for anything,” Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, told the Leveson inquiry into press standards last night.THE media magnate Rupert Murdoch last night agreed under questioning at the Leveson inquiry that his newspapers had endorsed Tony Blair’s bid to be prime minister after the politician assured him media regulation would not be onerous under a Labour government.

He agreed that The Sun had endorsed Mr Blair the day after an article was published in which Mr Blair took a euro sceptic view that chimed with Mr Murdoch’s dislike of the euro.

Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Murdoch: “You had extracted as much as you could from Mr Blair in terms of policy promises. He had gone a considerable distance in your direction, you assumed he had gone as far as he was going to go and you endorsed him?”

“I think so,” Mr Murdoch said. “I don’t think this all followed in this way so logically, but yes.”

Mr Murdoch also agreed that he had told Mr Blair: ”If our flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, I suspect we will end up making love like porcupines, very, very carefully.”

But Mr Murdoch denied a report that, while no deal was made about support from The Sun in return for Mr Murdoch’s media empire being left untouched, the two had an implicit understanding.

“That’s not true,” Mr Murdoch said. If there had been such an understanding, Mr Blair “certainly didn’t keep to it because he appointed [the media regulator] Ofcom with wide powers to interfere with us in every way.”

The Leveson inquiry into media ethics is examining the relationship between media proprietors and politicians.

Evidence on Tuesday from Mr Murdoch’s son James suggested that the Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, had leaked information to News Corporation in 2010-11 during the company’s bid to take over the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Last night Mr Hunt was resisting demands that he resign over apparent breaches of the ministerial code, but his adviser, Adam Smith, who had been involved in the unofficial email exchanges with News Corporation, did step down.

Lord Justice Leveson told the inquiry when it opened last night that it was important the email exchange not be judged until all sides had been heard.

In his evidence Rupert Murdoch, who is the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, became testy about what

he saw as “sinister inferences” in the questioning about his relationships with politicians.

He beat his hands on a bench to emphasise his words as he said: ”I, in 10 years he was in power, never asked Mr Blair for anything, nor did I receive any favours.”

Mr Jay said the relationship between a sophisticated politician and the proprietor would be rather more subtle than that. Mr Murdoch said: ”I’m afraid I don’t have much subtlety about me.”

Mr Murdoch denied he was the power behind the throne of the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher but agreed he was politically sympathetic to her and to the former US president Ronald Reagan.

Questioned about a lunch he had with the then British prime minister in 1981, he denied its purpose had been to show Mrs Thatcher he was ”on the same page” as her politically, or that the tacit understanding was that she would then help him with his bid to buy the Times newspapers.

”No, I didn’t expect any help from her, nor did I ask for anything,” Mr Murdoch said. He was asked about a report that he had told an editor on The Sunday Times : ”We owe Thatcher a lot as a company. Don’t go overboard in your attacks on her.”

Mr Murdoch said he had no memory of the conversation.

Mr Murdoch said he had strongly disapproved of a Sun front page in 1992 that claimed credit for John Major’s election win with the headline: “It was the Sun wot won it!”

Mr Murdoch said: ”It was tasteless and wrong for us. We don’t have that sort of power.”

Mr Murdoch also told the inquiry that then-prime minister Gordon Brown was ”not in a balanced state of mind” when he attacked the mogul over the phone after learning that The Sun would support a change in government.

”He [Brown] said, and I must stress no voices were raised, he said: ‘Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative to make war on your company.’ I said ‘I’m sorry about that Gordon, thank you for calling,’ and that was that.”

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Ex-PM denies ‘war’ cry as the hits keep coming at Leveson inquiry

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LONDON

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown last night strongly denied Rupert Murdoch’s claims that he had once declared war on the media empire.In evidence to the Leveson inquiry, Mr Murdoch said Mr Brown had phoned him after the front page of The Sun newspaper published the headline “Labour’s Lost It”, on a day in 2009 when Mr Brown was due to make an important speech.

Mr Murdoch said he told Mr Brown his newspapers would support a change of government at the upcoming election and that Mr Brown replied, “Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company.”

Mr Murdoch told the inquiry he said, “‘I’m sorry about that, Gordon. Thank you for calling.’ End of subject. I don’t think he was in a very balanced state of mind. I don’t know.”

