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Police Charge News of the World Editor Over Voicemail Hacking

Posted by Soulskill on from the figuring-out-where-the-line-is-drawn dept.

New submitter HarryatRock writes with news that former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and five others have been charged by police for their involvement in intercepting voicemail messages left for a murdered girl. From the article: "She is charged with conspiring with her 49-year-old husband, personal assistant Cheryl Carter, chauffeur Paul Edwards, security man Daryl Jorsling, and News International head of security Mr Hanna to "conceal material" from police between 6 and 19 July. In a second charge Mrs Brooks and Ms Carter are accused of conspiring to remove seven boxes of material from the News International archive between 6 and 9 July. In a third charge, Mr and Mrs Brooks, Mr Hanna, Mr Edwards and Mr Jorsling are accused of conspiring to conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment from police officers between 15 and 19 July."

15 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Just another reason... by ToiletBomber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...to avoid anything related to Fox News like the plague

    1. Re:Just another reason... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course you're trolling, but what does Rupert Murdoch's gutter-level right-wing editorial service called Fox News have to do with a legitimate news operation?

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    2. Re:Just another reason... by colfer · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the U.S., providing news is no longer required to maintain an FCC TV license, and neither is providing unbiased news. There is still a minimal educational requirement, but it's nothing compared to the 1970s, when outside business groups would try to capture station's FCC licenses by citing strict FCC public service requirements. Those were also the days of the Fairness Doctrine.

      Some low-rent broadcast stations claim to fulfill the current minimal Educational/Instructional standards by showing Edgemont, a teen drama imported from Canada! You can read about it here, the requirement is called E/I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgemont_(TV_series) In fact, Fox Family used to use Edgemont for this!

      The station here that shows Edgemont (at noon, when its intended audience is not even home), fills much of the rest of its daytime schedule with infomercials, which would have been impossible under 1970s rules. An FCC license has gone from a license to print money to a license to shill trinkets.

    3. Re:Just another reason... by nomadic · · Score: 4, Informative

      The head of Fox's news division (who for decades was a political operative for the Republican Party) assigned the first cousin of the Republican candidate to call the winner for each state during the 2000 election. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prescott_Ellis

      A Fox News producer was caught on tape trying to whip up the crowd for Glenn Beck's "9/12" demonstration. Fox then ran full-page advertisements in the newspaper asking why the other cable news networks weren't covering such an important event (using, for some bizarre reason, a video still from CNN, which was covering the event). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzWC0GX38Mk

      In 1996 Fox anchor Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for President. In 2000 Snow then went to purportedly cover the 2000 Republican convention as a journalist, then gave a speech to a Republican youth group when asked. Snow later went to the White House to become Bush's press secretary. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067

      You do not see comparable levels of bias with MSNBC. You just don't.

    4. Re:Just another reason... by Tarsir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is a reason Fox News regularly kills the other news networks viewership numbers combined.

      This is because Fox News regularly throws journalistic integrity to the wind in pursuit of ratings.

    5. Re:Just another reason... by nbauman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is not a debate where there is some merit to both sides. News Corp. is right-wing propaganda. They're not just a right-wing version of NBC, CBS and the Washington Post.

      The only people who defend News Corp. are right-wing wackos who don't know the difference between truth and propaganda.

      They're not like other American news organizations. Murdoch orders his editors to distort the news to advance his political goals.

      Fox News made "Fair and balanced" a cynical joke. It's like cigarette companies advertising that their cigarettes are healthy and doctors recommend them.

      The worst thing Murdoch did is destroy the Wall Street Journal, which used to be the best newspaper in the world, respected by left and right:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/business/media/14carr.html
      Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal
      By DAVID CARR
      December 13, 2009

      A little over a year ago, Robert Thomson, The Journal’s top editor, picked Gerard Baker, a columnist for The Times of London, as his deputy managing editor. Mr. Baker is a former Washington bureau chief of The Financial Times with a great deal of expertise in the Beltway. The two men came of age in the more partisan milieu of British journalism.

      According to several former members of the Washington bureau and two current ones, the two men have had a big impact on the paper’s Washington coverage, adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the current administration. And given that the paper’s circulation continues to grow, albeit helped along by some discounts, there’s nothing to suggest that The Journal’s readers don’t approve.

      Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)

      The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.

      On Aug. 27, a fairly straightforward obituary about Ted Kennedy for the Web site was subjected to a little political re-education on the way to the front page. A new paragraph was added quoting Rush Limbaugh deriding what he called all of the “slobbering media coverage,” and he also accused the recently deceased senator of being the kind of politician who “uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don’t work.”

      On Oct. 31, an article on the front of the B section about estate taxes at the state level used the phrase “death tax” six times, but there were no quotation marks around it. A month later, the newspaper’s Style & Substance blog suggested that the adoption of such a loaded political term was probably not a good idea: “Because opponents of estate taxes have long referred to them as death taxes, the term should be avoided in news stories.”

  2. Lots are falling on swords to keep Murdoch in. by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "She is charged with conspiring with her 49-year-old husband, personal assistant Cheryl Carter, chauffeur Paul Edwards, security man Daryl Jorsling, and News International head of security Mr Hanna to "conceal material" from police between 6 and 19 July. In a second charge Mrs Brooks and Ms Carter are accused of conspiring to remove seven boxes of material from the News International archive between 6 and 9 July. In a third charge, Mr and Mrs Brooks, Mr Hanna, Mr Edwards and Mr Jorsling are accused of conspiring to conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment from police officers between 15 and 19 July."

    For all the people that are being charged, the Murdochs seem quite absent, but anyone without their surname seems to be fair game.

    Hopefully someone turns on the Murdochs instead of taking the sword for the family.

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    1. Re:Lots are falling on swords to keep Murdoch in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you're the 1%, the 99% take the sword.

      And in this case, when you're in the .01%, 99% of the 1% are fair game too.

    2. Re:Lots are falling on swords to keep Murdoch in. by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Remember that the Murdochs are several degrees removed from all of these charges. Now they may be evil masterminds and they may eventually be charged with one or more crimes, but for the moment the police are having to work their way up through the ranks.

      I suspect that for anything substantial to stick it's going to take more than one or two NOTW employees pointing at the Murdochs and saying "they made me do it".

  3. Re:I'm Shocked by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No indictment for any Murdoch.

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  4. "Charge ... Over Voicemail Hacking" by DeathToBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Involvement in intercepting voicemail messages."

    Accuracy has never been very important to /., has it?

    They were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by withholding evidence from police. There is no charge that they were involved in voicemail hacking (though of course there are plenty of allegations that they were).

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  5. UK media cannot report it all by colfer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Non-UK sources provide additional details not allowed in the UK media, due to pre-trial laws. The Guardian broke this story, but now scrupulously points out it is limited in what it can report. Comparing to the NYT, the omitted facts seem to be the strange episode of the discarded briefcase in the parking garage. Brooks's husband was caught red-handed when he tried to reclaim it after someone found it in a dumpster.

    Anyone know what else the UK press must omit?

  6. Re:Mainstream media by colfer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Guardian took the lead, quite alone, and has nothing like the "transgressions" of the tabloid press to answer. Obviously this is not where you're going with your comment, but what is more interesting to me is the difference in press freedom between the US and the UK. The Leveson hearings I could not imagine happening in the US Congress. A whole line of questions to Brooks were about the political influence of newspapers. The transgressions of the print media in the UK are worse than in the US, but so is the threat of regulation. I'm sure the Guardian and it supporters are indeed worried about suicidal danger. The Independent does not sound to happy about all this, from what little I have read. But the Murdoch press in the UK is a lot more powerful and vindictive than Fox/WSJ in the US. They really did meet and threaten top party leaders.

  7. It's the coverup by residents_parking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is the attempted coverup they are being charged for, not the crime of phone hacking. That's what "perverting the course of justice" means here in the UK. It's a common law offence that usually carries a prison sentence, which can be up to life.

  8. Re:Insert by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's no difference between the two, except for their political beliefs.

    You seem to have overlooked that this is a criminal case. Rebekah Brookes hasn't been tried yet so we can't say she personally is guilty yet. But the fact that a murdered girl and thousands of others had their phones hacked by the right-wing News International organisation isn't in question, it's established fact.