The News International

ScandalBribery. Hacking. Wire tapping. Lies. Excuses.

Table of Contents Introduction : Murdoch, the Media Mogul

The Phone Hacking Scandal Unfolds

New Allegations: The Plot Thickens

Closure of the News of the World

The Aftermath: Outlook and Impact

Case Summary : The Ethical Perspective

Introduction

Murdoch: The Media Mogul Industry : Mass media

Fate : Assets Split Into 21st Century Fox and News Corp

Successors : 21st Century Fox, News Corp

Founders : Rupert Murdoch

Defunct : June 28, 2013

Area served : Worldwide

Key people : Rupert Murdoch(Chairman and CEO), Chase Carey (President & COO)

Product : Cable network programming, filmed entertainment, television, direct broadcast satellite television, publishing.

Revenue : US$ 33.706 billion (2012)

Employees : 47,650 (2012)

What is the Phone Hacking Scandal?

2006-07: Clive Goodman, editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, private investigator convicted of intercepting voicemail messages left for royal aides and jailed.

2009: the Guardian reports that News International made confidential settlements totalling £1m to three victims

September 2010: a string of well-known people begin legal moves.

January 2011: the Metropolitan Police launched Operation Weeting (discussed in detail later).

The investigation widens to include allegations of improper payments to public officials, computer hacking and 4000 cases of phone hacking

Rupert Murdoch

The Phone Hacking Scandal Unfolds

Operation Nigeria

Jonathan Rees

Daniel Morgan

Former police officer Jonathan Rees suspected for murder of a private investigator.

Police undertook investigation and tapped his telephone.

Evidence of purchasing and selling information to the News of the World paying him £150,000 (AED 900,000) yearly.

Rees and his team arrested and serving five years prison sentence.

Operation Glade

Steve Whittamore

Private detectives hacked the police national computer ; anti-corruption unit initiated Operation Glade.

Steve Whittamore, a private detective, hacked and sold informarion to 28 journalists of the news of the world

Whittamore served 2 years in prison

No journalists were charged.

The Royal Phone Hacking Scandal (2006)

Prince William

Tom Bradby

Impossible leaks :- Prince William borrowed an editing suite from ITV

correspondent Tom Bradby. - Emergency appointment with his knee surgeon.

31st January 2006 -Police concluded voicemail accounts of Princes’ aides hacked by reporters of the News of the World .

8th March 2006 -The Police raided the News of the World .

Seized documents listing 4000 celebrities,members of the royal family, politicians, sports stars, crime victims etc being hacked.

26th June 2006 -Clive Goodman and Mulcaire found guilty hacking, arrested and charged 6 years prison.

Operation Weeting The Metropolitan Police announced on 26

January 2011 that it would begin a new investigation into phone hacking, following the receipt of "significant new information" regarding the conduct of News of the World employees.

The operation was led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, Head of Organised Crime & Criminal Networks within the Specialist Crime Directorate.

Between 45 and 60 officers began looking over the 11,000 pages of evidence seized from Mulcaire in August 2006.

Operation Weeting- Arrests As of 13 March 2012, 23 people had been arrested as part of

Operation Weeting.

The first arrests as part of Operation Weeting were made on 5 April 2011. Ian Edmondson and the News of the World ' s chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck were arrested on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages.

Other people arrested included :

Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor

Clive Goodman, a former News of the World royal editor who had previously been jailed in January 2007

Rebekah Brooks, News International chief executive and former News of the World editor.

Clive Goodman

Ian Edmondson

July 2011: New Allegations… The

Plot Thickens

Milly Dowler’s Voicemail

Milly Dowler

It was first reported by The Guardian on 4 July 2011 that police had found evidence suggesting that the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire collected personal information about the family of the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler, following her disappearance in March 2002 and the subsequent discovery of her body six months later.

According to the paper, journalists working for the News of the World had hired private investigators to hack into Dowler's voicemail inbox while she was still missing.

It was alleged that they had deleted some messages, giving false hope to police and to Dowler's family.

They thought that she might have deleted the messages herself and therefore might still be alive, and potentially destroying valuable evidence about her abduction and murderer.

Reacting to the revelation, Prime Minister David Cameron said that the alleged hacking, if true, was "truly dreadful". He added that police ought to pursue a "vigorous" investigation to ascertain what had taken place.

In January 2012 it was revealed that Surrey Police knew soon after Dowler's death that News of the World staff had accessed her mobile phone messages.

