Hacking inquiry: Lawyer puts British press, firmly, in the dock

London: On the third day of inquiry into the role of the police and the press in the phone hacking scandal in Britain, the lawyer representing 51 victims of press abuses detailed one shocking allegation after another. Beyond illegally accessing people’s private voicemails, Lawyer David Sherborne that the tabloid journalists and private investigators were guilty of bribing, bullying and blagging. The entire phone hacking scandal unravelled with the revelation that a private investigator working for the News of the World had not just illegally listened to the voicemails of royals and celebrities but also of murdered school girl Milly Dowler. Sherborne spoke of how News of the World reporters secretly followed her grieving parents as they retraced their daughter’s last steps. Sherborne said:

“What kind of ethics can you teach journalists who hacked into the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl? If the relationship between the public and press is to recover, it must happen now.”

That was just the start of a litany of allegations. Sherborne told the inquiry: • Tinglan Hong, the mother of Hugh Grant’s child, was called repeatedly from a withheld number as he appeared on the BBC’s Question Time programme discussing the scandal. Eventually she answered the phone; she was threatened and told: “Tell Hugh Grant he must shut the fuck up.” • News of the World hatched the storyline that Max Mosley would be caught acting out a Nazi fantasy, and the paper’s former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck tried to bribe a female prostitute to act out a Nazi saluting scene, The Telegraph reported. • At the funeral of Max Mosley’s son, who died of an overdose, a reporter tried to pass himself off as a rambler so that he might be able to take photographs. • A senior News of the World obtained the emails of Ian Hurst, a former British army intelligence officer, by means of a concerted, sustained campaign of computer hacking. The allegations were first made earlier this year in a BBC investigation. The allegations have led to a separate police investigation beyond the phone hacking probe, Operation Tuleta. During the first day of the inquiry on Monday, Sherborne rocked the courtroom when an alarm on his computer sounded and began flashing warnings about a Trojan Horse, a computer virus. He compared to the red letter warning to the red banner of the now defunct and thoroughly disgraced News of the World. Despite the allegations outlined by Sherborne, Lord Justice Leveson, leader of the inquiry, worked hard to maintain the appearance of impartiality. The inquiry will be of two parts. The first part of the inquiry will look into the culture and practice of the press with an eye to possibly change in the system of press self-regulation in the UK. The second part of the inquiry will look into the specific allegations of wrong-doing at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper business, News International. [caption id=“attachment_133078” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“The Leveson Inquiry Begins Into Culture, Practices And Ethics Of The Press. Getty Images”]  [/caption] The scope of criminality being alleged in just the opening days of the inquiry is already growing. The allegations now go far beyond the industrial-scale illegal phone listening operations. The Guardian reported that Lord Leveson said:

“I’m not often thrown, but Mr Sherborne has managed to do that for the first time in this inquiry. And, I hope, for the last.”

In addition to Sherborn, Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger made a statement to the inquiry and answered questions by Lord Leveson on what shape he thought press regulation should take. Rusbridger started his comments by saying:

“Firstly, we hope that it’s apparent to all that the events that led to this inquiry were shocking and immensely damaging. Damaging because they impacted on the trust in all journalists. Shocking, for what they revealed about one powerful and dominant company.”

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The normal system of checks and balances had broken down, he said. As Leveson looks into press regulation, Rusbridger urged the inquiry to ask:

“Did people, both internally and externally, feel a fear of News International? Was its influence across many aspects of British political and cultural life simply too dominant?How did News Corp leverage its commercial, political, journalistic and (as we now know) outsourced criminal muscle?”

Rusbridger suggested that future regulation should include a process of mediation between the public and the press, and the idea seemed to resonate with Lord Leveson. It’s difficult to think of the inquiry coming to conclusions as the case continues to unfold not just at News International but also at other newspapers. Robert Jay, the counsel to the inquiry, said at the opening of the proceedings: “The inquiry is beginning to receive evidence to indicate that phone hacking was not limited to that organization.”