Murdoch’s press, Britain’s comeuppance, and how America can help

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Michael Cosgrove- It is both ironic and salutary that Britain has finally been obliged to confront the incestuous high-level relationships which have polluted its public life for decades because of a vulgar press scandal, but I am counting on America to help with the cleanup effort.

The current press/politicians/police relationship scandal in Britain didn't begin with last week's revelations concerning the News of the World's hacking of murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone, or its payments to police for stories, or it's tapping of Afghanistan war widows' phones, or its tapping of 7/7 bombing victims' relatives. It had already been going on for many years, in the form of entrapment tactics, financial enticements, the settling of political scores and - most of all - fear of Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch owns a substantial part of the British press and his press is so powerful that it is able to reach parts of the world that other presses don't reach. His press speaks to all of Britain in one way or another. He owns The Times and the Sun and he was the owner of the now defunct News of the World.

But for all the scandal his press has published, some of the blame must also be laid against British politicians, the British police, and the British press.

Former Prime minister Gordon Brown is outraged - as are we all - that The Sun published details of his dying child's last days. But why is he only telling us this now that the paper's owner - Murdoch - is in a weakened position? Why, if he was so upset at the time, did he subsequently invite The Sun's editor Rebekah Brooks (later to become News of the World editor), who had callously phoned him to say that the paper was publishing the story the next day against his wishes, to his wedding a short while later?

Why did Britain's Liberal party kowtow to Murdoch's monopoly for years only to see its current leader and deputy PM Nick Clegg pathetically bleat in parliament today with cowardly bravado and on the back of facile public approval that Murdoch and Brooks should be "frogmarched" to a parliamentary hearing if neccesary? Why is Prime minister David Cameron less willing today to discuss his horse-riding jaunts with Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World when it hacked Milly Dowler's phone as well as those of the terrorist victims? Why did the police drop the first inquiry into the phone-hacking allegations without exploiting all the evidence?

And why was the press allowed to exploit the Milly Dowler voicemail hacks as well as the other hacks? Why was the press able to hire "blaggers" - imitators who phone or email banks and other sources in order to obtain information on politicians and other personalities - in order to get a handle on them? And why didn't the so-called 'clean' papers tell us what they knew?

There has been a lot of soul-searching in Britain this last week about the relationships between the press, politicans and the police. It's not a pretty sight and the knives are out.

But the press is already beginning to sound warning bells about a possible backlash consisting of more control over press methods. Having freed the genie and denounced the demons the British are, ironically, at a pivotal point concerning press methods and there is already an air of "uh-oh, what have we done here?"

This is where America steps in. Britain will fudge and bluster and talk legalese and lord-knows-what-else for years before it eradicates the rogue elements in its midst, but I trust America to do better and quicker and uphold one of its most fiercely- defended and upheld traditions - that of a fair and independent press which will not tolerate the cozy arrangements between press and power that are to be found in Europe and of which, as a European, I am frankly ashamed.

To put it clearly, if Britain can't face up to Murdoch, I believe that America can. If the current FBI investigation into allegations that News of the World journalists tried to hack into the phones of American victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York demonstrates that they did, or that Fox News or any other of his many American outlets has indulged in tactics such as those used by the News of the World, for any purpose, I have every confidence that America will quickly force Murdoch to either toe the line or sell out and get into some other business. Used cars for example.

News of the World to close this weekend

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Michael Cosgrove - British newspaper the News of the World is to close after 168 years. Its owners - Rupert Murdoch's News International - made the announcement today. Sunday's edition will be the last and the paper has finally fallen victim to the hacking scandal which saw it hack the phones of thousands of personalities.

Revelations that the paper hacked into the phone of a murdered girl as well as those of Afghanistan war widows and people suspected of murder set of the firestorm of public rage that has led to the paper's demise and this event may well change the face of the British press for ever.

The British like to say that their press is both the best and the worst in the world and there is arguably some truth in that. The reasoning goes that gutter journalism, although unpleasant, is the price we pay for having a free and unfettered independent press which also includes some of the most vigorously investigative papers on the planet such as The Times and The Guardian.

But the scandal of the News of the World phone taps and hacking is set to change that perception if it hasn’t already done so.

The scandal first surfaced in 2006 when a News of the World editor and a private investigator were caught hacking into the voicemail of members of the royal family. They were jailed in 2007 but that episode was to be only the beginning of a scandal which would ultimately reveal that the paper may have intercepted the phone and other messages of up to 7000 people.

Victims include senior politicians including Tony Blair, celebrities, sporting personalities and almost any other category of famous person. The information the paper obtained was transformed behind the smokescreen of ‘sources’ into juicy stories about anything from adultery to fraud and criminal activity. Many lawsuits have been filed against the paper, more are sure to follow, and it has already paid almost a hundred million pounds in compensation to victims in exchange for the dropping of charges.

The public has been aware of this for a few years and a police investigation – the second - is ongoing but recent revelations have opened up a new and highly disturbing chapter in the story. So many new allegations have been revealed over the last five days that the British public is being overwhelmed by their revolting character..

The scandal re-ignited earlier this week with the news that the paper had hacked into the mobile phone of abducted schoolgirl Milly Dowler just after her disappearance and that messages were deleted from her inbox in order to make way for more in the hope of getting a story. That her voicemail box continued to accept messages led her distraught family to believe that she was still alive whereas she had been murdered days before. The police suspect that some of the deleted messages may have contained crucial clues to what had happened to her.

Since then the police have revealed that they are investigating evidence which indicates that the paper also tapped the phones of Afghanistan war widows, that it followed the conversations of two men who were suspected of murdering a business acquaintance, that it snooped on the phones of ongoing criminal trial victims, suspects and jurors, that it paid policemen for information concerning criminal activities and suspects, and that it may have hacked into the phone of Lady Diana’s lawyer as well as that of an ex-lover.

