In her memo to her own staff over the hacking scandal Rebekah Brooks wrote “We were all appalled and shocked when we heard about these allegations yesterday………I have to tell you that I am sickened that these events are alleged to have happened…………..Not just because I was editor of the News of the World at […]
Posts Tagged ‘Phone Hacking’
To catch people like Rebekah Brooks & Bob Diamond we need strict liability
Aug 18th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.If Cameron & Co. get their way, how would it be different at the next McCann/Dowler scandal?
Dec 3rd, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There are 3 possible positions on the central issue of division on the Leveson report. One is the press industry’s view, and presumably Cameron’s, namely a stronger version of the Hunt-Black proposals for independent self-regulation which could incorporate many of the Leveson principles, but crucially would be voluntary and depend on the industry coming together […]
Phone-hacking at Mirror could be last straw for self-regulation
Oct 24th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Next month Lord Justice Leveson will unveil his report on press ethics and governance, and in that context the lawsuits now being taken out against Mirror Group Newspapers could hardly have come at a worse time for those wanting to head off reform. If other potential victims flood in with their own legal actions as […]
MPs, journalists and moral collapse
Sep 2nd, 2011 by Jon Lansman.After the August riots, Ed Miliband rightly made a connection between the “me-first” culture evident in the riots and that which was displayed in the scandals involving MPs’ expenses and phone hacking. And yet, in spite of the connection that is now frequently made between those two scandals, there has been an unsurprising lack of […]
Who polices the police?
Jul 19th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Establishing an inquiry into setting up a new code of police-media ethics, as Theresa May proposed yesterday, whilst welcome, is not going to resolve the profound derelictions of duty recently exposed in police behaviour at the highest level: failing in the face of abundant evidence which they themselves held to re-open the hacking inquiry in […]
Police collusion, government complacency almost as serious as NoW law-breaking
Jul 18th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The police have a great deal to answer for over this media crisis and one resignation, however honourable, does not exculpate their collective liability. Three months ago the Guardian highlighted that “we now know that in dealing with the phone-hacking affair at the NoW, they (the Met) cut short their original inquiry, suppressed evidence, misled […]
Different rules apply?
Jul 18th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.For the record, here’s the extract from Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation statement which has enabled Yvette Cooper to pinpoint the critical question which now has to be asked about phone hacking — why different rules apply to the Met police commissioner and the prime minister over their respective phone hacking links:
Hackgate: notes on political crises
Jul 18th, 2011 by David Osler.Westland didn’t bring down Thatcher, Major took on the Maastricht Bastards and lived. Not even the combination of illegal war against Iraq, the Kelly suicide and cash for peerages was enough to force Blair to quit. Prime ministers, it seems, invariably ride out a little local difficulty. I do not see anything in either the […]
Ed Miliband right to call for press enquiry
Apr 21st, 2011 by Michael Meacher.There is a great deal wrong with the press and a Commission of Inquiry into its abuses is long overdue. Nor is it just a matter of the multiple phone hacking scandal, the News International lying about it, the police complicity with the Murdoch organisation in seeking to close down any investigation, and the supine […]
Murdoch’s power tentacles are gradually exposed
Apr 11th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.There’s still a great deal more murkiness to the phone hacking scandal than has yet come out. The latest revelation is that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, took it upon himself to tell Gordon Brown in autumn 2009 that it would be ‘inappropriate’ to hold a judicial inquiry not long before an election into […]