Phone Hacking Scandal

Overview

There had been accusations and investigations into the use of "phone hacking" by newspapers (particularly those owned by Rupert Murdoch) for years. Up until 2011 it had been widely assumed that the only victims of phone hacking were celebrities, politicians and other people who most of the public thought shouldn't have any privacy anyway. Although the practice was known to be illegal, it wasn't generally seen as that big of a deal if a reporter was caught doing it.

In July 2011 all that changed when it was revealed that the phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, relatives of deceased British soldiers, and victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings had also been hacked. The resulting public outcry against News Corporation and its owner Rupert Murdoch led to several high-profile resignations, including that of Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton, News International legal manager Tom Crone and chief executive Rebekah Brooks. The commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Paul Stephenson, also resigned. Advertiser boycotts led to the closure of the News of the World on 10 July 2011, after 168 years of publication. Continued public pressure shortly forced News Corporation to cancel its proposed takeover of the British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

British prime minister David Cameron announced on 6 July 2011 that a public inquiry, known as the Leveson Inquiry, would look into phone hacking and police bribery by the News of the World, consider the wider culture and ethics of the British newspaper industry and that the Press Complaints Commission would be replaced "entirely". A number of arrests and convictions followed, most notably of the former News of the World managing editor and David Cameron's former Director of Communications Andy Coulson.

Previous investigations

The News of the World had been investigated a number of times for phone hacking prior to the actual phone hacking scandal. In particular they had been investigated regarding hacking into the phones of the royal family in order to publish exclusive news stories about the crazy things the royals get up to. Although two men were found guilty of these hacks in 2007, they only received a few months in prison each. A few more instances of phone hacking came to light and these were generally settled out of court for large sums of money. Most people believed the "few bad apples" line spouted by lots of people at News International, placing the blame completely on those already convicted. Most people thought that would probably be the end of it.

Oh how wrong they were...

The Guardian investigation

In July 2009 the Guardian published a series of articles claiming that:

• News International has settled even more cases out of court for lots of money
• The Met Police knew about the illegal activities and held massive amounts of data relating to who had been hacked, including the hacking of ordinary people
• Everyone, including the editors of The News of the World, knew that illegal hacking had been taking place on an industrial scale at the paper
• Phone hacking was so normalised in the business that there were even invoices listing the amount of illegal hacking done by private investigators and how much it cost to hack different people's phones
• News International executives had misled a Parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public about the extent of their newspaper's illegal activities

The people at News International, and in particular at The News of the World, were not very happy with these allegations. Further allegations and court cases were brought, including some who claimed that their phones were hacked while Andy Coulson was editor of The News of the World. This was very embarrassing for David Cameron as at the time of the allegations, Coulson was serving as his Director of Communications at Number 10. Coulson resigned as Cameron's Director of Communications in January 2011.

On 8 April 2011 News International admitted liability for hacking the phones of 8 celebrities and high profile figures, including John Prescott's secretary, but continued to claim it was innocent of loads of other accusations of phone hacking. The longer they continued to deny it, the more people decided to bring claims against the company for breech of privacy. At this time accusations also came to light claiming that Rupert Murdoch had tried to pressure Gordon Brown while he was Prime Minister to stop the attacks by Tom Watson and Chris Bryant on News International.

July 2011

Up until July 2011, most of the accusations of phone hacking had come from celebrities or high profile or individuals linked to them. A new raft of allegations claimed that reporters at News International had hacked into the voicemails of ordinary citizens and victims of tragedies including:

• Milly Dowler - a missing school girl whose body was found six months later. There were accusations that the hacking conducted by News International could have caused (intentionally or accidentally) the wiping of messages from Milly Dowler's phone, leading the family to hope that Milly Dowler was still alive.

• The families of British soldiers - The Telegraph reported that contact details and messages from the phones of the families of soldiers who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan had been found in Glen Mulcaire's notes.

• 7/7 bombing victims - again, the families of the deceased were advised by the police that their phones may have been compromised and that they should change their PIN/etc to stop future messages being intercepted.

• Sara Payne - Mother of Sarah Payne, a seven year old who had been murdered in 2000. The News of the World had been working with Sara to help lobby in favour of Sarah's Law following the death of her child.

• Others - including Prescott and Tony Blair's fitness trainer

Fallout

News of the World Closure

The bad publicity brought about by the phone hacking allegations caused a number of the newspaper's biggest advertisers to pull their funding from the paper. When it became clear that the boycott was going to last and that the reputation of the paper was damaged beyond repair, it was closed.

A short while later The Sun, also a News International publication, announced that it was to start publishing a Sunday edition.

Resignations

Brooks resigned from her position as an executive at News International on 15 July 2011 after a great amount of pressure from both Ed Miliband and David Cameron as well as News International shareholders.

Coulson resigned as David Cameron's Director of Communication in Janurary 2011 before the allegations came to light but since it was linked to phone hacking it has been included here for completeness.

James Murdoch resigned as chairman of News Group Newspapers (the group just above The Sun etc in the News International hierarchy) in November 2011, as Executive Chairman of News Corp's British newspaper wing in February 2012, and as chairman of BSkyB in April of the same year, although remaining on the board for the latter.

Criminal proceedings

On 17 July 2011, Brooks was arrested by police on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption allegation and was later arrested with her husband on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

In total, so far 90 people have been arrested in connection with the phone hacking scandal.

Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Inquiry

On 14 July, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons served a summons on Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, expecting them to appear before the parliamentary committee on 19 July. After an initial invitation to give evidence to the committee, Brooks stated she would attend but the Murdochs declined which did not sit well with anyone and there was server backlash against them for this in the media as well as in parliament. Eventually is was agreed that all three would attend, the Murdochs on a different day to Brooks.

Tom Watson stated in Dial M For Murdoch that in the run up to their appearances at the Select Committee, the three established a team to investigate the private lives of the members of the Committee, with particular reference to lovers and extra-marital affairs, in order to gain some leverage.

Thurlbeck said: "All I know is that, when the DCMS [Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee] was formed or rather when it got onto all the hacking stuff, there was an edict came down from the editor and it was find out every single thing you can about every single member: who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use. "Each reporter was given two members and there were six reporters that went on for around 10 days. I don't know who looked at you. It fell by the wayside; I think even Ian Edmondson [the news editor] realised there was something quite horrible about doing this."

When he did finally appear, Rupert Murdoch said it had been "the most humble day of my life" and argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that the News of the World was "just 1%" of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid; he added that he had not considered resigning. Meanwhile, his son James described the "illegal voicemail interceptions" as a "matter of great regret" but that the company was "determined to put things right and make sure they do not happen again". James Murdoch stated that News International had based its "push back" against new allegations on the combination of three pieces of evidence: that the Metropolitan Police had closed their investigation; that the Crown Prosecution Service had closed their prosecution; and that they had received the previously submitted written advice from their then legal advisors that there was nothing to suggest phone hacking was not the work of one "rogue reporter" working with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Almost none of this was believed by the Committee and the non-answers and fauxpologies got very boring.

Then someone shoved a shaving-foam pie in Rupert Murdoch's face.

The pie thrower got six weeks in prison for the stunt.

Much of James Murdoch's testimony was challenged by other News of the World staff, including the assertion that he had no knowledge of phone hacking taking place during his editorship. David Cameron later said that James Murdoch in particular "had questions to answer" regarding the conflicting evidence.

Brooks answered questions at the committee after the Murdochs and independently of them. She began by calling the practice of phone hacking at the newspaper she edited as "pretty horrific". Upon questioning, she confirmed that under her editorship she knew the News of the World hired private detectives but denied having ever met Glenn Mulcaire.

Leveson Inquiry

On 20 July 2011, Cameron announced in a speech to Parliament the final terms of reference of Leveson's inquiry, stating that it will extend beyond newspapers to include broadcasters and social media. Lord Justice Leveson chaired the Committee and a panel of six others aided in the creation of the Leveson report which was published in November 2012.

The Inquiry heard evidence from a wide range of people and organisations, including author JK Rowling, actor Hugh Grant, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, David Cameron, George Osborne, James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. A full list of witnesses can be found at the Leveson website.

Although much of the Inquiry was very boring, the high profile figures drew both the fandom's and the general public's attention. Things were made slightly more interesting when Tony Blair was giving evidence as a protester burst into the room and called him a War Criminal:

The 1,987 page final report was published on 29 November 2012, along with a 48-page executive summary. It recommended a total overhaul of press regulation which caused lots of headaches for everyone.

Serious Consequences

Implementation Issues

The report was published while the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was in power and there was a great split between the two parties, including at the highest level. While David Cameron, who had previously said he would attempt to implement the report in full, came out against implementing the report through legislation, Nick Clegg was in favour of doing so. The two made independent statements on the issue. Ed Miliband backed the report in full, stating that legislation was necessary to ensure that the new guidelines be followed by the press.

The campaign group "Hacked Off" praised the Leveson Report and lobbied for it to be implemented in full. They, along with a number of high profile witnesses to the Inquiry including JK Rowling, felt betrayed by Cameron's refusal to bring in news laws. They refused to meet with government representatives on the issue in a number of well publicized snubs.

Failure of Check the Facts

It was later revealed that hidden somewhere in the report one "Brett Straub" was the founder of The Independent. This was complete rubbish as Brett Straub was in fact a 25 year old American student. His friends had added his name to various Wikipedia pages as a joke and those writing the Leveson report didn't bother to check if Wiki was right or not.

Fandom Consequences

Watch-a-longs

The Comm hosted periodic watch-a-long posts for particularly interesting or lolitics-relevant evidence given to the committee. Some in the fandom even went so far as to be in the audience for some of the evidence itself and reported back to fellow loliticians afterwards.

Tie Watch

In good old lolitical tradition, ties became a very important part of the proceedings with people pointing out their favourites and trying to find meaning in the way they were worn on any particular day.

Awkward crushes

The collective politically-inclined population seemed to form a crush rather swiftly on Mr Jay, counsel to the Leveson Inquiry who questioned most of the high profile witnesses. His excellent tie collection, wit and use of language made him an instant favourite in the Comm. It turned out that we were not the only ones with our eye on Mr Jay, as the mainstream press seemed to for him as well.

Others were more taken with Lord Leveson himself; calm, rational and in charge, he too became a lolitical favourite very quickly.

Inspired Fic

Both the Leveson Inquiry itself and the whole phone hacking saga inspired fandom to do what it does best - write fic. James Murdoch's appearance at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee spurred on a number of James Murdoch/Tom Watson fans , while the Leveson Inquiry itself had some writing and shipping Mr Jay/Lord Leveson. Others focused on the fight to bring down the Murdoch Empire through a series of AUs involving people such as Tom Watson and Chris Bryant as the leaders of rebellion.

Resources

BBC timeline of stories
BBC phone hacking intro
Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report and oral evidence
Telegraph phone hacking coverage
Wiki timeline
Leveson Inquriy website (archived)