This is a chronological list of key newspaper articles that made significant new public disclosures about the illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media companies.
This is a chronological list of press releases issued by various organizations regarding the illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media employees and their agents in conjunction with the phone hacking scandal. Dates indicate when each release first appeared.
These are a chronological lists of news articles, editorials, and other statements by news media organizations reflecting varying levels of aggressiveness and defensiveness in reporting the phone hacking scandal.
The scandal generated broad interest worldwide shortly after The Guardian reported on 4 July 2011 that murdered teenager Milly Dower's phone had been hacked into by agents of News of the World [59] and after Rupert Murdoch announced that the 168-year-old newspaper would be closed as a consequence. [60] Many contemporary commentators noted that the amount, aggressiveness, and focus of early media coverage of the scandal by news organizations varied widely, ostensibly reflecting the tension between journalistic integrity and the vested interests of the ultimate owners of those organizations. [61]
Included below are samples of media coverage immediately after The Guardian reported the hacking of Milly Dowlers phone. The samples are grouped by whether the reporting was by independent news organizations or organizations owned by News Corporation, the ultimate parent of News of the World . Also included are media coverage analyses completed at the time.
The Guardian ; (4 July 2012) Journalists at The Guardian began pursuing the illegal acquisition of confidential information in 2002. [1] In July 2009, it published three articles alleging that Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) entered into large settlement agreements with hacking victims that included gagging provisions that prevented the public from learning the Metropolitan Police Service held evidence that NGN journalists repeatedly used criminal methods to get stories. The articles also alleged that many people at News of the World , including then editor Andy Coulson, were aware of widespread phone hacking and that the public and Parliament had been misled about its scope. [5] Days after this became public, Max Clifford announced his intentions to sue and ultimately settled for £1,000,000. [6] On 4 July 2011, The Guardian published an article disclosing that voicemail messages from Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked back in 2002 by an agent of News of the World looking for a story. [10] This disclosure inflamed public opinion and led to the closure of News of the World and resignations of senior newspaper executives and police officials. [11]
The New York Times ; (4 July 2011 ) The New York Times began investigative reporting on phone hacking in 2010 with an article titled "Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond." [7] The article claimed the Metropolitan Police Service "failed to follow-up on clear leads" and "declined to pursue other evidence of criminality by others." The article also contradicted testimony by former News of the World editor Andy Coulson to Parliament that he was unaware of phone hacking. The newspaper was encouraged earlier that year by The Guardian to investigate and report on phone hacking. [62] The NY Times reported the disclosures made by The Guardian regarding Milly Dowler's hacked phone on the same day The Guardian article appeared. [63]
The Independent ; (5 July 2011) The Independent covered The Guardian's story about Milly Dowler the same day. [64] The newspaper also followed up with investigative reporting and published an article 22 September 2011 reporting that, within weeks of the arrests of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006, "a senior police officer" advised Rebekah Brooks there was substantial "circumstantial evidence" in the documents seized from Mulcaire that News of the World journalists in addition to Goodman were implicated in phone hacking. It also reported that in early autumn 2006, Tom Crone, legal manager for News International, contacted several other executives, including then News of the World editor Andy Coulson, informing them of what the Met told Brooks. News International executives, including Crone, maintained they were not aware of such evidence until almost two years later, in May 2008, when they received a copy of the "Transcript for Neville" in conjunction with Gordon Taylor's lawsuit. [13]
The Telegraph ; (5 July 2011) The Telegraph covered The Guardian's story about Milly Dowler the next day. The article quoted the Dowler's soliciter, Mark Lewis, who asked, "Who at the News of the World was thinking it was appropriate to try to hack into the phone of a missing young girl?" [65]
The Los Angeles Times ; (5 July 2011) This newspaper also coveredThe Guardian's story about Milly Dowler the next day, reporting that "Revulsion swept the nation Tuesday amid allegations that a sensationalist tabloid owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch also intercepted and tampered with voicemails left for a kidnapped 13-year-old girl whose body was later found dumped in the woods." [66]
Fox News ; (6 July 2012) Fox first reported on the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone two days after it had been reported by The Guardian. The news anchor did not minimize the seriousness of the story. [67] There was some hesitancy to address the issue on 10 July on Fox News Watch, a show which is intended to cover the media. Fox is totally owned by News Corporation, the ultimate parent company of News of the World .
