Newspapers
Plurality and the Press: The Telegraph Takeover
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Press freedom is once again in peril, according to right-wing newspapers.
As part of a mass offensive recalling the heady days of reaction to the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices, and ethics of the British press following the phone-hacking scandal, an editorial in the Mail on 28 November boomed that freedom of the press is a “democratic necessity” and among the “precious institutions and freedom which must not be compromised at any price” – while Charles Moore warned in the Telegraph on 24 November that “the nationalisation of a British national newspaper seems possible”.
What is the source of this renewed threat? According to Juliet Samuel in The Times on 22 November, it is the prospect that one of the UK’s major newspapers may be “effectively bought and controlled by an Arab dictatorship”.
More specifically, it’s the spectre of the Telegraph Media Group being bought by Abu Dhabi-backed Redbird IMI, a joint venture between the US private equity firm Redbird Capital, which is run by former boss of CNN and NBC News, Jeff Zucker, and International Media Investments (IMI), a vehicle controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and brother of the country’s President.
Much of the press coverage of this possible deal has been greatly distorted by the fact that the Daily Mail and General Trust is extremely keen to buy the Telegraph titles and News Corp to acquire the Spectator magazine, which is also part of the Telegraph Media Group.
Both parties are thus bitterly hostile to the deal, although less for the ostensible reasons given – national security and press freedom – than for rather less noble and more self-interested ones.
Scrutiny of the proposed deal has ended up in the hands of broadcasting and communications regulator Ofcom but how it intends to carry out its task has itself failed to receive the scrutiny it deserves.
On 30 November, Lucy Frazer, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN) under section 42(2) of the Enterprise Act 2002. This specifies two public interest considerations as relevant to the takeover: the need for accurate presentation of news; and the need for free expression of opinion in newspapers.
Ofcom has been tasked with preparing a report for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on these matters and will report back by 26 January.
There are a number of causes for concern but, in particular, the nature of the public interest considerations and the role of the Secretary of State in issuing the PIIN in the first place.
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The public interest tests which Ofcom is undertaking stem from amendments to the Communications Act 2003 at its pre-legislative stage by a committee chaired by Lord Puttnam, which was rightly concerned that this ‘deregulatory’ measure didn’t contain sufficient safeguards for media plurality. These amendments regarding accuracy and free expression of opinion were then incorporated into the Enterprise Act.
In May 2004, the then Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) issued guidance on the operation of the public interest merger provisions relating to the media, and these form the basis of the PIIN.
On accuracy, the guidance states that the impact of a possible merger is likely to be assessed by reference to the past behaviour of the company wishing to undertake the acquisition or by those controlling it. Also important are any measures the company proposes in order to preserve accuracy in news presentation.
Regarding free expression of opinion, the statutory guidance states that this concerns “the extent to which the transaction would affect the freedom of editors to operate without interference from the proprietor”. This will be considered in light of “any measures which the parties may have put in place to preserve editorial freedom”.
However, there is also a third test in the amended Enterprise Act, but for some reason this has been excluded from the PIIN, although it would appear to be highly relevant in this instance.
This stresses “the need for, to the extent that it is reasonable and practicable, a sufficient plurality of views in newspapers in each market for newspapers in the United Kingdom or a part of the United Kingdom”. It does not refer only to the local or regional press: “each market” also encompasses the three market segments – downmarket, midmarket and upmarket – of the national press.
Of course, the “reasonable and practicable” qualification allows for all sorts of get-outs, and the guidance duly notes that the wording reflects the Secretary of State’s view that “although plurality of views in each and every market is the ideal goal of the regime, it may not be reasonable to require this in relation to a particular part of the market because of associated costs”.
But what is immediately noticeable about the two tests which have been included is just how limited they are.
This undoubtedly relates to their origin in the DTI, essentially a trade body concerned with economic matters, as opposed to the DCMS, which might have been expected to take broader cultural issues into account. And given press owners’ antipathy to any measure that might limit their empire-building, it would be surprising if they had not lobbied the DTI to keep the scope of these tests as narrow as possible.
Indeed, the House of Lords Communications Committee in its 2008 report 'The Ownership of the News’ complained that the public interest considerations for media mergers did not include “any requirement to establish that a merger will not adversely affect professional news gathering and investigative journalism” and recommended – in vain – that such a requirement should be included in the legislation.
It also expressed concern, equally vainly, that “the considerations for newspaper mergers are hard to measure objectively and are in need of review” and wondered how the accurate presentation of news could be considered and measured before a merger had actually gone ahead.
The crisis and corruption in the British press is one of the biggest, ongoing scandals of our time. Byline Times tips its hat to Prince Harry
Hardeep Matharu
When it comes to the matter of the “free expression of opinion”, Jeff Zucker has already promised to create an editorial advisory board that would uphold the independence of the Telegraph titles and the Spectator and emphasised that he has no plans to change their management or editorial teams.
However, history suggests that such undertakings count for nothing when it comes to the UK national press. As former Sunday Times Editor Sir Harold Evans stated at the Leveson Inquiry, Rupert Murdoch himself told The Times home Editor Fred Emery in 1981 that the guarantees of editorial freedom which he’d recently given in order to be allowed to purchase the titles were “not worth the paper they’re written on”.
Further conditions entailed that the two newspapers had to be run as separate titles under separate editors. However, in January 2019, News UK, citing changed market conditions since 1981, successfully lobbied for these to be relaxed, allowing the papers to share resources, including journalists. Two years later, the company equally successfully lobbied to be entirely released from these undertakings.
The DCMS consulted with Ofcom on whether these changes were in the public interest and it argued that they were, finding that “the UK newspaper market is currently reasonably plural” and, even in the event of a merger, “readers would still have access to a wide range of viewpoints”. There were also commercial incentives for the two titles to deliver accurate news in that “their ability to attract readers and advertisers is linked to their reputation for quality, accurate and trusted news”.
The papers’ many critics would vehemently disagree, and such a Panglossian view of plurality in the UK national press as a whole raises serious questions about whether Ofcom is adequately equipped to deal with the proposed Telegraph Group deal, and indeed press mergers of any kind.
Judging free expression of opinion in the press solely in terms of editorial freedom from proprietorial interference is extremely limited. No one who knows how newspapers work seriously believes that proprietors constantly tell their editors what opinions to express. Instead, they appoint editors and managers who know perfectly well what lines their proprietors expect them to take on the main subjects of the day and, in all likelihood, agree with them.
This is a process of allocative as opposed to operational control. It means that what many journalists would welcome most is freedom from editorial power.
In the case of the Telegraph, how such control works has been chillingly illustrated by its erstwhile chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, who resigned because stories about HSBC were routinely suppressed on account of it being an important advertiser and about Hong Kong, so as not to upset valuable Chinese interests.
It is also germane to Ofcom’s Pollyanna-ish views about the 'plurality’ of the UK national press that this ended his career not only at the Telegraph but in the rest of Fleet Street too. A similarly grim picture of lack of journalistic autonomy, based on interviews (inevitably anonymous) with practising journalists, can be found in the chapters by journalism academic and former journalist Angela Phillips in the edited collection New Media, Old News.
On the role of the Secretary of State in issuing the PIIN, it’s worth recalling that, in this respect, the Lords Communications Committee argued that this power should also be invested in Ofcom, because governments spend time building good relationships with powerful media proprietors. This is not necessarily wrong but it does raise a possible conflict of interest if the same people who want, and need, to stay on the right side of a media company, have the final say on that company’s business interests.
This is a particularly important consideration in the present case.
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That the Telegraph titles have consistently supported the Conservatives, both in government and opposition, is incontrovertible. However, under the ownership of the Barclay family, the papers, along with the rest of the Tory press, have increasingly thrown their weight behind the hard-right factions of the party. That the Government has tacked ever closer to these factions is surely not a coincidence.
For a government in a situation as fraught as the present one, press support is more than usually vital and it is thus perfectly reasonable to harbour the suspicion that the Secretary of State’s concern about the future ownership of the Telegraph titles and the Spectator may be, at least partly, motivated by fears about the future direction of three particularly valuable press allies.
It could also be the case that, given the current conflict in the Middle East, in which the Government, the Telegraph titles and the Spectator strongly support Israel, she may have concerns about how a newspaper owned by Abu Dhabi-backed interests might cover future conflicts in the region. In this respect, any fears might be well founded.
The UAE has a very poor record when it comes to press freedom. It is 145th out of the 180 countries included on the index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. And there are questions about IMI itself in this respect. For example, until last year, it owned the newspaper al-Roeya, but in September this was shut down just weeks after it ran a story about how Emiratis were struggling with higher fuel prices following the invasion of Ukraine.
Thus, for all the wrong-headedness in the way in which the free expression test is framed, there is actually a good reason for running it. But let’s not get dewy-eyed about the state of press freedom in Britain. As Robert Shrimsley put it in the Financial Times on 29 November: "Let’s spare ourselves the humbug of pretending that existing British media moguls are as hands-off and virtuous as a Disney princess is chaste. Individuals buy newspapers for status or power and invariably use them to advance personal or professional interests. And the roll call of UK press barons is hardly one to shout about."
And when the likes of Janet Daley in the Telegraph on 2 December state that “the power wielded by a state must be, always and without qualification, separate from the presentation and analysis of information in the public domain”, let’s remember that Ian Gilmour, a member of Margaret Thatcher’s first Cabinet, proclaimed that the press “could scarcely have been more fawning if it had been state controlled”.
Both of these judgements could just as easily have been applied to Boris Johnson and to Liz Truss in her early days in power.
And finally, let’s remember why Byline Times came into existence, as summed up in its motto: what the papers don’t say.
Julian Petley is a Honorary Professor of Social and Political Sciences at Brunel University London
Piers Morgan: ‘A Pretty Despicable Human Being’
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“You don’t get to be editor of the Mirror without being a fairly despicable human being."
