Top Tabloid Editors Endorsed Hacking, Letter Says
By SARAH LYALL
NYT
Published: August 16, 2011
LONDON — An influential parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid, The News of the World, released a potentially damning four-year-old letter Tuesday claiming that hacking was routine and “widely discussed” at the paper, a direct contradiction of repeated assertions by the paper’s owners and editors that until recently they were unaware of the breadth of the problem.
The letter, from Clive Goodman, a former News of the World royal correspondent who briefly went to jail in 2007 for intercepting voice mail messages of members of the royal household, is important because it challenges the claim by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation that until last December it believed that the hacking was limited to one “rogue” reporter — Mr. Goodman — and that it had conclusively investigated the matter. Mr. Goodman sent the letter, including the now-redacted names of others he said knew about the hacking, to the company after he was fired.
The disclosure is a further embarrassment to Prime Minister David Cameron, who has already been ridiculed by his political rivals for his decision to hire a former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his director of communications. Mr. Coulson resigned from the paper during the initial phone hacking imbroglio in 2007 and from his government job in the wake of new evidence early this year. He was arrested last month on suspicion of conspiracy in the phone hacking and of corruption in approving payments to the police for information.
(More here.)
NYT
Published: August 16, 2011
LONDON — An influential parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid, The News of the World, released a potentially damning four-year-old letter Tuesday claiming that hacking was routine and “widely discussed” at the paper, a direct contradiction of repeated assertions by the paper’s owners and editors that until recently they were unaware of the breadth of the problem.
The letter, from Clive Goodman, a former News of the World royal correspondent who briefly went to jail in 2007 for intercepting voice mail messages of members of the royal household, is important because it challenges the claim by Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation that until last December it believed that the hacking was limited to one “rogue” reporter — Mr. Goodman — and that it had conclusively investigated the matter. Mr. Goodman sent the letter, including the now-redacted names of others he said knew about the hacking, to the company after he was fired.
The disclosure is a further embarrassment to Prime Minister David Cameron, who has already been ridiculed by his political rivals for his decision to hire a former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his director of communications. Mr. Coulson resigned from the paper during the initial phone hacking imbroglio in 2007 and from his government job in the wake of new evidence early this year. He was arrested last month on suspicion of conspiracy in the phone hacking and of corruption in approving payments to the police for information.
(More here.)
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