News International phone hacking scandal

[4] On 3 July 2013, Channel 4 News broadcast a secret tape from earlier that year, in which Murdoch dismissively claims that investigators were "totally incompetent" and acted over "next to nothing" and excuses his papers' actions as "part of the culture of Fleet Street".

"Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Dick Fedorcio, Director of Public Affairs and Internal Communication for the Met who had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the newspaper.

"[18] No one was charged with illegal acquisition of confidential information as a result of Operation Nigeria, even though the Met reportedly collected hundreds of thousands of incriminating documents during the investigation into Jonathan Rees and his links with corrupt officers.

"[13][23] On 14 November 2005, the News of the World published an article written by royal editor Clive Goodman that claimed Prince William was in the process of borrowing a portable editing suite from ITV correspondent Tom Bradby.

In August 2006, Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested by the Metropolitan Police, and later charged with hacking the telephones of members of the royal family by accessing voicemail messages, an offence under section 79 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

[38] The court heard that Mulcaire had also hacked into the messages of supermodel Elle Macpherson, former publicist Max Clifford, MP Simon Hughes, football agent Sky Andrew, and Gordon Taylor.

[47][48][49] Following the 2006 conviction of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, and with assurances from News International, the Press Complaints Commission and the Metropolitan Police Service that no one else had been involved in phone hacking, the public perception was that the matter was closed.

Their report concluded that it was "inconceivable" that no one, other than Goodman, knew about the extent of phone hacking at the paper, and that the committee had "repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information that we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall and deliberate obfuscation".

[61] The Home Affairs Committee began another inquiry on 1 September 2010 and later published a report highly critical of the Met, stating, "The difficulties were offered to us as justifying a failure to investigate further, and we saw nothing that suggested there was a real will to tackle and overcome those obstacles."

[13][62] Eventually, as celebrities and politicians continued asking if they had been victims of hacking, Yates directed that the evidence from the Mulcaire raid, that had been stored in bin bags for three years, finally be entered into a computer database.

[82] The Guardian, referring to the Information Commissioner's report of 2006, queried why the Metropolitan Police chose to exclude a large quantity of material relating to Jonathan Rees from the scope of its Operation Weeting inquiry.

[90][94] On 10 April, Tessa Jowell and her former husband David Mills, Andy Gray, Sky Andrew, Nicola Phillips, Joan Hammell, and Kelly Hoppen all received the official apology and compensation, but actor Leslie Ash and John Prescott, who both had also claimed breach of privacy, did not.

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 Surrey teenager Milly Dowler, following her disappearance in March 2002 and the discovery of her body six months later.

[107][108] It was in the wake of the Dowler allegations that a significant number of people, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and other politicians, began seriously to question whether the takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation should be vetoed by the appropriate government authorities.

[110] In January 2012, it was revealed that Surrey Police had discovered during the early stages of their inquiries that News of the World staff had accessed Milly Dowler's mobile phone messages but did not take issue with this.

[124] Former prime minister Gordon Brown alleged his bank account was accessed by The Sunday Times in 2000, and that The Sun gained private medical records about his son, Fraser, who has cystic fibrosis.

Rupert Murdoch announced on 13 July 2011 that News Corporation was withdrawing its proposal to take full control of the subscription television broadcaster BSkyB, due to concerns over the ongoing furore.

Citing "vendor responsibility issues with the parent company of Wireless Generation", state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said that the revelations surrounding News Corporation had made the final approval of the contract "untenable".

Later that year his media consultancy company began to advise Paul Stephenson and John Yates, two high-ranking Metropolitan Police officers, providing "strategic communications advice" until September 2010.

[213] These arrests came thirteen years after Rees' premises were raided under Operation Nigeria, during which large amounts of evidence indicating widespread illegal trafficking in confidential information was seized by the Metropolitan Police Service.

"At their appearance before the committee, Rupert Murdoch said it had been "the most humble day of my life" and argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that the News of the World was "just 1 percent" of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid; he added that he had not considered resigning.

Murdoch had denied reading or being aware of an email, sent after he authorised an out-of-court payment to Gordon Taylor over the hacking of his phone, which suggested the practice was more widely used than just by a rogue News of the World reporter.

[245] On 19 July, Lord MacDonald the former Director of Public Prosecutions engaged by News Corporation to review the emails handed to Harbottle & Lewis in 2007, said in evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee: I have to tell you that the material I saw was so blindingly obvious that anyone trying to argue that it shouldn't be given to the police would have had a very tough task.

[222]At his appearance before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 19 July, James Murdoch stated that News International had based its "push back" against new allegations on the combination of three pieces of evidence and one of these was the written advice from H&L.

[256][257] During their court proceedings, a small number of other victims of Mulcaire's phone hacking were mentioned, including Sky Andrew, Max Clifford, Simon Hughes, Elle Macpherson, and Gordon Taylor.

[267] On 5 July 2011, the head of the Press Complaints Commission Baroness Buscombe said in interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC programme The Daily Politics, that she had been lied to by the News of the World over phone hacking.

[270] On 11 July, the day after the News of the World ceased publication, The Guardian reported that Scotland Yard was investigating both The Sun and The Sunday Times for illegally gaining access to the financial, phone, and legal records of former prime minister Gordon Brown.

[72] Committee member Mark Reckless, the then Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood, stated that the original 2007 police investigation and the 2009 review had both been hindered by the advice from the CPS, that "phone hacking was only an offence if messages had been intercepted before they were listened to by the intended recipient;" which was in fact incorrect.

In 2011, working now with Taylor Hampton Solicitors in London, Lewis seems about to close a $4.7 million settlement in the Dowler case and has "more than 70 clients who believe News of the World illegally intercepted their cellphone voice mails", according to a Wall Street Journal story.

[288] There was also concerns amongst journalists that new regulations would be enacted as a means of reining in the press—"an attack on the power of the press itself"—rather than more effective self-regulation and ensuring a stricter enforcement of existing legislation to deter the use of phone hacking, breaches of privacy laws and bribery of public officials.