Piers Morgan to Kate Winslett: The Insider (2005)
When he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2009, Piers Morgan was challenged about phone hacking. Presenter Kirsty Young asked him about dealing with people who listened to phone messages. “People who tap people’s phones … how did you feel about that?”
Morgan didn’t deny the allegation: “I’m quite happy … to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to … I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do.”
But after the revelation in July 2011 that Rupert Murdoch’s journalists had hacked murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone, he changed his tune. When the American Daily Beast website resurrected his Desert Island Discs comments in 2011, Morgan insisted: “For the record … I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone.”
But, in fact, the Daily Mirror had printed an article based on phone hacking more than a decade earlier. It was just as mobile phones were taking off — and Piers Morgan had been Daily Mirror editor for more than two years.
Early in 1998 one of the paper’s journalists in Dublin realised it was possible to access messages left on the mobile phones of senior Irish politicians. Reporter Karl Brophy — based at the Irish Parliament — proceeded to listen to messages left on the phone of the Irish leader, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. He also successfully listened to messages left on the phones of other Cabinet ministers.
Brophy’s article — published as an “Exclusive” on Saturday, 18 April 1998 — went into great detail about how phone messages could be hacked: “The phone tap can be operated by anyone who knows the number of the mobile phone they wish to listen in to.” The article explained that mobile phones were sold with a standard password for stored messages that most people never changed. “That means that anyone can listen in to another person’s messages by simply phoning into their electronic mailbox and dialling the digits 0000. Once they have done this the hacker has unlimited access to all the messages.”
The article was accompanied by an editorial. This stated: “If Richard Nixon had lived in Dublin he would have had no need for Watergate. Instead of teams of bungling burglars all he would have needed was a mobile phone to tap into the thoughts of his political rivals.”
The piece continued: “The Irish Mirror discovered this amazing security breach and chose not to keep it under wraps. It is to be hoped the gap has been plugged before some unscrupulous eavesdropper has used it for sinister [purposes].”
There was to be no phone hacking scandal in Ireland.
UPDATE
Getting Away with Murder? What Harry’s Win Against the Mirror Means for Murdoch and the Mail
The judgment of Justice Fancourt establishes a clear link between the ‘criminal media nexus’ of corrupt cops, journalists and the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Daniel Morgan to feature in trials next year
Peter Jukes
The Open Backdoor
Not a word of the story appeared in the mainland editions of the Daily Mirror. This was despite the fact that several million people of Irish descent live in Britain — thousands of them Daily Mirror readers. And the implications of the story for the British political establishment were obvious.
If British mobile phones were anything like their Irish counterparts, there was a potential security problem.
There were also strong connections between the Irish edition and the paper’s headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf. The man in charge of the Irish Mirror was Craig Mackenzie, brother of Kelvin Mackenzie, Mirror Group deputy chief executive. Kelvin Mackenzie was editor of the Sun when Piers Morgan started on the paper in the late 1980s. Both Mackenzie brothers were friends of Morgan’s.
Press Gang spoke to Karl Brophy last week. He said he wrote the story at a time when mobile phones were taking off. “When you got your phone in those days it clearly … told you to change your PIN immediately,” he said. “The thing was that most older people didn’t bother.”
“So, one day, I just started phoning mobiles of politicians and seeing if they had changed their PINs. A lot hadn’t so I changed all the PINs of the ones who hadn’t to a single four digit number so nobody else could listen in.”
“I thought the fact that voice messages … of government ministers and advisers could be so easily accessed was rather serious – especially considering where we were in 1998 with the Peace Process …”
In fact, the historic Good Friday agreement had been signed a week earlier. All the ministers Brophy hacked immediately changed their PIN numbers after he told the government what he’d done.
EXCLUSIVE
Prince Harry to Appear in Person in Phone Hacking Court Case as ‘Teflon Piers’ Faces ‘Both Barrels’
The first senior British Royal to ever enter the witness box in the High Court will allege Piers Morgan oversaw a conspiracy of newsroom criminality at the Daily Mirror, reveals Dan Evans
Dan Evans
Tipped Off
Fifteen months later the Daily Mirror in London were told about security problems with mobile phones.
Welsh sales manager Steven Nott rang the paper in August 1999 about a flaw in Vodaphone’s system. He talked to Mirror special projects editor Oonagh Blackman. He told her that if people did not change the standard Vodaphone 3333 PIN number, anyone could dial in and listen to messages.
Nott claims that, initially, Blackman was enthusiastic but after 12 days told him the paper wasn’t interested. The paper later sent him a £100 cheque with a statement saying it was in relation to “mobile phone scandal.”
Nott later told the Leveson Inquiry: “I accused the Daily Mirror of keeping the phone hacking method for their own purposes.”
But, in addition to the Irish Mirror story, there’s evidence the paper’s journalists were already deeply involved in the “dark arts” of illegal news-gathering, including phone hacking.
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Princess Diana
Central to this operation was senior reporter Gary Jones and his dealings with a corrupt firm of private detectives. Jones had been News of the World crime reporter when Piers Morgan edited the Sunday tabloid in 1994-1995.
Jones won the Press Gazette Reporter of the Year award in 1995 for his scoops. One of the most dramatic was a story about anonymous calls being made by Princess Diana. This was also one of the key stories in Piers Morgan’s career — it impressed Rupert Murdoch who liked big, international controversies. Especially if it also involved an attack on the British establishment he despised.
This worldwide exclusive was based on a leaked investigation report from Scotland Yard. Press Gang — in the article Whodunnit? — revealed Piers Morgan almost certainly authorised an enormous payment to a recently retired senior police officer for access to the report. The sum is believed to have been in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Piers Morgan was appointed Daily Mirror editor in 1995 and Gary Jones joined him the following year.
Documentary evidence shows that by October 1997 Gary Jones was responsible for organising much of the paper’s clandestine operations. Jones was using the controversial detective agency Southern Investigations to illegally access information. The agency had also been working for the News of the World from the late 1980s — including the period Piers Morgan was editor.
The firm was run by private eye Jonathan Rees. Rees had been a suspect in the murder of his partner Daniel Morgan in 1987. Daniel Morgan’s place as Rees’ partner was taken by former Scotland Yard detective sergeant Sid Fillery. Fillery had been part of the homicide team investigating the murder until his superiors realised he was a friend of Rees.
Southern Investigations provided Gary Jones and the Mirror with one scoop after another.
The evidence comes from a secret operation — Two Bridges — mounted by anti-corruption detectives at Scotland Yard. They bugged the offices of Southern Investigations and, in September 1999, raided the firm and many of its network of informants. From the files generated by this operation, Press Gang has already shown that
— in September 1998 phone hacking may have played a part in an exclusive about news presenter Kirsty Young’s new relationship with millionaire businessman Nick Young. In our story Down In The Gutter we showed that Southern Investigations followed Young over several days. The paper’s reluctance to publish the story straight away suggests the original source of the story may have come from phone hacking ,,,
— in October 1998 Gary Jones and Oonagh Blackman published an article revealing the confidential mortgage details of members of the committee which set interest rates. In our article Assault On The Bank Of England we showed that Southern Investigations had illegally “blagged” the information from banks and building societies. The firm sent one set of doctored invoices to the Daily Mirror accounts department but Press Gang obtained a confidential statement sent to Gary Jones marked “For Your Information Only” which reveals the true nature of the operation.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Invoices generated by Southern Investigations were usually heavily disguised. “Confidential enquiries” was the phrase used to cover up illegal activity ordered by Gary Jones on behalf of the Mirror.
Four of these invoices include parts of telephone numbers. The first was in October 1997 — long before the Irish Mirror published its piece. Southern Investigations was billing Jones for “confidential enquiries” relating to a telephone number showing just the dialling code 01480 (Huntingdon). In 1998 there were three more invoices — again with only part of the number given.
The sums involved — around £300 each — suggest these “confidential enquiries” involved print-outs of calls made from the numbers. Southern Investigations had people inside phone companies who made copies of itemised phone calls.
Just how corrupt the relationship between Gary Jones and Jonathan Rees actually was is shown by a dramatic row which took place in July 1999.
Gary Jones once worked for the News of the World and the Daily Mirror. Today he edits the Daily Express. Will he figure in the report of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel, out next week? Brian Cathcart considers the evidence
Brian Cathcart
Caught on Tape
It's Tuesday 6 July 1999 at the offices of Southern Investigations in Thornton Heath, South London. Jonathan Rees is busy. Some of his work is legitimate routine bread and butter stuff like serving writs and tracing people. But increasingly his time is taken up with obtaining confidential information and selling it to newspapers like the News of the World and the Mirror Group.
Unknown to him, every word he says today will be recorded. A bug has been planted in the building by anti-corruption detectives from Scotland Yard as part of Operation Two Bridges. Two Bridges has two aims. One is to generate information about the murder of Daniel Morgan in 1987. The second is part of an attempt to prevent Southern Investigations from corrupting police officers.
An internal Scotland Yard document — later leaked to the BBC Home Affairs correspondent Graeme McLagan — spelt out the concerns. Rees — and his partner, ex Metropolitan Police detective Sid Fillery:
“.. are alert, cunning and devious individuals who have current knowledge of investigative methods and techniques which may be used against them.”
“They use some of the techniques in their own daily activities.”
“Such is their level of access to individuals within the police, through professional and social contacts, that the threat of compromise to any conventional investigation against them is constant and very real.”
But on that Tuesday — 6 July 1999 — Rees is oblivious to the fact that his office is bugged. When he rings Gary Jones at the Daily Mirror to discuss invoices, he believes the conversation is private. Rees says he’s faxing through a full list of invoices for the work done for the Mirror Group (including the Mirror, People and the Sunday Mirror) that year. The total is £16,991 for the five months. The list includes nearly £6,000 for the illegal supply of itemised print-outs of calls made from phones.