But Mr Brown released a statement saying the two men had not spoken and that Mr Murdoch “was wholly wrong? The Sun declared for the Conservatives on 30 September 2009. I did not phone Mr Murdoch or meet him, or write to him about his decision.”I hope Mr Murdoch will have the good grace to correct his account.”As Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, appeared for the first time before the inquiry into press standards and the relationships between proprietors and politicians, the shockwaves intensified from the hearing on Tuesday. Then, his son James discussed emails that appeared to show News International had routinely been leaked information from the office of Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt while Mr Hunt was overseeing the company’s bid to take over satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

In developments last night:- Mr Hunt’s special adviser stepped down, admitting he had gone too far in his dealings with News International.- Documents revealed Mr Hunt visited News Corp in the US while the company was deciding whether to bid for BSkyB.- Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond admitted he planned to lobby Mr Hunt to back the Murdoch bid only days after winning the support of the Scottish Sun for his election campaign

.Rupert Murdoch told the inquiry that after the alleged declaration of war, Mr Brown had gone on to make a “totally outrageous” claim “which he had to know was wrong” that The Sun had hacked the medical records of his sick child.

Mr Murdoch said Mrs Brown had been phoned before the story was published and told that the informant was a fellow parent at the same hospital.

He said he and Prime Minister David Cameron had not discussed Mr Cameron’s hiring of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, later arrested over phone hacking, as his director of communications in 2007. Mr Murdoch said the appointment had left him “just as surprised as everybody else”.

He agreed that Mr Cameron had dropped in to visit him on a yacht at the Greek island of Santorini in 2008 – he could not recall whether it was his own or his daughter’s yacht – but said Mr Cameron had wanted to meet him, not the other way around: “Politicians go out of their way to impress people in the press and I don’t remember discussing any heavy political things with him at all. They may have been some issues discussed passingly; it was not a long meeting.”

Mr Murdoch said he had never sought to use political influence for commercial advantage and had always decided editorial views on the basis of issues and candidates.  It was a “complete myth” that his company ever had preferential treatment from politicians because of the power of his newspapers, he said.If he were driven purely by business priorities he would always have told his newspapers to support the Conservatives because they were always friendlier to big business, but he said it was also in his newspapers’ interests to attract and hold readers.

He denied being a major power behind the throne for former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and said of Tony Blair, “In the 10 years he was in power I never asked Mr Blair for anything.

“Mr Murdoch was also asked about reports of comments made about him by former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. “‘You can do deals with him without ever saying a deal is done?”‘ asked Robert Jay, QC.

Mr Murdoch denied this: “I don’t understand what you’re saying but it isn’t true. Mr Keating is given to extravagant language.”Mr Jay asked about another quote: “‘The only thing he cares about is business and the only language he respects is strength’? Is that fair?”

“Certainly not,” Mr Murdoch said.

Meanwhile, Labour continued to demand the resignation of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. When Mr Hunt’s special adviser Adam Smith resigned, he said in a statement that he had acted without the authority of the minister and that he had allowed the impression to be created of too close a relationship between News Corp and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

He said, “While it was part of my role to keep News Corporation informed through the BSkyB bid process, the content and extent of my contact was done without authorisation from [Mr Hunt]? I appreciate that my activities at times went too far.”But he insisted, as did Mr Hunt, that the process had been conducted scrupulously fairly.

Mr Hunt’s position was further endangered by revelations in official documents that he had spent five days in the US in 2009 holding meetings with News Corp at the same time Rupert and James Murdoch were first deciding whether to bid for Sky.

Almost immediately after Mr Hunt’s trip, James Murdoch visited Mr Cameron in London and privately told him that News Corp had agreed to switch support to the Conservatives in the coming election. Mr Hunt then became culture secretary in the victorious Tory Government.

In yet another response to James Murdoch’s day of evidence, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond admitted he planned to lobby Mr Hunt in favour of the Murdoch bid for BSkyB only days after the Scottish Sun promised it would back his election campaign.

A spokesman for Mr Salmond confirmed he had booked a call with Mr Hunt _ which did not take place _ two days after Mr Salmond had dinner with the editor of the Scottish Sun.Last year the paper backed Mr Salmond’s Scottish National Party for the first time in 20 years and it won an unprecedented landslide.

First published in The Age.