Milly Dowler’s Voicemail….continued

David Cameron

British Soldiers’ Families Hacked On 6 July 2011, The Daily Telegraph reported

that the voicemail accounts of some relatives of British soldiers killed in action in Iraq since 2003 and Afghanistan since 2001 may have been accessed by the News of the World.

The personal details and phone numbers belonging to relatives of dead service personnel were found in the Glen Mulcaire's files.

In response to the allegations, The Royal British Legion announced that it would suspend all ties with the News of the World, dropping the newspaper as its campaigning partner.

Glen Mulcaire

7/7 Victims’ Families HackedOn the day before the sixth anniversary of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, it was reported that relatives of some victims may have had their telephones accessed by the News of the World in the aftermath of the attacks.

Sara Payne On 28 July, The Guardian reported that the News of the World

hacked into the voicemail of media campaigner Sara Payne, whose seven-year-old daughter, Sarah Payne, was murdered in West Sussex by pedophile Roy Whiting in July 2000.

This news was arguably met with even more public

Scotland Yard had reportedly found materials pertaining to Payne in Glenn Mulcaire's notes. They also discovered that Payne's voicemail was on a mobile phone given to her by Brooks.

Sara Payne

Sarah Payne

The Closure and The Apology

The Leveson Inquiry

Amidst the new allegations, several names were convicted

There were high profile resignations too

A 2000 page report was published with its findings and recommendations

Two amendments implemented which are worth noting are to:

- Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

- Computer Misuse Act 1990

Closure of the ‘News of the World’ July 2011: Big companies pulled their ads from the

News of the World in response to the controversy.

7th July 2011: James Murdoch announced that after 168 years in print the News of the World would publish its last-ever edition on 10 July, with the loss of 200 jobs.

22nd August 2011: Wireless Generation, subsidiary of News Corporation, lost contract with New York State.

26th February 2012: ‘The Sun on Sunday’ replaced sister paper ‘News of the World’.

A number of senior employees and executives resigned after the then new allegations.

The Apologies From 15th July: News Corp changed

position through series of public apologies.

16th-17th July: News International published two full-page apologies in national newspapers.

The First Apology- “sorry for the serious wrongdoing”.

The Second Apology- "Putting right what's gone wrong“.

18th July: Harbottle & Lewis, the group's legal advisers, issued open letter outlining its position; appointed Luther Pendragon to handle PR issues .

The Aftermath: Outlook & Impact

The Ethical Concerns The effect of the phone hacking scandal originating with

the News of the World also raised wider questions about the ethics employed by companies under Murdoch's ownership, as well as the effects the scandal will have on the ethics employed specifically by print journalists and to some extent the wider world of journalism.

In Newsweek in July 2011, one of Murdoch's former top executives was quoted as saying: " … Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means."

Stephen B. Shepard, dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, commenting on the phone hacking scandal, said: "It's wrong. It's not a grey area. … There's no defence for it. Even the government needs a warrant to get into a house or a computer. You can't break into something like this and get away with it.”

The Impact in Other Countries

• It created ripples in the media all over the world. The public’s view and trust in the media has been changed by the phone hacking scandal. 

• AUSTRALIA : John Hartigan, the CEO of News Corporation's Australian company News Limited, announced a review of all payments in the previous three years, and that he was personally willing to co-operate with any Australian Government led inquiry.

• UNITED STATES : News Corporation is headquartered and operates multiple media outlets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a probe on 14 July 2011, to determine whether News Corporation accessed voicemails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. On 15 July, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced an additional investigation by the Department of Justice, looking into whether the company had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Ethical Theories Questioned

Utilitarianism

Right to Privacy

Whistle Blowing

Case Summary

The Era of Yellow

Journalism

Rupert Murdoch : The Criminal Mastermind

“The principle purpose of business is not

to make profit. Profit is the engine that

takes the business forward but its not

the destination of business. Profit is only

a means to some end; its not an end in

itself.”

Resources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/uk-phone-hacking-scandal-fast-facts/

http://www.poynter.org/mediawire/top-stories/139689/explainer-news-corp-phone-hacking-scandal/

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/ethics_online/0071.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking-guide-2011-7

http://fleishman.com.au/2011/09/the-phone-hacking-scandal-and-its-impact-on-the-media/

Ethics and the Conduct of Business, Pearson Edition, Fifth Edition, Indian Reprint 2007