Rees says “… when it comes through you’ll see the invoice, with lots of stars next to them, and roughly billed at about £300 odd — which is print-outs." Rees tells Jones there are 19 of these print-outs with the initials of the reporters who ordered them, with “G.J. being you.”
Later that day Rees and Jones have another discussion about the lack of detail on the invoices relating to these print-outs. Jones is under pressure from the paper’s accounts department to provide more information on the Southern Investigations invoices.
Rees loses his temper:“Well they are printouts … this is tiresome, fucking tiresome … we are not going to put the numbers in there because what we are doing is illegal… I don’t want people coming in and nicking us for criminal offence, you know.”
When this conversation takes place, Gary Jones is sitting at his desk in the Daily Mirror newsroom on the 22nd floor of the skyscraper at Canary Wharf. A few yards away is the editor’s corner office. Can Piers Morgan have known absolutely nothing about Gary Jones’ illegal activities?
Arrests
Operation Two Bridges comes to an abrupt end in September 1999. The bug in Southern Investigations reveals Rees has a client fighting his estranged wife for custody of their child. Rees agrees to organise a conspiracy with a corrupt police officer to plant cocaine in the wife’s car. The plan is to saddle her with a drugs conviction — so proving her to be an unfit mother.
The police pounce on the conspirators. Rees and the client are given seven year prison sentences. The corrupt police officer is gaoled for five. Sid Fillery is not involved.
When police closed in on the conspiracy, they also arrested many of those suspected of being involved in illegal news-gathering. One of them was Doug Kempster, a reporter with the Sunday Mirror, part of the Mirror group. An internal police report shows some senior police officers wanted a conviction:
“It is likely that journalists and private investigators who actively corrupt serving officers would receive a long custodial sentence if convicted. There will be a high level of media interest in this particular investigation, especially when involving journalists. The Metropolitan Police will undoubtedly benefit if a journalist is convicted of corrupting serving police officers. This will send a clear message to members of the media to consider their own ethical and illegal involvement with employees of the Met in the future.”
Police submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service which decided not to charge the reporter.
Kempster’s arrest sent shock waves around senior management at the Mirror Group. But it did not stop illegal news-gathering at Piers Morgan’s Daily Mirror. With Jonathan Rees in gaol, the paper turned to another private eye — Steve Whittamore. By the time he was arrested for breaches of the Data Protection Act in 2003, the paper had spent at least £92,000 with the private eye.
In our article Whodunnit? we exclusively revealed that one of the Mirror reporters who apparently commissioned work from Whittamore was Tom Newton Dunn. Today, he’s the political editor of The Sun. In the early 2000s Dunn’s name was recorded by Whittamore as the Mirror contact for a criminal record check of a parliamentary candidate.
This was Adrian Flook, who later became Tory MP for Taunton. Newton Dunn does not answer our emails.
Piers Morgan and Phone Hacking: What Even He Can’t Deny
There is a lot of evidence about the former Mirror editor and hacking, but how much has he already admitted? More than you might think reveals, Brian Cathcart…
Brian Cathcart
Leveson Evidence
Is it possible Piers Morgan didn’t know what was going on at the Mirror when he was editor?
During the Leveson Inquiry journalist James Hipwell gave evidence about phone hacking when he worked at the paper between 1998 and 2000. Hipwell was a financial journalist and worked close to the paper’s showbiz reporters. He said they hacked openly and frequently.
Hacking was “a bog-standard journalistic tool for gathering information.”
He had no direct evidence Piers Morgan was involved but added: “I would say that it is very unlikely that he didn’t know it was going on … The newspaper was built around the cult of Piers. He was the newspaper. Nothing happened at the newspaper without him knowing.”
When he gave evidence, Morgan was contemptuous of Hipwell. Hipwell had been gaoled for six months for insider dealing in 2000 while working for the paper’s City Slickers column. He bought shares in a company owned by Alan Sugar before they were tipped by the column. The shares rocketed in value the next day.
Piers Morgan also bought shares but always insisted he didn’t know they were going to be the subject of a Mirror article.
In a statement to Leveson, Morgan wrote: “I note that Mr Hipwell is a convicted criminal who changed his story on a number of occasions during the City Slickers investigation, in part to wrongfully implicate me. “I believe any testimony he gives to be inherently unreliable.”
Leveson, though, found Hipwell a credible witness:
“… the Inquiry does conclude that the practice of phone hacking may well have taken place at the Mirror titles at the time Mr Hipwell was working there …”
Leveson also questioned Piers Morgan about his comment after the 2007 gaoling of News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman for hacking royal phones. Morgan had been Goodman’s editor at the News of the World in 1994-1995.
“… I feel a lot of sympathy for a man who has been the convenient fall guy for an investigative practice that everyone knows was going on at every paper in Fleet Street for years.”
Morgan told Leveson he was talking about the “rumour mill” at the time — and that phone hacking wasn’t happening at the Daily Mirror.
Leveson was caustic: “This was not, in any sense at all, a convincing answer. Overall, Mr Morgan’s attempt to push back from his own bullish statement to the Press Gazette was utterly unpersuasive.”
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State of Play (in 2015)
More and more evidence is emerging about the “dark arts” at the Daily Mirror. So far Operation Golding, the Scotland Yard operation into phone hacking at the Mirror Group, has seen 15 journalists — including Piers Morgan — questioned under caution. The investigation continues.
Scores of civil claims are also generating large amounts of information. In May Mr Justice Mann ordered the Mirror group to pay eight victims a massive £1.2 million in damages. Six were victims of the Daily Mirror during Piers Morgan’s tenure — including the actress Sadie Frost and the footballer Paul Gascoigne.
The judgment also revealed that the Mirror papers: “admitted paying over £2.25 million (in over 13,000 invoices) to certain named private eyes in the years from 2000 to 2007.”
Mr Justice Mann noted that the Mirror’s legal team acknowledged: “that ‘an unquantifiable but substantial’ number of the inquiries made of the agents is likely to have been to obtain private information that could not be obtained lawfully.”
Originally published on Press Gang as 'Dial M for Morgan' on 29 June 2015. He did not respond to requests to comment.
Getting Away with Murder? What Harry’s Win Against the Mirror Means for Murdoch and the Mail
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Hidden in today's voluminous High Court judgment of the case of Prince Harry against Mirror Group Newspapers is a finding which breaks open what Gordon Brown called the "criminal media nexus" of corrupt cops, tabloid journalists and private investigators and the "dark arts" that came to dominate the British press.
The evidence of one important witness, Derek Haslam, will be key to cases against the Murdoch and Mail newspapers due for trial next year.
Derek Haslam, a former Met detective, was tasked to go undercover in 1997 for the Met’s internal ‘Ghost Squad’ inquiry into police corruption to investigate the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan, a private investigator who many believed had discovered a major story of police corruption he was pitching to newspapers before being axed to death in the South London pub car park.
Haslam’s target was Daniel Morgan’s old private detective agency, Southern Investigations, and the two men there originally arrested on suspicion of involvement in his murder: the firm’s co-founder Jonathan Rees and a former Met Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery.
Gary Jones once worked for the News of the World and the Daily Mirror. Today he edits the Daily Express. Will he figure in the report of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel, out next week? Brian Cathcart considers the evidence
Brian Cathcart
The Mirror and the Daniel Morgan Murder Suspects
Justice Fancourt's ruling in the high Court lays out Haslam's evidence.
"Mr Derek Haslam, who operated as an undercover surveillance officer, was instructed to watch Jonathan Rees (the joint owner and operator of Southern Investigations, with Sid Fillery) with regard to activities with corrupt police officers and an investigation into the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan.
"Mr Haslam said that Rees boasted of obtaining information by phone tapping and computer and phone hacking, and admitted to him that he had supplied phone hacked information to MGN. He said that Rees had employed BT engineers to tap landlines. However, it is clear from Mr Haslam’s evidence that the majority of Rees’s information was obtained by other illegal means.
"Mr Haslam said that Rees frequently met with journalists and corrupt police officers in pubs, bragged about working for the Mirror and the Sunday Mirror, and that he had been introduced by Rees to Gary Jones of the Mirror and Doug Kempster of the Sunday Mirror.
"He said that both were clearly good customers of Rees and that he spoke about them often, and in particular boasted about having supplied information about Prince Michael of Kent’s bank account, which was unlawfully obtained.
"In cross examination, Mr Haslam was able to recall in which pubs meetings with Rees and Fillery would take place, and said that Jones and Kempster would come on occasions. On occasions there was a bank manager called Rob there, as well as policemen, and he was known as 'Rob the Bank'."
The Gary Jones mentioned is currently the editor of the Express newspaper. He was a crime reporter at News of the World in the 90s when the Sunday tabloid was under the editorship of Piers Morgan and the main employer of Rees and Fillery. When Morgan moved to the Mirror group he took Gary Jones with him.
But by then the police had installed a bug in the premises of the private detective agency. On 6 July 1999, when Jones was a senior reporter at the Daily Mirror, he was caught on tape querying invoices totalling £16,991 that Southern Investigations had billed the Mirror.
"This is tiresome, fucking tiresome," Ress told Jones. "We are not going to put the numbers in there because what we are doing is illegal, isn’t it? I don’t want people coming in and nicking us for a criminal offence, you know."
Today's judgment, among other things, vindicates this suppressed evidence. Justice Fancourt accepted Haslam's evidence in broad terms and called his testimony "clear and compelling".
But this is only the beginning of the story because Haslam's evidence is also a key testimony in more trials due next year brought by several claimants including Prince Harry, Elton John and Hugh Grant over unlawful information gathering against the Mail group and Murdoch’s publications.