It is also alleged that the paper tapped the phones of relatives of at least some of the 56 people who were killed in the ‘7/7’ triple terrorist bomb attack in London on July 7, 2005 as soon as their names were known. Other alleged victims include high-level terrorist informers, a senior London police commissioner, the parents of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann, who was abducted in Portugal in 2007 never to be seen again and senior politicians in Ireland.

The British are aghast at the sheer magnitude of these horrific revelations, the list of alleged victims is growing longer in rolling live coverage in all the major papers even as I type these words, and the unanimous revulsion of the public has finally forced the government to come out of its embarrassed silence and take action.

The tsunami of bitterly angry protest has meant that Prime Minister David Cameron had no choice but to cave in yesterday during PM’s question time, during which he announced that two inquiries are to be set up immediately – one into the News of the World’s activities and the other into the wider question of the future of media regulation. The British media is largely self-regulated and its senior watchdog is the Press Complaints Commission, which is also under heavy fire due to its alleged inability or unwillingness to confront serious abuses of journalistic ethics not only at the News of the World but also at many other major papers.

A long list of major advertisers have already announced that they are to stop doing business with the paper, some journalists and even an editor have left it, retail outlets are announcing in droves that they will no longer sell it - thus depriving it of much-needed revenue - and calls are mounting for the government to put a hold on plans by Rupert Murdoch – the paper’s owner- to buy BskyB, which is Britain’s largest satellite broadcasting company.

It would be easy to gloat over the News of the World’s come-uppance, but that would be most unwise. The British press has been laboring under accusations of sleazy practices for years, and almost all the major dailies have been involved in similar scandals in the past – albeit on a smaller scale.

Britain is extremely angry today and that is understandable. But once the dust settles it will be time to take a cold hard look at what is to be done about the scurrilous journalistic practices which have now been proven to have reached limits that even the most cynical of press observers would not have predicted as recently as last week.

The government has promised two inquiries and that is a start, but the scope of government action must not stop there. Several people have already either served or are serving prison sentences for crimes of hacking which were uncovered years ago but the latest revelations must result in rigorous and open police investigations into the paper’s editors and journalists’ implication in this scandal which must result in more trials and more prison time. That in itself will be difficult because of alleged collusion between certain top policemen and corrupt journalists who are believed to have paid for information about criminal trials but the government must do its job here, which is to ensure that the police and the courts do their jobs properly.

Even more importantly, it is high time that the British press’ self-regulating status was put under the microscope. The British press is quite rightly proud of its self-regulatory system but it is now clear that certain aspects of that system have failed to deliver. If the British press cannot demonstrate that it has finally decided to bite the bullet and root out the rogue elements within it then the law should take over and impose government control and supervision over certain areas of its practices.

That may sound draconian – and indeed it is – but after years of unheeded warnings and admonishments the British press must be forced to understand that we, the British public, are no longer willing to tolerate the shabby and sordid criminal activities that have poisoned it for far too long.

UK newspaper said to have hacked murdered Milly's phone

Gemma Fox - Nine years ago a terrifying event happened to the Dowler family of Surrey in the UK.  On the 21st of March 2002 Amanda Dowler, known as Milly, disappeared on her way home from Heathside School.

The 13-year old had decided that rather than take a lift home from her mother and sister she would instead get the train with her friends and then spend time with them in the cafe at Walton Railway Station.

Milly disappeared at 4pm that afternoon in Walton-on-Thames in what was literally the "blink of an eye".  Her friend Katherine Haynes was the last person to see Milly as she made her way around the side of advertising boards.  She never made it home.  Milly was to become the victim of serial killer Levi Bellfield, a nightclub bouncer who was, finally, convicted of her murder last month in a trial that dragged the entire Dowler family down.

Milly's body was found on September 18th 2002 in Yateley Heath Forest near Fleet, Hampshire.  Her cause of death could not be determined because of the length of time her body had been exposed.

Despite police being right on Bellfield's doorstep and visiting the flat he lived in 10 times Bellfield was never apprehended at the time and went on to kill 2 other girls and attempt to kill another.

Six years after Milly died Bellfield was finally cited as her killer when police realised the similarity of Milly to his other victims.  He was charged and stood trial this year.  The trial was horrifying for the Dowler family who had their private lives opened out to the court.  Throughout the trial Bellfield said nothing.  Finally, on June 23rd this year he was convicted of Milly's kidnap and murder.  Here was some closure for the Dowler family, or so folks thought at the time.

Back on April 21,  2003 a 21-year old woman called Lianne Newman of  Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire was sentenced to five months in jail.  Newman had been found guilty of making a series of phone calls to the Dowlers, to Milly's school and to local police.  In the calls she had claimed to be Milly.

Now, as the Dowler family should be looking forward and should be able to try and put the events of the past nine years behind them, the Guardian newspaper in the UK revealed that in the months between Milly disappearing and her body being found in 2002 an investigator for the News of the World newspaper had allegedly hacked into the voice mail of the teenagers mobile phone.  The newspaper hacker(s) then listened to the frantic messages left by Milly's parents and her friends.  Then something happened that has already been described as "heinous".  When the voice mail inbox became full,  the messages were deleted.

That act alone sent out false hope to the Dowler family that Milly was still alive.  They would have no idea that their daughter was already dead and that the person deleting the messages was someone working for the News of the World.  Today though, they and the rest of the world, found out what happened,  and calls have already been made for the paper to be closed and for the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, to be fired.  Brooks was the editor of the News of the World when the alleged hacking of Milly's phone took place.

It's a dark day for journalism in the UK.