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Sunday 27 May 2012

News International: will one more scandal be enough?

Sunday, 23rd January 2011

At the start of the phone hacking scandal, I was sceptical that News International’s pursuers would get far. There is an omerta on Fleet Street. Reporters do not blab about their employers because they know they will lose their jobs and guess, probably correctly, that no other paper will hire them once they have a reputation for speaking out of turn. Who, I wondered, was going crack the story open?

Silly question, and I ought to have known the answer: the lawyers would, of course. Except in extraordinary circumstances, reporters can only take a story so far. Politicians caught up in a scandal who demand we produce a “smoking gun” are being very canny. Reporters cannot seize evidence. We cannot issue search warrants and compel witnesses to testify under oath. Everyone who remembers the Watergate scandal remembers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting. Brilliant though it was, the Nixon administration was destroyed not by the Washington Post, but by Sam Ervin’s Senate committee, which had the powers parliamentary select committees ought to have to issue subpoenas and compel witnesses to talk or go to jail for contempt.

Lawyers for celebrities and politicians are now planning multiple actions against Rupert Murdoch and demanding that the Met supply them with the evidence they collected against News International but never submitted to a court.

Perhaps there will not be the flood of cases some are expecting. One tabloid hack, who wished to remain anonymous for the usual reasons, said that those who believed the Met had deliberately suppressed evidence because it was in the pocket of News International, did not understand how hard it would be to win cases. His reckoning was that the police had categorised those targeted by Mulcaire into three lists. On the first list were those whose phones had been illegally hacked: Boris Johnson, a senior executive at the BBC, and the individuals named in the Goodman court case. On a second list were 40-50 people whose numbers were in Mulcaire’s possession, but whose phones he had not tapped unlawfully. (Or rather, the police had no evidence that he had tapped them). Tessa Jowell and Sir Ian Blair, the former Met commissioner, are believed to have been on this list. On the final list were about 400-500 people who were possible targets, but Mulcaire had not even obtained their phone numbers.

My colleague thought that it would be “very difficult, without dates, times, places, to pin access to voicemails on anyone other than the intended recipient. Phone companies don't keep their records long enough to go back the years people are talking about.”

That is as maybe, but politically the difficulties in bringing a large number of prosecutions or civil actions may not matter. Murdoch has had a dubious relationship with successive British governments - to put it mildly. They provide him with business favours: he provides them with propaganda. Murdoch is now demanding that Jeremy Hunt do him the favour of not applying the usual competition rules to his takeover BSkyB. If celebrities’ lawyers can pin down one more scandal, it may be clear to the public that the coalition is not just involved in a corrupt relationship with a standard business organisation, but with a business organisation that has been involved in a criminal conspiracy.

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SM

January 23rd, 2011 3:28pm Report this comment

Re:
"That is as maybe, but politically the difficulties in bringing a large number of prosecutions or civil actions may not matter. Murdoch has had a dubious relationship with successive British governments - to put it mildly. They provide him with business favours: he provides them with propaganda. Murdoch is now demanding that Jeremy Hunt do him the favour of not applying the usual competition rules to his takeover BSkyB. If celebrities’ lawyers can pin down one more scandal, it may be clear to the public that the coalition is not just involved in a corrupt relationship with a standard business organisation, but with a business organisation that has been involved in a criminal conspiracy."

The word "corrupt" appearing in the same paragraph as the word "Murdoch"? Very daring, Nick!

Charles

January 24th, 2011 9:25am Report this comment

"the coalition is not just involved in a corrupt relationship with a standard business organisation"

Corruption is a pretty serious accustation. Given that Jeremy Hunt hasn't made any decision about the matter, don't you think that you are being a little over the top?

It also suggests that either (a) he agrees with you or (b) he is corrupt. Is it possible that you might be wrong?

