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The Murdoch legacy
Nicholas Jones
DATELINE: 13/9/12
Forty six journalists have now been arrested as a result of the investigations being conducted by the Metropolitan Police into phone hacking and the alleged bribery and corruption of police officers and public officials. By allowing a newsroom culture to develop at the Sun and the News of the World which gave reporters the freedom to pay cash for unauthorised disclosures Rupert Murdoch opened the floodgates to the sale of dubious information to tabloid newspapers.
More than any other group the Murdoch press was responsible for fostering an expectation on the part of the British public that money can be made from the trade in private data, personal records, unauthorised tip-offs and the like.
As the number of arrests continued to mount during the summer – especially for the alleged bribery and corruption of police and public officials – Lord Justice Leveson has insisted that his inquiry into media ethics must be fully briefed before he completes his report later in the autumn.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers has been asked to provide a full update at a special hearing in September. If looked at solely on the basis of the number of arrests, the phone hacking investigation is now being rapidly overtaken by what the judge has conceded are the two other "fast moving" inquiries which began once potentially incriminating evidence started being hand over to the Metropolitan Police by News International.
During the two days he gave evidence in late April, Murdoch was not asked either by Robert Jay QC or the judge to explain let alone seek to justify the extent to which his newspapers had monetised the gathering of unlawful disclosures.
By resigning in late July from the directorships of his British newspapers Murdoch continued his step-by-step retreat from the UK, putting further distance between himself and any potential criticism which might emerge in the judge's report.
Yet tucked away in a written statement to the Leveson Inquiry by the former chief executive Rebekah Brooks is the clearest possible insight into the way paying cash for stories became embedded at Wapping within the editorial structures of News International – an arrangement which was well within Murdoch's responsibility for corporate governance.
When pieced together with other evidence dating back to the 1990s Ms Brooks' testimony helps to explain how the ability of reporters to reimburse their sources with cash morphed into the monster of phone hacking.Her witness statement signed in October 2011 – four months before the arrest of nine Sun journalists for alleged bribery and corruption – sets out the procedure she had known during her ten years as a News International editor for using "external providers of information...not just private investigators but also individual sources." Senior journalists who had their "own sources" had access to the "payment process"; the editor would only get involved when a large one-off cash payment "would break the weekly run rate" for payments which had been determined by the managing editor.
"That's fine" was the opinion of the Sun's former editor Kelvin MacKenzie when in 1998 he wrote in The Times about the ethics of paying police officers for tip offs. A decade later in evidence to the Leveson Inquiry he said he would not have been surprised if police officers had been paid by the Sun but in his day as editor only "anything costing more than around £3,000" would have crossed his desk.
Even after the arrest of nine Sun journalists in January 2012, the paper's long-serving political commentator Trevor Kavanagh was still defending cash payments. Sometimes money had changed hands when the Sun covered stories involving whistleblowers – "standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed here and abroad."
The thousands of British reporters who have never paid cash for stories in the way Kavanagh suggested have taken no comfort from the update Sue Akers gave in late July: Twenty-three current and former journalists are among the forty-one arrested for the alleged bribery and corruption of police officers and public officials; this follows the earlier arrest of fifteen journalists for phone hacking; and a further six arrests for computer hacking and downloading information from stolen mobile phones.Ms Akers, who retires from the Metropolitan Police in October, gave a further update on arrests and charges when she made her final appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee (4.9.2012). Two more journalists had been arrested in the weeks since her July appearance before the Leveson Inquiry.
She told MPs the total number of people arrested in the three inquiries had now reached 79 and was likely to increase still further. The breakdown was: 25 arrests in the phone hacking inquiry; 43 arrests in the investigation into corrupt payments; and 11 arrests in the inquiry into computer hacking.
ends
A fuller version of this article will appear in The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial, second edition, to be published in September by Abramis.
Last modified: Thursday, September 13, 2012
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Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
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DATELINE: 26/3/10
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MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
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Previous stories
Leveson Inquiry
Leveson 'loading a gun' against papers, warns Independent's editor
Leveson Fringe at the TUC
Leveson Fringe at the TUC
Leveson Fringe at the TUC
Leveson Inquiry: Will bribery of police and public officials emerge as a far greater scandal than phone hacking?
Our evidence to Leveson Module 4
Leveson: A tiger with no teeth?
Police study Murdoch's 'secret' iPhone account
Police study Murdoch's 'secret' iPhone account
Cameron's master class in spin
Osborne talent spots Coulson but denies there was a strategy to win the Sun's support
Leveson Round Up: Has He Thrown in the Towel?
Standing up for citizens' complaints
Operation Motorman - don't let it get away
Leveson Inquiry: Tories 'did not want to regulate press'
Alastair Campbell at Leveson: great theatre Mr Jay, shame about the questions
Brooks at Leveson: an insight into how the Sun exploited the political endorsement of the Murdoch press
Coulson at Leveson: a former spin doctor's master class in closing down unhelpful questions
It's not just about Murdoch - the whole system needs fixing
New Podcast: post Murdoch where is Leveson Inquiry going?
After Leveson… What future for the media?
NUJ responds to Murdoch's evidence at the Leveson Inquiry
Leveson Inquiry: Rupert Murdoch off the hook over alleged illegal payments to public officials
Leveson Inquiry shock news: Rupert Murdoch says his political influence was just 'a myth'
Now we come to the dark heart of this strange affair
Leveson Inquiry: Rupert Murdoch and son to appear
Money talks: no wonder so many rival journalists were beaten by the Sun's exclusive stories
If the Sun hates attacks on press freedom, how must it despise itself!
Jeremy Hunt calls for regulation of press content free of political interference...but no promise that politicians will refrain from meddling in media ownership
Iraq War: "Implacable support" of Murdoch press a key factor for Blair
