Sun Coogan Deflection RUMBLED

Just after 2230 hours yesterday evening, BBC Home and Foreign Duty Editor Allie Hodgkins-Brown, currently in charge of the invaluable Tomorrow’s Papers Today feature, gave a preview of today’s splash from the Murdoch Sun. “Thursday’s SUN: ‘Knowing me, furloughing you, AHA!’” she told. Was this a harmless slice of hokum about Alan Partridge? Well, no it wasn’t. It was a crude and easily rumbled hit job.

And Steve Coogan - who the Super Soaraway Currant Bun has accused of “hypocrisy” because two people who work for him have allegedly been furloughed - is not the actual target. Let’s see James Ball’s take on the story, in order to get a hint of what this is all about. “Steve Coogan once accused the publisher of The Sun of using the threat of bad headlines ‘as a weapon against those who get in the way of News International’”.

There was more. “Seems inevitable that running that particular splash would reopen a day of discussion of phone hacking, which is a topic I'm *amazed* the Sun would want to revisit, but… *shrug*”. Phone hacking. Why might the subject of phone hacking come up in relation to News Group Newspapers, so many years after the hacking trial?

Ah well. Those still needing to ask that question may not have been watching events at the High Court in London yesterday. It is a nailed-on certainty that clueless rent-a-quote Tory MP Andrew “HS2 ate my fridge” Bridgen, who was there ready to assist the Murdoch mafiosi in putting the boot into Steve Coogan, was one of those not watching.

But Byline Investigates was watching. “THREE Chief Executives of Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper empire have been accused of a mass cover-up of phone hacking, the High Court in London has heard. The bosses include Mr Murdoch’s own son James, current head of News UK Rebekah Brooks, and the ex-Chief Executive of the prestigious Wall Street Journal, Les Hinton”. Everything becoming a little clearer? There is more.

“The allegations form part of an explosive document deployed at the High Court today … It centres on a plan allegedly hatched to start deleting emails 3 weeks before the company informed the police it had found evidence that disproved its own public ‘one rogue reporter’ defence to phone hacking, according to barrister David Sherborne. who represents 49 claimants currently suing The Sun and News of the World for alleged phone hacking”.

And a little more. “On the January 6, 2011, the company’s IT bosses informed corporate lawyer Jon Chapman that they had found ‘incriminating emails,’ Mr Sherborne told Justice Mann at the High Court in London on Wednesday, May 20, 2020. The messages involved former news editors Ian Edmondson, James Weatherup and Neville Thurlbeck - who had been instructing the paper’s in-house hacker Glenn Mulcaire” (full report HERE).

But here a problem enters: the Murdoch mafiosi does not want to go after Byline, for fear of not only drawing attention to their legal woes, but also giving another of those new media outlets more publicity. What to do? Simples. What’s that Pinned Tweet on the Byline Investigates feed? Why, it’s “A Message From Steve Coogan”. AHA!

Problem solved - the Sun hits Steve Coogan! Except the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker have let slip they’re worried about that court case. Oh what a giveaway!

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