Nick Cohen

January 24th, 2011 10:12am Report this comment

Well Charles, a normal case of political corruption goes as follows. Political party offers favour to business in return for money, which it then spends on propaganda,spreading its message etc.
In this case Labour and Conservative governments have offered business favours in return for News International producing propaganda, spreading their message etc. No money has changed hands, but the effect is the same.

Patricia Shaw

January 24th, 2011 10:49am Report this comment

Absolutely.

Which is why Clegg should have supported Vince, caught his refrain and underlined the reasoning behind it, instead of hanging him out to dry.

Cameron's England has a media as skewed as Berlusconi's Italy.

If the Libs dont smite Murdoch now they have the opportunity, they ll never get it back.

After all, they have nothing to lose.

Jeremy

January 24th, 2011 12:04pm Report this comment

Splendid stuff.

You put the relationship between Murdoch and successive Prime Ministers of both parties into the proverbial nutshell:

"They provide him with business favours: he provides them with propaganda."

Successive Prime Ministers have scuttled off to Murdoch towers in order to strike this very deal, and it is high time that it was identified, openly discussed and stopped. Such "corrupt relationships" only wax deeper and more corrupt with the passage of time. All of our leading politicians - i.e. those who have successively struck the deal - have maintained a conspiracy of silence about it. It is time for this particular form of corruption to be identified, isolated and surgically removed from our body politic.

"Murdoch is now demanding that Jeremy Hunt do him the favour of not applying the usual competition rules to his takeover BSkyB."

It's over to you then, Mr Hunt. We'll be watching with interest...

Rhoda Klapp

January 24th, 2011 1:02pm Report this comment

Politicians of all stripes appear to love big international coorporations. They despise us, the voters. No real need to specify names or parties, everything you see is likely to be a stitchup. Oh, the media are in it up to their bloody necks, and I do not mean specifically News International, whose only distinct crime is to be better at it.

Charles

January 24th, 2011 1:49pm Report this comment

Tremendous patronising, Nick, well done!

The key point in your article is that "Murdoch is now demanding that Jeremy Hunt do him the favour of not applying the usual competition rules to his takeover BSkyB".

For it to be corruption (a) Jeremy Hunt would have needed to have complies with Murdoch's demands and (b) you would need to prove that he did so because of the benefits that Murdoch was prepared to offer him rather than because he thought it was the appropriate decision.

Your article accuses the coalition of corruption (at least implicitly). Without proof. Is this another case of guilty until proven innocent?

DavidDP

January 24th, 2011 4:38pm Report this comment

"Murdoch is now demanding that Jeremy Hunt do him the favour of not applying the usual competition rules to his takeover BSkyB. "

No he isn't.

Firstly, the takeover isn't being looked at under the usual competition rules; it's being looked at under the media plurality public interest test.

Secondly, the legislation places a duty on the SoS to not only consider the report from OFCOM but also to consider any representations, including offers to mitigate any problems found by OFCOM, by the acquirer.

So far, there is nothing unusual about what is happening. When BSkyB bought shares in ITV, the then SOS (a Labour one by the way) took a month from being given a report by the OFT to issuing a decision to refer it to the Competition Commission.

Please don't take your line from Labour in this. it's easy, but it's equally easy to actually look up what the regime actually is.

Patricia Shaw

January 24th, 2011 4:44pm Report this comment

Charles,

the proof you need is the hatchet job done on Gordon Brown across all the inmates of the News International stable.

Not even Mad Mel could conceive of such a smear campaign.

Such a concerted NI blameathon does not come cheap.

Jeremy

January 24th, 2011 7:16pm Report this comment

Like the aged strumpet, I should imagine that Murdoch enjoys playing off Labour against Tory, eventually bedding whoever bids the most for his syphilitic f(l)avours.

Charles

January 26th, 2011 5:04pm Report this comment

Patricia,

Mere speculation at least that it was (a) coordinated and (b) linked in any way to the Conservatives.

Like most Tories I believe in due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Perhaps those concepts don't extend to your side to the table?

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