And this opens up the whole issue of police and press corruption around the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Daniel Morgan
‘Reckless to the Point of Madness’: How the Murdoch Empire Hacked British Politics
Journalist Nick Davies talks to Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber in Prospect magazine’s ‘Media Confidential’ podcast about the new revelations from the settlement by News Group Newspapers
Nick Davies
The Murdoch Connection to Corrupt Policing
It’s no coincidence that two of the most notorious murders of the last half-century occurred within a few miles of each other in south-east London: the assassination of private investigator Daniel Morgan in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham in 1987, and the racist murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence in Eltham in 1993.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, the proximity between those corrupt police officers and the national press was so extensive the area was known as the ‘News of the World Regional Crime Squad’. The senior luminary to come out of the area, Commander Ray Adams, was described at the time as Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Yard Man’ (he went on to become deputy head of security for NDS – the global security arm for Murdoch’s News Corp).
In the meantime, over the past three decades, the murders of Daniel Morgan and Stephen Lawrence were subject to a dozen or more partial and problematic police investigations.
The 1998 Macpherson Inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder concluded that the Metropolitan Police was guilty of “institutional racism”. An independent review by Mark Ellison KC in 2014 – around the phone-hacking scandal – established police corruption was a factor too.
Read the full story
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Similarly, the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Inquiry led by Baroness O’Loan concluded in 2021 that the UK’s largest police force suffered from “institutional corruption”.
The News of the World was the main customer for Southern Investigations for almost 20 years, and Rees and Fillery trained and supported its star reporter, Mazher Mahmood. As he went undercover for nine years, Haslam reported back to his ‘handlers’ about the array of unlawful information gathering services available to Rees and Fillery: moonlighting police covert entry teams for break-ins, a BT engineer to tap phone lines, a bank employee to access confidential financial statements.
“We can get the Queen’s medical records,” Haslam recalls Rees once boasting. But most disturbing of all was the ready access to former or serving Met officers who could be bought off for unlawful information.
Haslam's reports about unlawful news gathering and the probe in the premises of Southern Investigations caused a stir in the Met. Commander Bob Quick drew up a secret intelligence report detailing 46 'media crimes' and recommending the arrest of two News of the World journalists, Alex Marunchak and Mazher Mahmood, and Doug Kempster from the Mirror.
But Quick's senior officers in the Met did nothing about the report. Indeed several of them went on to accept well-paid columns in Murdoch's newspapers.
Witness statements on behalf of the claimants against Associated News plunge us straight back into what Gordon Brown once described as the ‘criminal media nexus’
Peter Jukes
The Mail and the Stephen Lawrence Murder
More startling and surprising is Haslam's evidence against ANL, the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. He says Rees and Fillery were major suppliers of unlawful information to the Mail titles who were interested in finding out if Doreen Lawrence and her campaign for justice had been “infiltrated by left-wing groups”.
Again the major source of for Southern Investigation's stories were corrupt cops. Among the dozens of officers in regular communication during Rees and Fillery in their heyday were two men who played an important role in the original Stephen Lawrence murder investigation: Commander Ray Adams and his bagman DC John (OJ) Davidson. Having left the force both became, in Haslam’s words, “security consultants and important sub-contractors for Southern [Investigations]”
In the January print edition of Byline Times, Jake Arnott puts together some of the new evidence linking Davidson and Adams to both the Morgan and Lawrence cases. And former Guardian crime reporter Duncan Campbell and investigative journalist and whistleblower Dan Evans recollect the former Flying Squad detective – John Ross – who also “specialised in selling information to the Mail and other newspapers from corrupt, serving officers” and was also targeting Doreen Lawrence, according to Haslam.
Haslam has already been the subject of spurious attacks by Fleet Street journalists because his evidence doesn’t suit their industry or agenda. They would rather muddy the investigations into an infamous racist stabbing and an axe murder with low-level character assassinations and hatchet jobs against key witnesses.
This is a disservice to the present as well as recent history and shows so much of the British press is more intent on deceiving their readers rather than informing them. They are trying to get away with murder.
To get the full story, with exclusive to print articles by Jake Arnott, Duncan Campbell and Dan Evans, buy the current edition of Byline Times, onsale now
Revealed: The Emails Behind the Royal ‘Cash-For-Leaks’ Affair
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This article was first published in the November 2023 print edition of Byline Times
A series of anonymous emails blowing the whistle on payments by The Sun to the partner of a senior royal aide were written by three former colleagues of the controversial journalist Dan Wootton, a Byline Times investigation can reveal
This newspaper has received credible intelligence to suggest the three worked together to inform on the Murdoch tabloid’s former executive editor as they feared a cover-up by publisher News UK if they did not.
To protect themselves from exposure, the colleagues went to extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks, after reaching out to Scotland Yard, Buckingham Palace lawyers, and retired Guardian journalist Nick Davies.
Byline Times will not be identifying them as a matter of journalistic source protection. However, it can reveal how they presented themselves as being a temporary worker and a friend of a junior News UK administrator with access to The Sun’s editorial payment systems.
They acted following the publication of two stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their son Archie in June and July 2019, and the subsequent discovery of payments totalling £4,000 to a publicist whose partner is Prince William’s former press officer Christian Jones.
For the first time, this newspaper is reproducing some of the emails’ content. Part of them reads: “If a journalist is using someone’s [partner] to pay Prince William’s PR for information about his own brother and sister-in-law that shouldn’t happen.”
They add: “Someone in editorial started questioning why stories that weren’t on the front page were getting thousands of pounds in fees. My friend says someone saw a string of payments within a few weeks to [the publicist, Jones’ partner] about royals and then asked who this person was. They couldn’t understand why a showbiz PR would have that kind of knowledge.”
The insider information was later handed to Neil Basu, the former Met Police Assistant Commissioner overseeing counter-terrorism at the time, and led to two internal inquiries at Buckingham Palace.
News UK denies making any unlawful payments to third parties, and Jones and his partner say they did not provide private information about the Sussexes to The Sun.
Byline Times has sourced its own copies of the emails, which were first addressed to Nick Davies in spring 2020.
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Davies – whose investigations for the Guardian exposed the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, leading to that newspaper’s closure in 2011 and a major Old Bailey trial – confirmed his role in passing on the anonymous communications to relevant third-parties.
“I am retired, but I still get approached with stories two or three times a week and have to say no to them,” he said. “But this email was clearly important. There was a clear public interest if there had been misfeasance by a public official. It was important and there was clearly a chance that what was being said was true. So I boosted it into the hands of people with power.”
First, Davies reached out to lawyers for the Duke of Sussex, who also passed the information on to Neil Basu.
“I was in the middle, and I admitted I had no idea if what the email said was true,” Davies added. “It was detailed information, but the truth was not clear. The police needed some kind of evidence to put before a judge to get a warrant to go to Buckingham Palace and search Christian Jones’ records and those at The Sun. They needed to meet the source to get a sworn statement or some other form of sworn evidence. I urged them [the anonymous whistleblower] to meet the police, who were willing to do so off-the-record, but the source would not come forward.”
The information in the emails was so detailed and credible, however, that it prompted the Duke of Sussex to explore a civil lawsuit with a formal ‘letter before action’ to The Sun. The information they contained centred on the appropriateness of payments going to the partner of someone acting in an official capacity for the Royal Family.
The Sun front page 09.01.20 The Emails
Byline Times can reproduce parts of the emails which went on to have such wide-reaching ramifications.
Posing as The Sun worker’s friend, the authors wrote to Davies: “I understand you are now retired from journalism. Perhaps if this is not of interest to you directly, you might wish to pass it on to someone capable if you think it worthwhile. I have no wish to be involved because I would fear for the safety and wellbeing of my loved ones. You played a pivotal role in exposing wrongdoing at News International. The company, now News UK, claims to be the cleanest media company in the world. It is not. I will give you one example. See where it leads.”
The emails claimed to be from a News UK worker who, during a brief period of employment there, had access to payment systems used by editorial teams and had knowledge of internal legal compliance protocols. The worker, it was claimed, had maintained a friendship with a second whistleblower at the tabloid.
One email went on: “Everyone there now has to undergo strict training to avoid corrupt payments, but at The Sun they are circumventing this. I know this because there is one case involving one of the top editors, Dan Wootton, that has been hushed up.”
The email continued: “The impression my friend gave is that only a few people within The Sun know about it. They’ve told me before that when the connection was made between [Christian Jones’ partner, the publicist] and Jones there was a real sense of panic because Wootton is so powerful within that office.
“He deals directly with [chief executive] Rebekah Brooks on stories sometimes, he has his own radio show, and he’s forced out a lot of people as he’s moved up through the organisation. He’s tried and succeeded to get people sacked. He’s that powerful.”
EXCLUSIVE
The Truth About Megxit: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-For-Leaks Scandal Split the Royal Family
As Scotland Yard probes the journalist Dan Wootton over allegations of blackmail and serial sexual catfishing after a three-year special investigation by Byline Times, this newspaper can now reveal
how his payments to the partner
of a top royal aide forced the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex to run
from the UK
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem
Explaining the situation, the emails continue: “[Dan Wootton] is a showbiz journalist, but in the last year or so, if you check you will see he has written a number of stories about the Royal Family. There were concerns raised internally last year over a number of payments he had made, totalling thousands of pounds, to a freelance PR.
“If you look on Google, [the publicist] worked for a number of showbiz PR firms, so perhaps not a big deal. The reason concerns were flagged was because Wootton suddenly began paying [the publicist] thousands of pounds … for royal stories, starting on or around 15 July last year (2019).”
It went on: “These began with large payments of £3,000 upwards for single stories about the Duchess of Sussex that only someone very close to them could know about. The information was very detailed and questions were asked very discreetly internally about why the amounts paid were suddenly so high about stories possibly involving public officials (which is a big red flag at News UK now).
“The answer, it was quickly established, was that [the publicist] is the partner of William and Kate’s press secretary, Christian Jones.”
