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Ten years ago this morning, newsagents took delivery of the latest issue of the News of the World. But for the man who, thanks to his investigations in The Guardian, sparked the events that brought down the UK’s best-selling Sunday newspaper, it didn’t look like a victory.
No one at the Guardian wanted News of the World shut down, said Nick Davies, the reporter who exposed the phone hacking scandal. We hadn’t even dreamed that the Murdochs would do such a horrible thing.
Within days, by July 2011, News of the World had grown from tens of millions of readers who, every weekend, relished its mix of sex, scandal and scoops on the agenda to become an outcast publication considered beyond salvation.
It started on Monday this week when Davies and her colleague Amelia Hill revealed that News of the Worlds reporters illegally accessed the voicemail messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. On Thursday, owner Rupert Murdoch concluded that his 168-year-old tabloid had become politically toxic and threatened to take control of broadcaster Sky. He abruptly shut down the newspaper and fired most of the 200 employees.
Usually we were in the news, but by then we were in the news, said Tom Latchem, editor of News of the Worlds TV when it closed., speaking a decade later. He began to realize the diary was doomed when the candidate fired by Alan Sugar in episode of the week of The Apprentice canceled an interview following Dowler’s story: I thought I was really in trouble. here. If these people who are desperate for fame, at almost any cost, to step aside, it is not a good sign.
For years, the Murdochs company has falsely argued that a single rogue journalist, former royal editor Clive Goodman, hacked voicemail messages, while paying other famous victims and downplaying Davies’ stories. But it was Dowler’s revelation that caught the public’s attention.
Ten years later, former News of the World employees and victims of its tactics participated in a Radio 4s Archive episode in 4 about the shutdown. They remember a pressurized newsroom where almost any method was justified to get a front-page scoop, with thousands of pounds kept in an office safe to buy last minute articles.
Sometimes it got to the ridiculous stage where I would send someone over a story and the reporting department would also send a reporter and we would bid against each other, said James Weatherup, a former editor who then pleaded guilty. phone hacking.
Paul McMullan, a former News of the World reporter, described a typical sting: [A celebrity] moved into a hotel room in Paris with a new girlfriend who was not his wife. So what we did was we called the hotel pretending to be their accountant and told them we need the whole bill, please with all the phone calls so we can detail it. And the hotel, rather foolishly, just faxed his bill and we just called all the numbers until we found his girlfriend’s house number and then sent paparazzi to take a picture.
McMullan, who infamously told the subsequent Leveson inquiry into press ethics that privacy is for pedophiles also described the direction of the newspapers campaign against pedophiles, which inadvertently led to vandalism from a pediatrician’s house in South Wales: It’s amazing you could just write something that took an afternoon and people were revolting in the streets.
But it was the desire to pick up rivals using almost any method possible that would bring the newspaper down. Editor-in-chief Greg Miskiw helped introduce phone hacking to the newspaper after hearing about it from a private investigator: One day during a conversation, he said, you realize I can listen to them. voicemail messages from people? And I said, wow, it’s amazing we could use this service. And that’s what we’ve done.
The technique was simple. All it took was knowing a person’s cell phone number. The reporter called him, hoped he was going to voicemail, then guessed that the individual’s PIN was usually set to the default of 0000 or 1234. They could immediately listen to any voicemail messages left on that. phone. In an age when smartphones didn’t make it easy to send long text messages, a typical set of voicemail messages could include everything from declarations of love to private medical information.
I would choose my targets very, very carefully, said Miskiw. But by the time I left the London office, the people responsible were just hacking everyone. And that’s how it ended up unraveling.
Thousands of people have been targeted. Journalists listened to hundreds of messages left by then Home Secretary David Blunkett, who was in charge of police and security services.
Blunkett said the subsequent front-page exposure of his relationship with a married woman caused friendships to break down: I was in the public eye. And I was responsible for my behavior. But it’s always people’s families who are hurt.
Murdoch reportedly regretted the decision to shut down the newspaper. At some point after it closed, he informally suggested to BuzzFeed, then a fast-growing online medium aimed at millennials, that he could repurpose the News of the World brand. They refused.
Instead, he is still dealing with the clarification bill. Fifteen years after the first conviction for phone hacking, tens of millions of pounds are still spent by News UK each year to settle the claims of victims of phone hacking. The practice was also prevalent at the Mirror and the Sunday People, all of which continue to deal with cases.
The biggest UK tabloid that has never admitted hacking voicemail messages is the Sun, the sister newspaper News of the Worlds. Despite this, only last month the Murdochs Company paid substantial damages to former MP Simon Hughes, who specifically claimed he was unlawfully targeted by the Sun. The settlement ensured that Hughes’ claims were never heard in open court.
When photos of Matt Hancocks hooking up with an assistant made headlines in The Sun last month, it was a rare throwback to the days when such exhibitions happened almost every Sunday. Even then, the very strict privacy law meant that it was couples’ violation of social distancing rules as much as the case that helped legally justify the post.
Thinking back to News of the Worlds shutting down a decade later, Davies said a chance for real change was missed: There was an extraordinary time that only lasted a few weeks and it was like seeing the teacher kicked out of the classroom. And just for a brief period, we didn’t have to be afraid of Rupert Murdoch and his horrible newspapers and politicians were free to say what they thought and advertisers were free to tell him to get screwed.
But you know, power doesn’t easily loosen its grip. And slowly and insidiously, Murdoch put his bony fingers around the throat of British public life and held them there.
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