Wall Street Journal (14 July 2011) Rupert Murdoch used the Wall Street Journal', which he owned, to make his first public statements since the revelations that agents of News of the World , which he also owned, hacked the phone of Milly Dowler looking for a story. Murdoch defended his company's actions, saying "News Corp. has handled the crisis extremely well in every way possible, making just minor mistakes...He rejected criticism that James Murdoch had acted too slowly in dealing with the tabloid scandal." [68] On 18 July, the Journal's "Review and Outlook" article about the phone hacking scandal defended Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton and News International but strongly criticized politicians, police, and rival newspapers. Rather than applaud rival newspapers for effective investigative reporting, the WSJ stated "We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics." [69] Two weeks later, on 2 August, the Journal published an article calling attention to an eleven-year-old case in which a reporter for a rival newspaper, The Sunday Mirror, was involved in bribing a police officer, noting that "as police investigate the News of the World tabloid for allegedly bribing police officers for information, a libel case involving another London tabloid suggests that the practice may not have been unusual." [70]
The Australian ; When Met police announced in December 2011 that there was no evidence phone hacking of Milly Dowler's phone by agents of News of the World had caused messages to be deleted or give her parents false hope of her being alive, the Australian, which is owned by News International carried the article published by The Times, also a News International newspaper, strongly critical of The Guardian and their investigative reporter, Nick Davies who broke the story. The article raised the question, "whether the paper would still exist if The Guardian had not erroneously blamed it for the Dowlers' false hope." The article contained no criticism of News of the World for the phone hacking itself. [71] [72]
CNN ; (13 July 2011) County Fair, a media blog with links to media criticism, included on its NewsCorpWatch webpage that Cable News Network (CNN) reported Fox News Watch had admitted avoiding reporting on the phone hacking at its parent company. CNN found that Fox News Watch had not mentioned the scandal since August 2006 and that the L.A.Times reported that "Fox News stays mainly silent on the scandal during prime time when Rupert Murdoch shut down News of the World . Other major news networks reportedly had fairly extensive coverage, as did Sky News in the UK, whose controlling interest was owned by News Corp. On the day after Murdoch closed News of the World, his New York Post mentioned the scandal on page 29. In comparison, The New York Times and The Washington Post had front-page stories, as did Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and his Times of London . [73]
The Atlantic Wire; (14 July 2011)
Fox News has reported on the phone hacking scandal engulfing its parent company, News Corp., in at least 30 segments in the last eight days, according to a search of news transcripts by Snapstream, a TV monitoring service... The figure matches a new report by Media Matters also pegging the number of segments at 30. The liberal media watchdog group says CNN and MSNBC reported on the scandal in 109 and 71 segments respectively... The earliest available transcript on the scandal is from July 6 in a report by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who makes no attempt to hide some of the most damaging details of the scandal including the hacking of a 13-year-old murder victim. [67]
ABC News (Australia); (29 July 2011) The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney conducted a study of coverage of the phone hacking scandal from 8 to 15 July by the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, the Adelaide Advertiser, the Sun Herald, the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun to "test of the independence of the 70 per cent of Australian newspaper journalists employed in the Murdoch stable." For the broadsheets, the Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax) carried 50 stories, more than any other paper, The Australian ran 44 stories, and The Age ran 33. The Murdoch-owned Australian carried much commentary critical of responses to the scandal. For the tabloids, none of the Murdoch-owned News Limited tabloids carried the phone-hacking story on the first two pages, with most stories not on the first 10 pages of the paper. Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph carried nine stories, the least of any paper. The Adelaide Advertiser and the Herald Sun each ran 16 stories. During the week, all papers carried at least one editorial regarding phone hacking. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Herald Sun carried two.
When you delve deeper into the thrust of the coverage, a clearer picture of editorial independence - or the lack of it - emerges. In the week under review, no News Ltd paper acknowledged any problems for News Corporation's power or practices other than phone hacking. And phone hacking was only denounced in editorials once a statement was issued by News CEO John Hartigan describing phone hacking as "a terrible slur on our craft". In fact, as well as publishing editorials, the Adelaide Advertiser and The Australian also published CEO Hartigan's statement on the scandal in full as a comment piece. Fairfax editorials were extremely critical of News Corporation. Some could argue this also reflects corporate self-interest. An editorial in The Age questioned the role of James Murdoch: "The claim that he 'did not have a complete picture' hardly helps, because if he didn't, surely he should have." And at times, readers might have felt that the coverage had been diverted into a confusing spat between rivals. The Australian's coverage included attacks on The Age newspaper, which it accused of hypocrisy because it had accessed an ALP database. The accusation was vigorously defended by The Age. A close reader of the articles about Australian ethics would pick up that the Sydney Morning Herald has a policy of not paying for stories, while the News Ltd papers said they do not pay police for information, leaving open the question of when and how often Australian News Ltd publications approve other payments for information and stories. There is also a convention that when reporting on the activities of a company which owns the reporter's newspaper, journalists will mention this in their story. This principle was applied inconsistently across News Ltd tabloids. [75]
The News of the World was a weekly national "red top" tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one of the highest English-language circulations. It was originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation and vice as the themes that would sell most copies. The Bells sold to Henry Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969, it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. Reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper was transformed into a tabloid in 1984 and became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun.