The email went on: “By the company’s own updated rules, any suspicion of a payment to a public official should be flagged up immediately to lawyers. The reason I’m contacting you is that this didn’t happen. I have no reason why although given the seniority of the journalist and the panic it would cause internally, perhaps that is sufficient explanation.
“Only a handful of people had direct knowledge of it and I’m not sure Dan Wootton was even confronted about it. I don’t know the journalists personally but it really angers me that good people, secretaries even, lost jobs on the News of the World and here we are again possibly and it has not even been looked into.”
The emails go on: “After I left I heard someone involved was so angry they had emailed a Mr Basu at Scotland Yard last December about it and possibly even a royal servant called Tyrrell [Gerrard Tyrrell, the Royal Family’s lawyer] to tip them off.
“All I know is [the publicist] is on The Sun’s payment system under a ZC (contributor) number paid lots of money by Dan Wootton, I know that much. The paper trail is there if someone wants to find it. It seems rotten to me. I hope this is of interest.”
In a subsequent email, the whistleblowers confirmed the detail of [the publicist’s] contributor code: “I think [the publicist’s] ZC number is ZC634*** [Byline Times’ redaction]. My friend thinks there was a payment for £3,000 made around the 15 July last year for a story about the Duchess of Sussex and her nannies which was published on 28 June. There was also a payment of £1,000 made for a story about godparents to Meghan’s son. I don’t have any more details and I don’t know if I can get any more without arousing suspicion for my friend.”
EXCLUSIVE
In Plain Sight: The Picture the Palace Probe Missed
In 2020, Simon Case was tasked to investigate payments from Dan Wootton and The Sun to the partner of a royal press officer, allegedly for information about Prince Harry and Meghan. He found there was no evidence of wrongdoing. But Byline Times can shed further light
Tom Latchem and Dan Evans
The informants went on to talk about internal compliance policies intended to protect News UK from Operation Elveden-type scandals and bribery allegations.
Since Elveden, which closed down in 2016, News UK has upgraded its internal compliance systems to flag suspicious payments to serving public officials with a self-certifying system based around e-learning modules.
The email added: “This is used for every new contributor the company pays like a source. It’s a single sheet and has a box on it which asks the journalist to tick yes/no whether the person is a public official.”
Byline Times understands that the New York HQ of parent company News Corporation could be alerted to red flags. It followed the creation in 2011 of a management standards committee, one of whose first jobs was to assist UK police and act as ‘assisting suspects’ in the Elveden probe, and hand over evidence against employees in order to avoid corporate charges, which could have infringed the US Federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with the potential to impact directly on owner Rupert Murdoch.
The email went on: “People internally on editorial … started getting suspicious about the scale of the payments made by Wootton, looked at it, someone did some research and found the connection between Jones and [his partner], presented it to the same senior execs, who then recoiled in horror at what had been found and stuck their heads in the sand without taking it further.”
It added: “Basically [they] said, yep, anyway, let’s move on, it’s a great story by Dan. I don’t think there’s any desire to push for it to be investigated. I think the view internally is to let sleeping dogs lie and hope no one ever makes the connection independently.”
Byline Times put a series of detailed questions to a lawyer for the Royal Family, a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Dan Wootton, Christian Jones, Jones’ partner, and Simon Case.
The allegations about payments were put to News UK in 2020, when Byline Investigates, the sister website of Byline Times, first revealed payments were made. News UK threatened to sue in order to stifle publication. The identities of the senior executives said to have known about the connection between Christian Jones and his partner are not known and the extent that News UK management know that this happened, if at all, is unclear.
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem are former colleagues of Dan Wootton’s from the News of the World between 2007 and 2011. None of the sources or analysts cited either in this story or wider investigation were paid
In Plain Sight: The Picture the Palace Probe Missed
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This article was first published in the November 2023 print edition of Byline Times
It’s the friendship Prince William’s former right-hand-man Simon Case concluded simply didn’t exist. And yet here are one-time royal press secretary Christian Jones and his publicist partner huddling together for an intimate celebratory photograph with ‘cash-for-leaks’ journalist Dan Wootton.
The occasion was Wootton’s 35th birthday party in March 2018. The location was the private terrace of a £1,675-a-night suite at London’s exclusive hotel The Ned. The guests were 20 “incredible friends” (in Wootton’s own words) – hand-picked to enjoy his extensive largesse. The issue is that it was a ‘friendship’ that – when legal documents later named Christian Jones – he flatly denied.
None of which could have seemed possible as Jones and his partner toasted the birthday boy – just a few days from winning a third British Press Award for ‘Showbiz Reporter of the Year’, and five years before he was unmasked as a serial catfish targeting young celebrities and colleagues for sexual images – with Veuve Clicquot among the potted peonies and Carrara marble tables on the 35m sq entertaining terrace of a hotel suite complete with a mahogany four-poster bed and roll-top bathtub.
One of the party’s attendees told Byline Times that “there was no expense spared” and “everyone invited was part of Dan’s special group of mates”.
“Dan hired a private dining room and laid on a set menu with three options for each course,” they said. “It was champagne and cocktails and whatever you wanted from the menu. Just 20 ate and then a few more turned up to celebrate with Dan upstairs on his terrace before heading on to a club in Shoreditch. It was lavish. There was no expense spared. Everyone invited was part of Dan’s special group of mates. Dan paid for everything.
This apparent closeness, as illustrated by the photo Wootton uploaded to Instagram and captioned with three red hearts on 11 March 2018, presented a problem, however, for Jones and his long-term publicist partner.
For, after Jones took the job of deputy communications secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in December 2018, Wootton paid the publicist for stories which, according to a whistleblower account, led to a secretive internal investigation at The Sun newspaper, which feared being sucked into a leaks scandal just a few years after some of its journalists were prosecuted over payments to public officials.
Christian Jones (right) and Dan Wootton at The Ned ‘Just A Fluke’
The Sun has never confirmed anything on the record, but Byline Investigates – the sister website to this newspaper – revealed in June 2020 how lawyers for the Duke of Sussex, armed with credible but anonymously supplied information apparently originating from inside The Sun’s publisher News UK, were threatening to sue the tabloid over the publication of stories written by Wootton – and negatively spun against the Sussexes – headlined ‘Nanny McThree’ and ‘Tot Secret’.
They were published in June and July 2019 and centred on nannying and god-parenting arrangements for the Sussexes’ son Archie. Payments of £4,000 had been made to the publicist in August 2019 and were identified by way of an internal News UK accounting code. The matter had been referred to both Buckingham Palace and Britain’s then top anti-terrorism police officer, Scotland Yard’s Neil Basu, for investigation.
Basu’s job was to try to establish whether there was any case for a criminal prosecution for misconduct in public office – the crime for which nine police officers were convicted, based on evidence handed over by the Murdoch media empire to Scotland Yard’s 2016 Operation Elveden, for accepting money from journalists for information.
After the Metropolitan Police failed to obtain the full identity of the whistleblowing Sun insiders – which it required to obtain a warrant to search royal property – Simon Case, the then private secretary to Prince William, was tasked to investigate from within Kensington Palace, where Jones was employed.
Byline Times, through a number of sources close to the matter, has been able to establish some details of the investigation and the processes that ultimately cleared Christian Jones of wrongdoing. Both he and his partner insist the allegations that Wootton paid for private information about the Sussexes are incorrect.
But this newspaper can reveal that, although when formally questioned by Case – who is today the head of the British Civil Service and facing tough questions at the Covid Inquiry over the quality of decision-making during the pandemic – Jones admitted to knowing Wootton and dealing with him on a professional basis, he strongly denied that either he, or his partner, were close friends with the journalist.
“Quite a long and involved process resulted from Prince Harry’s lawyers sending a letter before action to The Sun,” one source said. “Of course, Christian had to be questioned by his bosses about it. He said that, yes, he had known Dan for a while, but that he did not know him very well, and that Prince William’s courtiers who appointed him didn’t have a problem with it.
“Christian also told them that his partner had indeed been paid by The Sun at the time stated in the whistleblower emails, and for the amounts described, but that the money related to stories about clients his partner represented in their work as a publicist, and was nothing to do with Prince Harry and Meghan.
“One of his partner’s clients supposedly had the same name as the Duchess of Sussex. There was the suggestion that this was the reason for some of the money paid and that the timing was just a fluke.
“On that basis, Christian faced no further action. He retained the confidence of Kensington Palace and later on had a couple of big promotions.”
Byline Times has learned that Jones’ position was that the allegations against him ought not to have been made at all on the basis of anonymous accusations, albeit they contained many correct details, including the internal News UK code, which warranted a legitimate case for further investigation.
Kensington Palace is understood to have sought to draw a line under the matter unless compelling new evidence emerged.
Alongside Wootton’s birthday Instagram photo, this newspaper has spoken to multiple other witnesses who say that Wootton tried to cultivate a friendship between the three.
EXCLUSIVE
The Truth About Megxit: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-For-Leaks Scandal Split the Royal Family
As Scotland Yard probes the journalist Dan Wootton over allegations of blackmail and serial sexual catfishing after a three-year special investigation by Byline Times, this newspaper can now reveal
how his payments to the partner
of a top royal aide forced the
Duke and Duchess of Sussex to run
from the UK
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem
‘It Wasn’t Like It Was A Secret’
“It is true that Dan knew [Jones’ partner] pretty well,” one source said. “At the time, they were quite a young publicist who had worked for a couple of the London agencies and were keen to get on in their career. Dan knew this and made a point of including [the publicist] in his group, beyond just seeing them at the usual premieres and television events where publicists and journalists tend to rub shoulders.
“For [the publicist], knowing Dan was undeniably useful professionally. Dan had a hell of a lot of power with the Murdoch press and [the publicist] sometimes had clients who either wanted to be in those papers or to be kept out of them.