Rupert Murdoch denies receiving political favours

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LONDON

THE media magnate Rupert Murdoch last night agreed under questioning at the Leveson inquiry that his newspapers had endorsed Tony Blair’s bid to be prime minister after the politician assured him media regulation would not be onerous under a Labour government.
He agreed that The Sun had endorsed Mr Blair the day after an article was published in which Mr Blair took a euro sceptic view that chimed with Mr Murdoch’s dislike of the euro.
Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Murdoch: “You had extracted as much as you could from Mr Blair in terms of policy promises. He had gone a considerable distance in your direction, you assumed he had gone as far as he was going to go and you endorsed him?”
“I think so,” Mr Murdoch said. “I don’t think this all followed in this way so logically, but yes.”
Mr Murdoch also agreed that he had told Mr Blair: “If our flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, I suspect we will end up making love like porcupines, very, very carefully.”
But Mr Murdoch denied a report that, while no deal was made about support from The Sun in return for Mr Murdoch’s media empire being left untouched, the two had an implicit understanding.
“That’s not true,” Mr Murdoch said. If there had been such an understanding, Mr Blair “certainly didn’t keep to it because he appointed [the media regulator] Ofcom with wide powers to interfere with us in every way.”
The Leveson inquiry into media ethics is examining the relationship between media proprietors and politicians.
Evidence on Tuesday from Mr Murdoch’s son James suggested that the Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, had leaked information to News Corporation in 2010-11 during the company’s bid to take over the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Last night Mr Hunt was resisting demands that he resign over apparent breaches of the ministerial code, but his adviser, Adam Smith, who had been involved in the unofficial email exchanges with News Corporation, did step down.
Lord Justice Leveson told the inquiry when it opened last night that it was important the email exchange not be judged until all sides had been heard.
In his evidence Rupert Murdoch, who is the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, became testy about what he saw as “sinister inferences” in the questioning about his relationships with politicians.
He beat his hands on a bench to emphasise his words as he said: “I, in 10 years he was in power, never asked Mr Blair for anything, nor did I receive any favours.”
Mr Jay said the relationship between a sophisticated politician and the proprietor would be rather more subtle than that. Mr Murdoch said: “I’m afraid I don’t have much subtlety about me.”
Mr Murdoch denied he was the power behind the throne of the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher but agreed he was politically sympathetic to her and to the former US president Ronald Reagan.
Questioned about a lunch he had with the then British prime minister in 1981, he denied its purpose had been to show Mrs Thatcher he was “on the same page” as her politically, or that the tacit understanding was that she would then help him with his bid to buy the Times newspapers.
“No, I didn’t expect any help from her, nor did I ask for anything,” Mr Murdoch said. He was asked about a report that he had told an editor on The Sunday Times : “We owe Thatcher a lot as a company. Don’t go overboard in your attacks on her.”
Mr Murdoch said he had no memory of the conversation.
Mr Murdoch said he had strongly disapproved of a Sun front page in 1992 that claimed credit for John Major’s election win with the headline: “It was the Sun wot won it!”
Mr Murdoch said: “It was tasteless and wrong for us. We don’t have that sort of power.”
Mr Murdoch also told the inquiry that then-prime minister Gordon Brown was “not in a balanced state of mind” when he attacked the mogul over the phone after learning that The Sun would support a change in government.
“He [Brown] said, and I must stress no voices were raised, he said: ‘Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative to make war on your company.’ I said ‘I’m sorry about that Gordon, thank you for calling,’ and that was that.”First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Murdoch admits his paper backed Tony Blair for PM

