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Thursday 14 April 2016

Phone Hacking Is Back

While the press establishment, bolstered by a phalanx of wannabes, useful idiots, and the plain misguided, frames the John Whittingdale story as a Hacked Off hit job, assembles its retaliation, and attempts to take down the campaigning group, the reason it was created in the first place has once again reared its ugly head. Yes, phone hacking is back with us - not that you would have guessed from most newspapers.
You think I jest? Here’s the headline: “Email allegedly shows Sun executive asked journalist to hack phone … Email is part of new evidence presented by alleged phone-hacking victims hoping to launch civil claims against tabloid”. And there we are back in 2009 at the point that Nick Davies began to prise the lid off the can of worms that was the late and not at all lamented Screws. Allegations of phone hacking.

The sense of déjà vu is only compounded by the fact that now, as then, the story is only being carried - thus far - by the Guardian. No other paper is reporting on it. And, probably because of the continuing ruckus surrounding the Whittingdale saga, and the attempts to take out Hacked Off, the stuff of which tabloid editors’ wet dreams are made, we have not even had the chorus of “non story” and “conspiracy theory” - yet.

So what’s the deal? “An email that it is claimed shows a senior Sun executive asking a former News of the World journalist to hack the voicemail of Heather Mills’s sister Fiona is part of new evidence presented by alleged phone-hacking victims in a bid to launch civil claims against the Sun … The claimants … allege that the 2006 email shows the Sun executive editor Geoff Webster approving phone hacking”.

And who is ponying up the information? Ah well. Now it gets a little bit tasty for the Murdoch doggies: “It has been provided by the convicted phone hacker and former News of the World news editor Greg Miskiw in support of an application to include the Sun in a tranche of phone-hacking claims against News Group Newspapers, the owner of the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World”. He may know where the bodies are buried.

Who’s on the legal team? It gets even better: “Acting for the claimants, David Sherborne QC said: ‘What’s clear is these stories are being fed in ... at a high level by Mr Miskiw or [Glenn] Mulcaire, straight to those at the top end of the tree’ … He added that the email shows voicemail interception was ‘approved of at a very high level at the Sun newspaper’”. David Sherborne will be familiar to anyone who watched the Leveson Inquiry.

It was Sherborne who represented actor and campaigner Hugh Grant, and at one point caused significant discomfort to the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. Can it get any worse for the Sun? It certainly can: “They are also presenting evidence from two other convicted phone hackers, Mulcaire and Paul McMullan, in support of claims that 40 articles published in the Sun were obtained through phone hacking”.

No wonder they’re all playing “look over there at Hacked Off”. More on this later.

6 comments:

Steven Nott said...

I want to comment but I'm laughing that much it hurts. Good enough for the bastards. Karma all the way. I hope they shut the fucking paper down for good.

Steven Nott said...

Best place is with it's sister paper, The News of the World. The sooner the better.

rob said...

A Tabloid Prediction

Roger Alton comments "Move along, nothing to see here, TRUST ME"
Bonking Boris says "it's all cobblers made up by The Guardian and left wing nutters"
David Aarononvitch intones "Juat another line to be drawn"
Rebekah Brooks is sure she wasn't there or if she was she wasn't aware.
James Murdoch says "Don't look at me I don't read emails and in any event I am a very important person who have lackeys to deal with these problems that I have put into a box marked "don't touch""
Yates of The Yard says" I'm back off to Dubai" and checks his black bin bags in case there is sonmething else he's missed.
Cameron & Ms Mayormaynotbemakinitup chuckle to themselves "Another court case to delay Leveson 2"

And Neil Wallis comments "Pity the poor journalists whose lives could be ruined"















Anonymous said...

Of course the issue never really went away. Except in the guilty offices, which is almost all of them.

The more we hear of what went on, the more sickening the Murdoch and Rothermere scumbags become. There isn't a scrap of decency or courage in any of their employees and glove puppets.

It might give temporary enjoyment to watch them picnicking on each other, but I'd much prefer a media system that more readily allowed access to the truth and reality. Which of course automatically excludes ownership by tenth rate seedy Nazi thugs like Rupert Murdoch and his brats, and Rothermere and his grovellers.

Peter Leveson only touched the edges of this horror. And that's why we need an intensified follow up and why the Bullingdon pig's head boy will either stall it or cancel it altogether - but what else should be expected from Dodgy Dave the Eton barrow boy.

Anonymous said...

As do many others.

Make it a national holiday.

Unknown said...

But the NoW didn't really disappear, did it. We now have the equally awful Current Bun on Sunday.