“They enjoyed the benefits of knowing Dan. Sometimes they got to use The Sun’s box at the 02 for gigs. They were often around each other socially in the West End. You’d see them at the usual media haunts like Soho House and Shoreditch House.
“Sometimes Christian was there too. He got to know Dan through his partner. They used to go out together quite regularly for a while, sometimes in a small group, sometimes in larger ones, for food and drinks. It wasn’t like it was a secret. Lots of people in their social set saw them and knew about it and, justifiably, assumed they were pretty close.”
Wootton was at the zenith of his personal power at The Sun and on a senior rota to periodically assume overall editing duties when Jones took up his post at Kensington Palace around Christmas 2018.
Jones’ principal job was to handle media matters for the Cambridges – his actual employers – with a dual role to look after the Sussexes. But a few weeks into his new appointment, Jones himself became the story.
On 23 January, The Sun published photos of Jones out in London’s Notting Hill with the Duchess of Sussex under the headline: ‘“WHAT A HOTTIE” Meghan Markle’s hunky new press secretary sets pulses racing as female fans urge Harry to “be careful”’.
Alongside paparazzi pictures snatched after a low-key work lunch with Meghan, who at the time was pregnant with Archie, the paper wrote: “Royal fans have been left hot under the collar after Meghan Markle stepped out with her hunky new press secretary.”
The article went on to quote social media comments praising Jones’ physical appearance and cited his LinkedIn CV, crediting the Cardiff University graduate as being a former Brexit speechwriter and Treasury press officer.
“In his new role,” the piece added, “he will liaise with British and international media as well support the royals’ charitable work and engagements.”
A media management source said the article “raised eyebrows” at the palace at the time, considering Jones’ “main job was to be a trusted point-man to guide and protect his employers from invasive media” coverage. Yet, this was the “equivalent of clattering straight into the first hurdle”.
Byline Times understands that any social connection between Wootton, Jones, and his partner ended following the investigations into the payments.
The first source said that “the friendships pretty much died” after this because for Jones or his partner to be seen publicly with Wootton “would have been a very bad look”.
Despite the inauspicious start to working life at the royal household, Jones went on to enjoy a successful three years there during which he stepped into the shoes of Simon Case, when Boris Johnson brought him into his Government during the pandemic, to be the private secretary to the Cambridges.
He left Prince William and Kate in January 2021 to become a partner and head of corporate affairs for Bridgepoint, a £31.56 billion private asset investment fund in the City.
EXCLUSIVE
Revealed: The Emails Behind the Royal ‘Cash-For-Leaks’ Affair
Detailed but anonymous testimony from insiders at The Sun sat at the heart of cash-for-leaks allegations involving a royal official and the newspaper’s former top editor Dan Wootton. Now, Byline Times can publish the details for the first time
Dan Evans
Again, The Sun covered the career change, noting that Jones had enjoyed an “incredibly close relationship with Prince William”. The paper wrote: “Whereas Simon was credited with making the Duke a statesman – Christian has really helped them to steer them through their public-facing role during the pandemic. He’s helped them to grow in confidence by gently pushing them out of their comfort zone.”
Today, Jones’ partner continues to work as a publicist with some high-profile clients.
Wootton did not comment on the record at the time of the 2020 Byline Investigates story. But his lawyers at Mishcon de Reya, one of Britain’s most costly law firms, denied that any payments were made unlawfully to a public official or a proxy and claimed their client was the victim of a smear campaign by unknown bad actors.
Byline Times put a series of detailed questions to a lawyer for the Royal Family, a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Dan Wootton, Christian Jones, Jones’ partner, and Simon Case.
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem are former colleagues of Dan Wootton’s from the News of the World between 2007 and 2011. None of the sources or analysts cited either in this story or wider investigation were paid
The Truth About Megxit: How Dan Wootton and a ‘Cash-For-Leaks’ Scandal Split the Royal Family
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This article was first published in the November 2023 print edition of Byline Times
King Charles withdrew his £700,000 funding deal for son Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s transition to a life in Canada in retaliation for the naming of a top royal aide in legal papers alleging a cash-for-leaks arrangement with the journalist Dan Wootton, Byline Times can reveal.
The financial sanction came after the Duke of Sussex defied the demands of the then Prince of Wales and palace staff by declining to remove the name of former Kensington Palace press secretary Christian Jones from a ‘letter before action’ to Wootton’s former employer The Sun in May 2020.
Jones denies any suggestion of wrongdoing or leaking confidential information about the royal household.
The matters alleged in the letter before action about him appear to have been dropped, but the sudden defunding of the Sussexes in late June 2020 led to the collapse of the ‘Sandringham Agreement’ governing a 12-month trial period as the couple sought to split their time between the UK and Canada and remove themselves from the ‘royal rota’ – the press pool given exclusive inside access to cover the royals.
It came just three months into the trial period and led directly to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex having to enter into private commercial arrangements to pay the estimated £3 million-a-year cost of 24-hour security for their family.
One well-placed source with knowledge of the matter told Byline Times: “They threatened the removal of the funding to try and protect the royal household from a potential courtroom scandal with Jones and Wootton very publicly at the centre. The actual removal of the funding weeks later was about control, and designed to force Harry and Meghan to come back to the senior royal family in the UK where their security would be assured.”
EXCLUSIVE
In Plain Sight: The Picture the Palace Probe Missed
In 2020, Simon Case was tasked to investigate payments from Dan Wootton and The Sun to the partner of a royal press officer, allegedly for information about Prince Harry and Meghan. He found there was no evidence of wrongdoing. But Byline Times can shed further light
Tom Latchem and Dan Evans
The source added: “The greater truth is that Harry and Meghan make better headlines than the King and Camilla or William and Kate. The idea of them still being in public service but abroad and out of the control of the institution and dominating the media narrative just couldn’t happen.
“Senior members of the family wanted them back after the transition period and were ready to continue playing dirty to make this happen. They never thought the trial period would work and tried everything to make it fail, starting with the removal of security and then signing off on a 12-month assault by the UK press on Harry and Meghan and everyone in their orbit.
“As far as the institution of the monarchy went, the Sussexes had either to be safely in the tent in Britain or cast away and castigated as comprehensively as possible in order to reduce the threat of them eclipsing the rest of the family.
“It’s no surprise they have endured such a degrading time from such a willing British media, when the same just isn’t true elsewhere in the world.”
‘The Telling Detail’
As part of a three-year special investigation into the professional and personal conduct of Dan Wootton, Byline Times has spoken to several sources with connections to the royal households about how the partner of Christian Jones, a publicist, came to be paid £4,000 by Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun in August 2019 – allegedly for articles relating to the Sussexes.
It is understood that the professional publicist admits to receiving the payments, but has claimed they were for other stories about a reality television star with a similar name to the Duchess of Sussex.
Jones has always denied being the source of any unauthorised information about the Sussexes getting into the press, including details of a written summary that Prince Harry had given Prince Charles in December 2019 of plans to move his family to North America, which Wootton reported initially on the front page of The Sun on 7 January 2020, before running day after day of negative coverage.
In his bestselling book Spare, the Duke of Sussex said Wootton’s information included a “telling detail” about an offer to relinquish their titles. “There was only one document on Earth in which that detail was mentioned – my private and confidential letter to my father,” he writes. “To which a shockingly, damningly small number of people had access. We hadn’t mentioned it to even our closest friends.”
Byline Times can reveal how the story, so-called Megxit, was published on the same day the Sussexes were planning their own announcement. It prompted a constitutional crisis and wrongly claimed that Prince Harry had blindsided his then 93-year-old grandmother – provoking a widespread public backlash – when, in fact, according to Spare, the Queen had been aware of it since 3 January.
In the book – in which Wootton is referred to as a “sad little man” – Prince Harry revealed how a further meeting set up with the Queen was blocked by palace staff and how she had already signed-off on a previous plan for her grandson and Meghan to move in part to South Africa.
Two well-placed sources have confirmed to this newspaper that Prince Charles’ private secretary Sir Clive Alderton and the then Lord Chamberlain, Lord Peel, a close friend of Prince Charles, strongly urged Prince Harry to have Jones’ name stripped from the record.
It followed an internal inquiry conducted by Simon Case, then the private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge, and a close colleague of Jones, who concluded that – having heard him deny the allegations that he leaked confidential information – there was no case to answer.
However, Byline Times has learned that Jones and his partner had already been named specifically in anonymous but highly detailed whistleblower testimony – which included an internal News UK ‘ZC’ contributor accounting code – purportedly from an administrator within The Sun, which was deemed credible enough to warrant referral to the Metropolitan Police, and which was integral to the legal letter.
EXCLUSIVE
Revealed: The Emails Behind the Royal ‘Cash-For-Leaks’ Affair
Detailed but anonymous testimony from insiders at The Sun sat at the heart of cash-for-leaks allegations involving a royal official and the newspaper’s former top editor Dan Wootton. Now, Byline Times can publish the details for the first time
Dan Evans
‘No One Wanted that Stuff to End Up in a Courtroom’
Part of the testimony, which was initially supplied to the respected retired investigative journalist Nick Davies, reads: “I think the publicist’s ZC number is ZC634***. My friend thinks there was a payment for £3,000 made around the 15th of July last year [2019] for a story about the Duchess of Sussex and her nannies which was published on 28 June. There was also a payment of £1,000 made for a story about godparents to Meghan’s son.”
A second source with links to the royal households told Byline Times that the “Christian Jones problem promised to drag the hidden dealings between the palaces and the press into the public domain”.
“That was deemed highly undesirable by the offices of Prince Charles and Prince William because there was always lots of horse-trading going on with the editors and their correspondents to ensure favourable coverage and protection when scandals broke,” the source continued. “No one wanted that stuff to end up in a courtroom. Harry and Meghan were expendable, but the heirs and their wives were not.