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LONDON

THE media magnate Rupert Murdoch last night agreed under questioning at the Leveson inquiry that his newspapers had endorsed Tony Blair’s bid to be prime minister after Mr Blair had assured him media regulation would not be onerous under a Labour government.
He agreed that The Sun had endorsed Mr Blair the day after an article was published in which Mr Blair took a euro sceptic view that chimed with Mr Murdoch’s dislike of the euro.
Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Murdoch: “You had extracted as much as you could from Mr Blair in terms of policy promises. He had gone a considerable distance in your direction, you assumed he had gone as far as he was going to go and you endorsed him?”
“I think so,” Mr Murdoch said. “I don’t think this all followed in this way so logically, but yes.”
Mr Murdoch also agreed that he had told Mr Blair: “If our flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, I suspect we will end up making love like porcupines, very, very carefully.”
But Mr Murdoch denied a report that, while no deal was made about support from The Sun in return for Mr Murdoch’s media empire being left untouched, the two had an implicit understanding.
“That’s not true,” Mr Murdoch said. If there had been such an understanding, Mr Blair “certainly didn’t keep to it because he appointed [the media regulator] Ofcom with wide powers to interfere with us in every way.”
The Leveson inquiry into media ethics is examining the relationship between media proprietors and politicians.
Evidence on Tuesday from Mr Murdoch’s son James suggested that the Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, had leaked information to James Murdoch in 2010-11 during the News bid to take over the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Last night Mr Hunt was resisting demands that he resign over apparent breaches of the ministerial code, but his adviser, Adam Smith, who had been involved in the unofficial email exchanges with News, did step down. He said in a statement: “I appreciate that my activities at times went too far.”
Lord Justice Leveson told the inquiry when it opened last night that it was important the email exchange not be judged until all sides had been heard.
In his evidence Rupert Murdoch, who is the chairman and chief executive of News Corp, became testy about what he saw as “sinister inferences” in the questioning about his relationships with politicians.
He beat his hands on a bench to emphasise his words as he said: “I, in 10 years he was in power, never asked Mr Blair for anything, nor did I receive any favours.”
Mr Jay said the relationship between a sophisticated politician and the proprietor would be rather more subtle than that. Mr Murdoch said: “I’m afraid I don’t have much subtlety about me.”
Mr Murdoch denied he was the power behind the throne of the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher but agreed that he was politically sympathetic to her and to the former US president Ronald Reagan.
Questioned about a lunch he had had with the then British prime minister in 1981, he denied its purpose had been to show Mrs Thatcher he was “on the same page” as her politically, or that the tacit understanding was that she would then help him with his bid to buy the Times newspapers.
“No, I didn’t expect any help from her, nor did I ask for anything,” Mr Murdoch said. He denied he had wanted the lunch because he was concerned the bid might be delayed if it were referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission: “That didn’t worry me in the least.”
Mr Murdoch was asked about a report that he had told an editor on The Sunday Times : “We owe Thatcher a lot as a company. Don’t go overboard in your attacks on her.”
Mr Murdoch said he had no memory of the conversation. Did he say it? “I don’t think so.”
Mr Murdoch said he had strongly disapproved of a Sun front page in 1992 that claimed credit for John Major’s election win with the headline: “It was the Sun wot won it!” He said he gave the editor “a hell of a bollocking” over it.
Mr Jay asked whether he disliked it because it suggested newspapers were powerful and anti-democratic. “Anti-democratic is too strong a word,” Mr Murdoch said. “It was tasteless and wrong for us. We don’t have that sort of power.”First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reporter lifts lid on tabloid’s murky world

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Editors knew of hacking, inquiry told