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun newspapers; its former publications include the Today, News of the World, and The London Paper newspapers. It was established in February 1981 under the name News International plc. In June 2002, the company name was changed to News International Limited, and on 31 May 2011, to NI Group Limited, and on 26 June 2013 to News UK.
Rebekah Mary Brooks is a British media executive and former journalist and newspaper editor. She has been chief executive officer of News UK since 2015. She was previously CEO of News International from 2009 to 2011 and was the youngest editor of a British national newspaper at News of the World, from 2000 to 2003, and the first female editor of The Sun, from 2003 to 2009. Brooks married actor Ross Kemp in 2002. They divorced in 2009 and she married former racehorse trainer and author Charlie Brooks.
The News International phone hacking scandal was a controversy involving the now-defunct News of the World and other British newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Employees of the newspaper engaged in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories.
Peter Wright is a British newspaper editor.
Ian Edmondson is a British tabloid journalist. He was the news editor at the News of the World. Edmondson was arrested by the Metropolitan Police in April 2011 during the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation.
Operation Weeting was a British police investigation that commenced on 26 January 2011, under the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police Service into allegations of phone hacking in the News of the World phone hacking affair. The operation was conducted alongside Operation Elveden, an investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to the police by those involved with phone hacking, and Operation Tuleta, an investigation into alleged computer hacking for the News of the World. All three operations are led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, Head of Organised Crime & Criminal Networks within the Specialist Crime Directorate.
The News Corporation scandal involves phone, voicemail, and computer hacking that were allegedly committed over a number of years. The scandal began in the United Kingdom, where the News International phone hacking scandal has to date resulted in the closure of the News of the World newspaper and the resignation of a number of senior members of the Metropolitan Police force.
The News of the World phone hacking scandal investigations followed the revelations in 2005 of voicemail interception on behalf of News of the World. Despite wider evidence of wrongdoing, the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal appeared resolved with the 2007 conviction of the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, and the resignation of editor Andy Coulson. However, a series of civil legal cases and investigations by newspapers, parliament and the police ultimately saw evidence of "industrial scale" phone hacking, leading to the closure of the News of the World on 10 July 2011. However, the affair did not end there, developing into the News Corporation ethics scandal as wrongdoing beyond the News of the World and beyond phone hacking came to light.
The News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB was a proposed takeover of British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) by News Corporation, the media conglomerate of Rupert Murdoch. The bid was launched in June 2010 but was withdrawn in July 2011 following the News International phone hacking scandal. News Corporation already owned 39.1% of BSkyB and held onto its stake following the collapse of the takeover bid. The takeover was an essential part of News Corporation's business strategy, not least as it would have made possible integration with other entities such as Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. The Guardian went so far as to say that, "Without a full takeover of BSkyB, News Corp's global satellite strategy would look an unco-ordinated mess."
The Leveson Inquiry was a judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal, chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, who was appointed in July 2011. A series of public hearings were held throughout 2011 and 2012. The Inquiry published the Leveson Report in November 2012, which reviewed the general culture and ethics of the British media, and made recommendations for a new, independent, body to replace the existing Press Complaints Commission, which would have to be recognised by the state through new laws. Prime Minister David Cameron, under whose direction the inquiry had been established, said that he welcomed many of the findings, but declined to enact the requisite legislation. Part 2 of the inquiry was to be delayed until after criminal prosecutions regarding events at the News of the World, but the Conservative Party's 2017 manifesto stated that the second part of the inquiry would be dropped entirely, and this was confirmed by Culture Secretary Matt Hancock in a statement to the House of Commons on 1 March 2018.
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The news media phone hacking scandal is a controversy over illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media organizations that reportedly occurred in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia between 1995 and 2011. This article includes reference lists for various topics relating to that scandal.
This article provides a narrative beginning in 1999 of investigations by the Metropolitan Police Service (Met) of Greater London into the illegal acquisition of confidential information by agents in collaboration with the news media that is commonly referred to as the phone hacking scandal. The article discusses seven phases of investigations by the Met and several investigations of the Met itself, including critiques and responses regarding the Met's performance. Separate articles provide an overview of the scandal and a comprehensive set of reference lists with detailed background information.
Phone hacking by news organizations became the subject of scandals that raised concerns about illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media organizations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia between 1995 and 2012. The scandal had been simmering since 2002 but broke wide open in July 2011 with the disclosure that a murdered teenage girl's mobile phone had been hacked by a newspaper looking for a story. The scandals involved multiple organizations, and include the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal, the News International phone hacking scandal, the 2011 News Corporation scandals, and the Metropolitan Police role in the News International phone hacking scandal.
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