Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA) came under pressure from UK Prime Minister David Cameron to respond to “really appaling” allegations that its News of the World tabloid hacked into the voicemail of a schoolgirl who was murdered almost a decade ago.
News International Chief Executive Officer Rebekah Brooks, the newspaper’s editor at the time, should “consider her position,” said Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour Party. Brooks vowed today to ‘vigorously pursue the truth” after reports that Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective working for the tabloid, illegally accessed Milly Dowler’s phone messages after she was abducted in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in March 2002.
“If they are true, this is a truly dreadful act, and a truly dreadful situation,” Cameron told reporters at a press conference in Kabul today with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It’s “quite, quite shocking that someone could do this, knowing that the police were trying to find this person and trying to find out what had happened.”
The latest allegations widen a four-year-old phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World that has so far centered mainly on celebrities, politicians and athletes. More than two dozen individuals are suing New York-based News Corp., and the company has apologised and offered to settle some of the cases after journalists linked to the paper were arrested as part of a police investigation.
‘False Hope’
Dowler’s body was not found for six months after she was murdered. The case received widespread media coverage at the time and again last month when her killer, Levi Bellfield, was sentenced to life imprisonment. According to a Guardian newspaper report, Mulcaire is alleged to have deleted voicemail messages on Dowler’s phone, giving her parents “false hope” she might still be alive and thereby complicating the police investigation.
“Doing something illegal, the phone hacking in the first place, was bad enough,” said Charlie Beckett, director of the media institute Polis at the London School of Economics. “But if you’re doing it and then interfering with the course of justice, that’s a double crime.”
Brooks was editor of the News of the World when the alleged interception of Dowler’s voicemail messages took place. Andy Coulson, who resigned as director of communications for Cameron in January, was deputy editor. Brooks wrote to the Dowler family to say News International will “vigorously pursue the truth,” the company said. She also wrote to Surrey Police.
‘Start Taking Responsibility’
“I have to tell you that I am sickened that these events are alleged to have happened,” Brooks said in a memo to staff. “If the allegations are proved to be true then I can promise the strongest possible action will be taken as this company will not tolerate such disgraceful behaviour.”
“It wasn’t a rogue reporter. It wasn’t just one individual,” Miliband told reporters. “This was a systematic series of things that happened and what I want from executives at News International is people to start taking responsibility for this.” In her memo, Brooks said she’s “determined to lead the company to ensure we do the right thing and resolve these serious issues.”
BSkyB Bid
Business Secretary Vince Cable told BBC television that “a lot of people should be examining their consciences because it’s an appaling state of affairs and those people who were responsible have got to take the consequences.” Brooks’s position in overseeing News International’s probe into phone-hacking may be compromised, according to Beckett at the London School of Economics.
“It’s very strange that the person who’s liaising with the police on this, is somebody who was responsible at the time in a different capacity and much closer to the actual event,” Beckett said. “Shouldn’t they be finding somebody else to do the task of handling the investigation? If she’s now materially involved, it just seems to me that’s uncomfortable to put it mildly.”
News Corp, which bid 7.8 billion pounds ($12.6 billion) for the 61 per cent in British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY) it doesn’t already own, is awaiting a government review into whether the deal would give Murdoch too much influence. News Corp already owns four of the UK’s largest newspapers.
Takeover Clearance
BSkyB, the UK’s biggest pay-television broadcaster, slipped 3.5 pence, or 0.4 percent, to 846.5 pence at 1:27 p.m. in London, valuing the company at 14.8 billion pounds.
Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott wrote on a Twitter Inc posting that “the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone by Murdoch’s News of the World proves once and for all he is not a fit and proper person to own BSkyB.”