FOR anyone who watched the phone hacking scandal unfold and wondered, “What were those journalists thinking?”, eye-watering answers have come from a former reporter at the News of the World, who says editors including “criminal-in-chief” Rebekah Brooks had encouraged the “perfectly acceptable” practice.
On Tuesday, Paul McMullan gave brutally frank evidence about the mindset at the now defunct tabloid paper to Britain’s Leveson inquiry into media practices. He said:
■Former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson knew about phone hacking, and their denials made them “the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it”.
■Only evil people needed privacy: “Privacy is for paedos.”
■Hacking was “perfectly acceptable” given the need to find the truth and the sacrifices reporters made for their careers.
McMullan, who worked at the paper as a reporter and deputy features editor for seven years until 2001, also said hacking into the voicemails of murdered girl Milly Dowler was “not a bad thing” as journalists had been trying to help find her: “Our intentions were good; our intentions were honourable.”
It was a dramatic day at the inquiry, with former tabloid journalists presenting like sinners at the pearly gates, either full of repentance or full of bluster over their misdeeds.
McMullan is the first journalist to defend to the inquiry the techniques used by News of the World, which was shut down because of the hacking scandal. He painted a portrait of thrill-seeking reporters pushed by editors to breach boundaries for the sake of stories.
But another former tabloid reporter, Richard Peppiatt of the Daily Star, apologised for intrusive and inaccurate stories and said: “I am ashamed.” He said reporters on that paper had been “cannon fodder” for editors and proprietors.
However, McMullan, asked whether he believed no one should have privacy, answered: “Yes.”
He went on: “In 21 years of invading people’s privacy I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s been doing any good. Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in. Privacy is evil; it brings out the worst qualities in people. Privacy is for paedos [paedophiles]. Fundamentally, nobody else needs it.”
McMullan blasted great holes in the earlier evidence given to Parliament by Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson, who had strongly denied knowledge of hacking. He told the inquiry hacking was widespread at the paper because “Coulson brought the practice wholesale with him when he was appointed deputy editor, an appointment I could not believe”.
Mr Coulson was editor from 2003 to 2007, when he resigned after the paper’s royal reporter and a private investigator were jailed for hacking voicemail accounts of the royal family.
Mr Coulson had claimed the practice was confined to “a single rogue reporter”. He was later hired as media adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron but resigned in January, saying pressure over hacking was preventing him from doing his job.
McMullan said editors threw reporters “to the wolves” by denying they knew about hacking. Apparently offended by this alleged breach of honour, he said: “They should have had the strength of their conviction to say, ‘I know, yes, sometimes you have to enter a grey area or enter a black illegal area for the good of our readers, for the public good, and yes, we asked our reporters to do these things.’
“But, instead, they turned around on us and said, ‘Oh, we didn’t know they were doing it. Oh, heavens. It was all just [royal reporter] Clive Goodman.’ And later, ‘It was just a few others.’
“They should have been the heroes of journalism, but they aren’t. Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson . . . are the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it.”
Making the most of his moment in the spotlight, McMullan also launched a broadside at Mr Cameron for “cosying up” to News International executives: “David Cameron wants to become prime minister and he ends up with Murdoch lite, James [Murdoch], and Rebekah Brooks.” He said Mr Cameron had been “moulded” by Mrs Brooks, who became chief executive of the paper’s owner, News International.
He said hacking should not be limited to intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6: “For a brief period of about 20 years we have actually lived in a free society where we have hacked back. And if you start jailing journalists for that, then this is going to be a country that is laughed at by Iran and China and by Turkey.”
He spoke of his “absolute” love of celebrity pursuits: “How many jobs can you actually have car chases in?” But, he added, “The glory days when it was so much fun before [Princess] Diana died have gone.”
He said he had received death threats: “I sacrificed a lot to write truthful articles for the biggest-circulation English-language paper in the world, and I was quite happy and proud to do it, which is why I think phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool . . .”
In contrast, Peppiatt apologised to celebrities including singer Susan Boyle. He said a number of stories during his time at the Star were “completely fictitious”. He claimed that after he left the paper and told his story to The Guardian, he was threatened and his work emails intercepted.
McMullan said he saw no difference between the public interest and what the public was interested in, and that sales figures were the only reliable indicator of what was acceptable. “The public are clever enough to be judge and jury for what goes on in newspapers.”
His defiance bodes ill for the attempts of media proprietors to keep their industry self-regulated, a cause they equate with the democratic freedom of the press. Perhaps the sharpest nail in that coffin yesterday came from one of the strongest examples of the benefits of open media, Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies.
His work was central in exposing phone hacking, but he told the inquiry he could no longer support self-regulation: “I don’t think this is an industry that is interested in, or capable of, self-regulation.”
Police investigating phone hacking said yesterday they had arrested a woman, 31, on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages.
University lecturer Bethany Usher, who worked at the News of the World and The People, was being questioned at a police station in Northumbria, sources said.First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Murdoch’s ‘Milly’ bill rises