“It sent a chill through Clarence House [for the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall] and Kensington Palace [for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge]. But the Sussexes – particularly Harry – were very keen to get to the bottom of it all.
“He wanted to know how their private information kept being spun into negative headlines in the biggest newspapers. He and Meghan had been stung very badly by the timing and manner of Wootton’s reporting on their plans to live part of the year abroad, which wasn’t even a new idea as the Queen had previously given her blessing for a move to South Africa, which hadn’t worked out.
“And then detailed intelligence had come up to suggest Wootton was paying the partner of a Kensington Palace official, who had a lot of access, for stories about his family. Harry seemed pretty determined to get to the bottom of it.
“A view was quickly taken within the royal households that everything needed to be brought under control. The removal of the transition funding, which Prince Charles knew was his son’s only lifeline to keeping safe, was considered a very effective way of trying to bring Harry and Meghan to heel in the UK. But it didn’t work.”
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Another source explained the mechanics of the royal institution’s competing media strategies.
They told Byline Times: “You need to understand the competition that is constantly in play between the offices of the senior members of the Royal Family. Each has their own staff and their own agendas. The primary objective is to protect the institution of the monarchy. Charles and Camilla are obviously at the top of the tree, and were even when the Queen was alive; William and Kate next. Anything that threatens the hierarchy, or the public perception of it, is a problem to be dealt with.
“Quite often these problems are tackled through the tactical use of the press. The offices of each family member have their own relationships with the very top people at the newspapers. If there are specific messages they wish to express, then it will usually be through the Mail, Mail on Sunday, and The Sun, or less frequently through The Times and Sunday Times. These papers continually report briefings spoon-fed from the palace without questioning them.
“This is why it was such a problem when Christian Jones was named in those legal letters. Whether it was true or not true that information Jones collected in the course of his work was ending up in The Sun, was not really the point.
“The point is that the Royal Family is doing deals and trades with the press all the time for favourable coverage and protection and to maintain public relevance. The naming of Christian Jones threatened to shine a light on the entire unethical relationship between the institution and the press barons and that could not be tolerated and had to be punished.”
And so it appears that the monarchy chose to side with a press secretary over Prince Harry.
Shifting Allegiances
Despite not holding a formal remit from The Sun to cover royal matters, Wootton – who was the newspaper’s executive editor for show-business and television coverage until he departed in 2021 to become the star presenter for GB News – started taking an increasing interest in royal stories in 2018.
On 13 March 2019, Wootton published an article in The Sun about an alleged falling out between Prince William and Kate and the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley, David Rocksavage and Rose Hanbury, whom the paper dubbed Kate’s “rural rival”. For reasons that are not clear, the article was subsequently removed from The Sun’s website, but remained widely reported elsewhere.
A former friend of Wootton’s told Byline Times that the journalist’s allegiance appeared to quickly shift from one prince to another.
“Dan hated Prince William until around May 2019,” they said. “Behind closed doors, he didn’t have a good word for him. He was always talking about his attitude. But Dan never criticised Harry, really. He never seemed to have much interest at all. Then, suddenly in the summer of 2019, he switched. Basically, he was hating on Harry and Meghan. He had previously been obsessed with Prince William. And then he switched to the Sussexes.”
Byline Times put a series of detailed questions to a lawyer for the Royal Family, a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Dan Wootton, Christian Jones, Jones’ partner, and Simon Case.
Dan Evans and Tom Latchem are former colleagues of Dan Wootton’s from the News of the World between 2007 and 2011. None of the sources or analysts cited either in this story or wider investigation were paid
‘Reckless to the Point of Madness’: How the Murdoch Empire Hacked British Politics
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This week, News Group Newspapers – the publisher of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World – agreed a six-figure settlement with former Liberal Democrat minister Chris Huhne over a phone-hacking and intrusion claim. It also settled 11 other cases, including those of singer Melanie Chisholm, and actors Keith Allen and Catherine Tate.
Rupert Murdoch's company News Corp has now paid out a total of £1.2 billion in settlement of claims of unlawful privacy intrusion.
In the latest edition of Prospect magazine’s Media Confidential podcast, its Editor Alan Rusbridger – under whose editorship the Guardian newspaper exposed the phone-hacking scandal in 2011 – interviews former Guardian journalist Nick Davies, whose reporting revealed how claims of 'one rogue reporter’ masked the widespread use of hacking at the News of the World.
In this extract from the podcast, Davies explores the significance of the Huhne settlement.
'A Weapon' to Attack those 'Causing a Political Obstruction’
There were two big headlines. First, the Murdoch people carried on hacking voicemails for many years longer than we have previously understood, and did so in a way which was so reckless.
The second big headline is that, whereas all of the hacking we knew about already was about trying to get stories about people's personal lives, this, or at least a significant part of it, appears to have been devoted to advancing Rupert Murdoch's commercial interests, specifically his attempt to take over all of BSkyB.
The implication of that is that there were senior people organising it. It wouldn't be the familiar names from the News of the World newsroom. It would be somebody high up in the hierarchy. And somewhere up there, there's not only Rupert Murdoch but more immediately on the scene his son James.
I would describe it as a strong case of circumstantial evidence, which falls short of anything like a smoking gun. There isn't an email from A to B saying 'guess what, I just hacked Chris Huhne's email and discovered the following info'. So, as circumstantial cases go, it's strong, but I think it's not without doubt.
When we talk about the circumstantial evidence here, some of it is familiar stuff. People saying 'oh yeah, I remember my mobile phone would go, and when I picked it up, there was nobody there'. (If you're going to hack someone's voicemail, you have to get through when they're not answering the phone). 'I would show up for some meeting and there would be a photographer there. How the hell did they know I was going to be there? How on earth did they get this information?' So, there's that kind of foundation layer of circumstantial evidence.
The media company has now paid to settle a claim that alleges the involvement in, or at least the knowledge of, illegal activities by senior executives
Brian Cathcart
There are two other types of evidence extracted from the Murdoch company on the orders of the judge hearing the Huhne case.
First, records of payments to private investigators. And the second – which is the most important – is the records of phone calls made from Murdoch HQ in Wapping to the three senior Lib Dem MPs we're talking about here: Chris Huhne, Vince Cable and Norman Lamb.
What you see over a period of time is nearly 900 calls coming from the Wapping Murdoch building to these three MPs. The three MPs say 'but we weren't getting calls from The Sun or the News of the World', which are the people involved here. 'What are these calls for?' And some of them are suspiciously short. A reporter calls a politician, it's going to be a complicated conversation, at least 10 minutes, maybe longer. This is a minute or two, over and over again.
The private investigator invoices, and the calls from Wapping, happen in clusters. If we apply that circumstantial evidence to a timeline, you see a very interesting picture developing.
First of all, in late 2005, and early 2006, Charles Kennedy was the Leader of the Liberals. There's a problem with alcohol. He loses the leadership. There's an election with four candidates. And there is tremendous activity by the News of the World and The Sun hiring private investigators. We can see the payments going through, and the overwhelming majority of these short, nearly 900, mysterious calls are coming through the main switchboard cluster around the Charles Kennedy story and the election bid.
Two of the targets of that hacking, Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten, have separately settled, and it's been accepted that they were being hacked. Later that year, everything goes wrong when the police bust the News of the World's royal correspondent Clive Goodman in August 2006, seven months after the election hacking. Come the spring of 2009, as far as the official version of events is concerned, all of the phone-hacking has stopped.
Suddenly, the News of the World and The Sun pick up on Chris Huhne as a target. He's seeing somebody he's not married to. Suddenly, you've got this cluster of PI (private investigator) activity and mysterious, short phone calls from the Wapping hub number. That suggests to me that the Murdoch company really does think it's above the law and it can do what the hell it likes.
They carry on doing that with clusters after the Guardian starts publishing these stories that cause them such trouble. Within days of the Milly Dowler story in July 2011, the are clusters of PI activity and mysterious hub calls going into Vince Cable. There’s a phase in December 2011 when Lord Justice Leveson is sitting, hearing evidence based on the material that's come out. They're still hacking phones while that's going on. This is reckless to the point of madness.
There's a really interesting phase around Murdoch's attempt to take over BSkyB.
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We have the election in May 2010; the Coalition is now in Government. On 10 June, the Murdochs’ very smooth French lobbyist, Fred Michel, goes in to see Norman Lamb, a senior Lib Dem MP who is, at this point, parliamentary private secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. And guess what? There are six short hub calls to Lamb's phone on and around that day, 10 June, and six others to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, who's going to decide whether to issue an 'intervention notice' and start investigating the competition implications of the BSkyB bid.
That cluster of phone calls at that moment looks very much like somebody on the commercial side not looking for blackmail stuff and kompromat, but just trying to find out which way the ball is bouncing so that Fred can do better than perhaps he might be able to at the meeting with Norman Lamb.
At the beginning of September 2009, The New York Times (thanks to Alan Rusbridger’s initiative) publish a big story on phone-hacking. CEO Rebekah Brooks writes to Fred Michel an email saying 'what can we do?' Michel writes back in terms, this is slightly chilling: "The key will be for prominent Lib Dems, like Clegg and Huhne, to stay silent on it, and I think they will.”
A few weeks later, Vince Cable says 'I'm issuing an intervention notice. We're going to investigate this bid'. Two things happen.
One, we get lots of hub calls coming in – there's lots and lots of apparent evidence of espionage on Cable, the Business Secretary handling this huge deal, and on Norman Lamb, Nick Clegg's right-hand.
Will Lewis, senior executive in the Murdoch company, persuaded his old pals at the Daily Telegraph to send two young freelance journalists to Vince Cable's constituency meeting, where they secretly recorded him saying, essentially, 'I'm going to stop Murdoch doing this'. That recording meant that Vince Cable lost his job. Vince Cable didn't go quiet, so he lost his job. All of this is surrounded by these hub calls and PI invoices.
