Testimony at Hacking Trial Gives Peek Into British Tabloids

By KATRIN BENNHOLD, NYT, MARCH 5, 2014

LONDON — When Rebekah Brooks first entered the witness box in Britain’s phone hacking trial, her lawyer reminded the jury that she was not on trial for running Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers.

Even so, her testimony over the past two weeks has offered a rare view into the skating-on-the-edge culture of the popular press here, one that fascinates and revolts Britons in equal measure: the scavenging in lawyers’ trash cans; the hidden recording devices; the six-figure sums paid for exclusive access to the mistresses of celebrities; the private jets whisking those mistresses to expensive hide-outs from the competition.

Not to mention the illegal interception of mobile phone voice mail messages, which Ms. Brooks is accused of condoning when she was editor of The News of the World, the sensational weekly that Mr. Murdoch shut down because of the scandal. Like her six co-defendants in the trial, Ms. Brooks, who was later promoted to run all of Mr. Murdoch’s British newspapers, denies all the charges against her, including paying a public official for information and hiding evidence from the police.

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