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LONDON

THE “Milly moment” is to cost Rupert Murdoch even more dearly than expected, with the British arm of his media empire offering the family of the murdered schoolgirl about £3 million ($A4.6 million) over the hacking of her phone.
It is believed the sum will be divided into £2 million for the Dowler family and £1 million to be donated by Mr Murdoch to a charity of their choice.
The proposed payout, yet to be finalised, dwarfs previous settlements in the long-running phone hacking scandal, but Milly Dowler’s case was always going to carry a premium.
It is the one that sparked a tide of public revulsion over the tactics of the Sunday tabloid News of the World.
Milly, then 13, disappeared in 2002 and was still being treated as a missing person when the News of the World arranged for her phone messages to be intercepted.
The paper’s hacker even deleted some messages, giving her family false hope that she might still be alive. The public, which had been sanguine over hacking when it seemed confined to celebrities, was outraged when Milly’s case was revealed in July.
Mr Murdoch and his son James were forced to kill the commercially successful tabloid, and Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, News Corp’s British arm, resigned.
The Dowler family’s payout might lead to higher expectations by families of other victims of violent death who were hacked.
They included soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a young man who died in the July 2005 London terrorist bombings.
A London media lawyer, Niri Shan, said the payout was much more generous than could be expected in a court. “The only downside is if it potentially sets an unrealistic expectation for others,” he said.
Others suggested the size of the payment meant News Corp might blow its £20 million budget for phone hacking claims.
Tom Watson, a Labour MP who has campaigned strongly over the issue, told The Independent: “News Corp shareholders were told that cleaning up the hacking cases would cost £20 million in the civil courts.
“This settlement shows that the final cost to shareholders will be considerably more than that. There will be questions to answer at the News Corp AGM next month.”
About 30 claims are still to be settled. The High Court has accepted six as “lead cases” to be heard as exemplars.
Previous out-of-court settlements over hacking by News include £1 million to publicity agent Max Clifford, £700,000 to footballers’ union chief Gordon Taylor and £100,000 to actor Sienna Miller.
Scotland Yard is investigating the potential hacking of 3000 more phone numbers held by the paper’s hired hacker, private detective Glenn Mulcaire. That operation has cost £1.8 million so far, The Guardian reported.
Two other police operations are looking at payments to police and computer hacking. Sixteen people have been arrested.First published in The Age.

Huge caches of documents, emails found in hacking case

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LONDON

“Many tens of thousands” of documents and emails that might be evidence of phone hacking have been found by the publisher of the defunct tabloid News of the World, Britain’s High Court has been told.
The lawyer for News Group Newspapers, which had been ordered to search its internal mail system for any evidence of hacking of a list of public figures, said: “Two very large new caches of documents have been [found], which the current management were unaware of”.
The search was not yet finished, Michael Silverleaf, QC, told the court.
The news emerged before Mr Justice Vos, who was conducting pre-trial hearings for civil suits by phone-hacking claimants.
Mr Justice Vos said he wanted five “lead actions”, including suits by politicians and celebrities, to be the first considered by the courts. He accepted Sheila Henry, the mother of a victim of the London bombings of July 7, 2005, as a lead action as she was a victim of a crime and so represented “a new category of people”.
Mrs Henry’s 28-year-old son, Christian Small, died when his train was bombed by terrorists.
A News International spokesman said: “We take very seriously the matters raised in court and we are committed to working with civil claimants to resolve their cases.”
Separately, the company announced that James Murdoch, the chief executive of News International, was happy to reappear before the House of Commons media select committee that is investigating phone hacking.
MPs decided on Tuesday to recall him after two of his former colleagues disputed his claim that he did not know of a crucial phone-hacking email.
Meanwhile in the US, prominent News Corp investors added to their claims in a lawsuit accusing Rupert Murdoch of using the company as his “own private fiefdom” and accuse the company of widespread misconduct.
In March the shareholders launched a US legal action aimed at board members, including Rupert himself, his sons James and Lachlan, and the media empire’s chief operating officer, Chase Carey.
Leading the action is Amalgamated Bank, which manages $US12 billion ($11.7 billion) on behalf of investors and holds about 1 million News Corp shares, and the New Orleans Employees’ Retirement System and Central Laborers Pension Fund.
The latest amended complaint alleges “widespread misconduct” at News Corp subsidiaries including News America Marketing and the smart-card manufacturer NDS. The complaint says the two “have been accused by multiple parties of stealing computer technology, hacking into business plans and computers and violating the law through a wide range of anti-competitive behaviour”.
The complaint draws on several lawsuits in which News Corp subsidiaries were sued by rival businesses for alleged misconduct. In one case, a subsidiary called News America Marketing was accused of breaking into a rival’s computer system 11 times.
It reached settlements with three separate competitors totaling $US650 million.
The lawsuit claims NDS posted on the internet the code to the smart cards of a rival, allowing hackers to inflict more than $US1 billion worth of damage.
A lawyer for the complainants, Jay Eisenhofer, said the cases showed “a corporate culture that allows this sort of misconduct to take place over a very long period”.
There was no immediate response by News Corp.

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.