Granted, there's an element of doubt. But I think we are entitled to say that the Murdoch company used the News of the World as a weapon to try to attack the people who were causing a political obstruction and to appear to have engaged in illegal criminal activity to gather evidence which would assist them in doing that.
When people criticise Rupert Murdoch, they often think it's all about him intervening in the editorial line of his papers. That's actually the secondary issue. The primary one is Murdoch undermines, and occasionally overthrows, democratically elected governments. And never before, in all the research that I was doing, have we been able to see it happening in such fine detail.
Listen to the full interview in Prospect magazine’s Media Confidential podcast
‘News Corp Was Out to Get Me’: Chris Huhne Condemns Murdoch Empire after Settlement for Phone-Hacking and Intrusion
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The former Liberal Democrat Cabinet minister Chris Huhne today accepted a six-figure sum from the publisher of The Sun and News of the World in settlement of a phone-hacking and intrusion claim – and promptly demanded a new police investigation into the Murdoch company.
In a statement outside court, Huhne accused named executives, including current News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks, of targeting him with the aim of destroying a vocal critic of the media multinational owned by Rupert Murdoch.
"News Corp was out to get me," he said. "My case is unprecedented because the unlawful information-gathering was directed not by journalists but by News Corp executives. The Metropolitan Police should reopen its investigation."
He had wanted the case to go to trial but late in the day the Murdoch company offered a settlement sufficiently large that he could not refuse it without assuming unacceptable financial risks.
Although the company had earlier drafted a defence challenging some of his allegations, Huhne asked today: "Why would they now pay up if they could prove I was wrong?"
His case is significant in several respects besides the questions it raises about the role of managers.
It is the first of three brought by senior Lib Dem politicians (Sir Vince Cable and Sir Norman Lamb will follow) alleging hacking and other illegal information gathering that was driven by political rather than journalistic motives.
Three Sensible, Non-Radical Things Labour Could Do to Reform our News Media
Nothing drastic is required if a new government is to tackle the obvious crisis in the way we get our news, while the benefits of change could be enormous
Brian Cathcart
It takes this intrusive activity into the highest reaches of government. Huhne presented evidence (some of it challenged in the News defence) of an intensive campaign against him that continued when he was a Cabinet minister in the Cameron Coalition Government, and sitting on ministerial committees such as the National Security Committee.
He presented evidence that these activities continued at least until 2011 – five years after the company publicly claimed it had been halted.
It is the latest case to include extensive allegations of illegal activities by The Sun newspaper. Hacking by the now defunct News of the World has long been beyond any possibility of denial, but the Murdoch organisation has yet to admit the involvement of The Sun – despite having already paid large sums to settle a number of claims against it.
As Huhne said in his statement, News has now paid to settle a claim that alleges the involvement in, or at least the knowledge of, illegal activities by senior executives.
"The key News corporation executives were... a director in charge of political and external affairs, and long-standing Murdoch lieutenant Rebekah Brooks. Both were overseen by family member James Murdoch," he said.
A new police investigation should focus on directors and managers, he added.
Brooks was among Murdoch executives tried in 2014 for offences related to illegal news gathering and a subsequent cover-up. She was acquitted, while Andy Coulson – former Sun editor and director of communications for Prime Minister Cameron – was jailed.
Huhne’s own political career ended in 2013 when he was jailed for perverting the course of justice in relation to a motoring offence.
According to the campaigning group Hacked Off, today’s settlement brings the total spent by the Murdoch organisation on settling hacking-related claims and associated legal costs to £1.2 billion over about a dozen years. All of Huhne’s legal costs are being met by The Sun’s holding company, News Group Newspapers.
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His claim against the papers was built largely on information that the company had been legally obliged to disclose, and it painted a picture of multi-faceted surveillance and intrusion by Murdoch employees on a nightmarish scale.
Among the allegations were that:
In two periods of a few days, each in 2009 and 2010, private investigators were paid a total of more than £10,000 to follow him.
Between 2006 and 2011, 222 calls were made from the Murdoch headquarters at Wapping to Huhne’s mobile phone which bore the hallmarks of voicemail interception.
Some 20 private investigators and investigation companies were commissioned for tasks including the illegal accessing of Huhne’s medical records, credit standing, utility bills, bank details and telephone records including his list of ‘friends and family’ numbers.
Messages allegedly accessed included both highly private matters – Huhne’s marriage was breaking up and he was forming a new relationship – and highly sensitive political communications with political figures not only in the Lib Dems but with others such as Labour Home Secretaries Charles Clarke and Alan Johnson.
Huhne said today that the "issues in this case are much wider than previous phone-hacking cases".
Former BBC reporter and producer Patrick Howse explores the damage done to the broadcaster in its attempts to appease enemies that want it destroyed
Patrick Howse
"News Corporation ordered unlawful information gathering in the UK that demonstrated exactly the same contempt for the democratic process shown by Fox when it knowingly lied about Trump winning the presidential election," he added.
"Searching for political kompromat, spying on government ministers for political gain and knowingly telling repeated lies to maintain sales and ratings should all be utterly unacceptable in any responsible media company, yet are the stock in trade of the two Murdoch companies [News and Fox].
"The US, UK and Australian political systems have allowed the Murdochs to become far too powerful. I confidently predict there will be little or no reporting of this settlement in The Times, Sunday Times, Sun, Sun on Sunday, TalkTV, Times Radio, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Marketwatch, Australian, Sky News Australia, News.com.au, Fox News or Fox TV stations because they are all owned by the Murdochs."
A News UK spokeswoman told The Times that Huhne's allegations were denied.
She said: "It is strongly denied that there was any corporate motive or direction to obtain information unlawfully. Huhne was a senior politician and stories published were legitimate and in the public interest."
New Charity Launched to Tackle Abuse by the Press as Government Starts to Repeal Leveson Inquiry Law
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A new charity has been launched to offer advice to members of the public affected by “unethical behaviour” in the press, and to push for higher standards in the media.
The Press Justice Project launched at an event inside Parliament on Tuesday 28 November, with a pledge to join up with advocacy groups working on climate change, violence against women, the rights of migrants, racism, sexuality-based discrimination and press intrusion. The group hopes to raise awareness of the impacts of unethical press reporting "right across society."
The PJP says it will complement the work of campaign group Hacked Off, which is backing the project. PJP will offer advisory and educational services directly to the public on how to tackle wrongdoing by newspapers, while Hacked Off continues to focus on the legal reforms it says are needed to "address low standards in the press".
The event was hosted by Lord Lipsey, a Labour peer and former journalist who was outspoken during the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking.
Lord Lispey told the event the Government tried to “buy” the support of the press in 2019 by pledging to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which was passed after the Leveson inquiry following the phone-hacking scandal.
Section 40, if enacted, would mean publishers would be required to sign up to an independent press regulator to handle complaints, in a similar way to how broadcasters are regulated by Ofcom. Ministers are currently trying to scrap the law in its current Media Bill, which is soon to be scrutinised in the Commons.
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Section 40 is strongly opposed by newspapers, who back "self-regulation". If the post-Leveson inquiry law came into force, any news organisation that has not signed up to the official regulator would have to pay both sides’ legal costs of libel trials - unless a judge rules otherwise - even if they win. Newspapers said it would have a “chilling effect” on investigative journalism.
But publishers signed up to official regulator, Impress, would see their costs limited in libel cases. Hacked Off says it would also tackle controversial Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), a form of “lawfare” used by wealthy individuals and firms that can currently see news organisations face crippling costs even if they have a strong defence.
Lord Lipsey added: “Just before the [2019] general election, [the Conservatives[ promised in their manifesto to repeal the legislation. Do you think that was because they thought it was a bad piece of legislation? No, they had all signed up to it. It was a crude attempt to buy the support of the press, and it worked…Now they are trying to fulfil that pledge in the current Media Bill.”
But he added that the Lords “are not just going to let this go through” and opposition parties are likely to heavily scrutinise the repeal.
Boris Johnson ‘Prioritised Views of Telegraph Over the Science’, his Director of Comms Tells Inquiry
The disgraced ex-PM also claimed “COVID is just nature’s way of dealing with old people” the official inquiry heard.
Josiah Mortimer
Labour has said it will oppose repeal of Section 40, with a spokesperson telling the Guardian in July: “The government is wrong to muddy the waters with a debate about repealing section 40, which is unnecessary as it has never been enacted and so repeal will not make any substantive difference.”
Among the speakers at the launch was Danielle Bennett, a beautician who said her business was “destroyed” by untrue allegations in an article in the Mail on Sunday in December 2017. She attempted suicide after an undercover reporter went into her home following a complaint of poor service - despite Trading Standards having found in her favour. Bennett brought a libel action against the Mail’s publishers, which was eventually settled with a payout and apology.
Bennett said: “Soon after the article came out, I really lost myself. I stopped working, lived on cups of tea, stayed in bed all day every day and I couldn’t concentrate on anything...I lost so much weight. I became obsessed with needing to move house because neither of us felt safe in our home.
“Even my son was affected – his behaviour changed. I didn’t notice because I was feeling lost…but his school noticed. My son was bullied at school and people in our village would make comments about the article to us. I felt like we were the disgrace of our village.”
IPSO eventually ordered a correction on page two of the newspaper – albeit much smaller than the article attacking her. However, the Mail on Sunday “refused and insisted on publishing it on page eight - [and] IPSO let them,” Bennett told campaign group Hacked Off previously. Bennett now campaigns for higher standards in the press and sits on the trustee board of the Press Justice Project.
A spokesperson for the Press Justice Project said: “Everyday, people are affected by lies, intrusion or other forms of wrongdoing in the press…The PJP [will] work directly with the public, to help ordinary people affected by press wrongdoing to navigate IPSO and other complaints-handlers to get redress.” However, the group notes that IPSO upholds fewer than 1% of the complaints it receives.
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