A damning verdict and where next

Making the headlines this morning is the verdict of the Commons culture committee on the News of the World's phone tapping which the Guardian says

News International could face a judicial inquiry after a highly critical parliamentary report today accuses senior executives at its top-selling newspaper of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone hacking by its journalists.

NoW executives are accused of having "collective amnesia" and of"deliberate obfuscation" whilst Scotland yard should have

have broadened its original investigation in 2006, and not just focused on Clive Goodman, the NoW's royal reporter.

The committee claimed that some of the celebrities involved might well have had their silence bought and whilst New International is adamant that the select committee had been hijacked by MP's with a political agenda,there is no doubt that the News of the World's activities have gone a lot further than simply Clive Goodman.

Surely then the spotlight will once again fall on Andy Coulson who jumped ship when this story first broke to join the Tories.

News of the World's phone hacking claims contradicted

The controversy over the News of the World's telephone hacking techniques continues.

There are now claims that well over 100 people have had their private accounts hacked.

Three leading mobile phone companies have told the Guardian that they have discovered a total of more than 100 customers whose voicemail was accessed by the private investigator and the journalist at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

and as Nck Davies reports in that paper

This directly contradicts the official version of events promoted by the newspaper and police that there were "only a handful" of victims in the scandal.

PCC under fire over NOTW phone tapping

The PCC's ruling over the News of the World phone tapping scandal has according to the Guardian this morning been attacked by MP's

Its report was described as a "whitewash" and there was a promise that another inquiry, from the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, would be more rigorous.
In a report published, the PCC also said it was not "materially misled" by executives at Rupert Murdoch's tabloid and that it did not believe senior managers at the paper knew reporters had illegally intercepted phone message left on mobile phones.

The new ruling centred around the Guardian's revelation that the paper had paid out £1m in confidential damages and legal fees to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, and two others, over hacking claims.

However

While acknowledging the Guardian had "produced one new significant fact" in its revelations of the Gordon Taylor settlement, and had performed a "perfectly legitimate function" in further scrutinising activity at the Sunday paper, it added that in presenting its story, the Guardian had obligations requiring it to "take care not to publish distorted or misleading information".

Newspaper sales continue to fall but some hope for some Sunday's in September

There were one or two interesting quirks in yesterday's ABC's.

Interestingly both the Observer and the Sunday Times saw their circulation's rise in Septemeber.Cynics may well put the former's rise down to talk of closure though GMG scotched speculation that the paper may close by confirming it will continue publishing and is to be revamped.

The News of the World also bucked the trend with its circulation up 0.26% month on month in September, to 3,129,162.

Sunday sales though continue to fall year on year and the Independent's saw a 2.72% drop in sales last month compared with August and a 14.29% decline year on year.

The Mail on Sunday also took a battering having posted the largest year-on-year fall of any title in the sector with a 10.11% drop in circulation to 2,012,741 copies.

Breaking the law can be justified in certain circumstances

According to Brendan O'Neill the Guardian is a greater threat to our society than the News of the World.

Writing in the First Post,O'Neill says that

That oh-so-worthy broadsheet's campaign against the News of the World poses a potentially far greater threat to liberty and press freedom than anything the tacky Sunday tabloid might have done.

arguing that

If journalists did not sometimes break the law then the truth would remain hidden

Now that can be a fair point sometimes but when it appears that it is used for undercover celeb scandals or sportspeople then the argument is surely blown out of the water.

Roy Greenslade is quick to the defence of his employers as he writes that

The point about the News of the World's activities is that they were not investigating high crime and misdemeanours. They were not exposing police corruption. They were not acting in the public interest.
What O'Neill needs to grasp is that unprincipled and trivial journalism by the News of the World puts serious, inquiring journalism on the back foot.

News of the World embargoed?

Apparently yesterday's News of the World pulled a story about a snap general election after concerns were voiced about its accuracy.

Press Gazette reports this morning that

the piece claimed that the prime minister held a "secret meeting" in his Downing Street study on Tuesday with advisers and had "thrashed out a plan" to take the Conservatives by surprise and call an election next summer – a year earlier than expected.
It also claimed that the new secretary of state for business, Lord Mandelson, and Brown's former press secretary Charlie Whelan attended the meeting.

A record for descriptive horror

The Sun and the News of the World have never contained their reporting of their horror at the case of Karen Matthews and maybe this opening to the NOW's lead story shows how much they abhor the family

EVIL Karen Matthews had a sick SECRET AFFAIR with the misfit who helped kidnap her daughter Shannon, we can reveal today.
The twisted mum seduced sinister Michael Donovan at the FUNERAL of her pervert partner Craig Meehan’s dad.

Is this a record for the number of descriptive adjectives in an opening par

Some thoughts on the Mosley Case.

The decision by Mr Justice Eady to award Max Mosley £60,000 in punitive damages after successfully suing the News of the World will no doubt set the legal media world on fire over the next few days.

At the one extreme,that his Lordship has chosen to interpret the Human Rights act in a specifically individual way which will repercussions for journalists for some time.

On the other that,Justice Eady has upheld the right of every UK citizen to a private life.The ruling was that Mosley had

reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to his sexual activities no matter how "unconventional".

This centres on two things.The first being that Mosley was not considered an important enough citizen to warrant a public interest.Head of Formula 1?.I will leave you to make your own conclusions.
The second is the Nazi connection and this really was down to the News of the World's badly cobbled together defence.

Editor Colin Myler acknowledged after the ruling that

The judge has ruled that Mr Mosley's activities did not involve Nazi role-play as we had reported, but has acknowledged that the News of the World had an honest belief that a Nazi theme was involved during the orgy,"

Roy Greenslade comes down hard on the paper and lists five points in which he feels the paper acted wrongly

1. it failed to have the German dialogue in the S&M orgy translated. Why not? Potentially that might have provided better "evidence" of a Nazi theme than the English speech.

2. Myler admitted having seen little of the video himself. Surely an editor about to publish a sensational story should have concerned himself with every possible detail in advance of publication?

3. Myler expressed surprise that his reporter had failed to obtain a signed statement from Woman E before printing her story. Should he not have known that from the beginning?

4. the inbuilt, old-fashioned anti-German prejudice of the staff meant that they confused German play-acting for Nazism. To speak in German or with a German accent does not make a person a Nazi.

5. the paper failed to put any of the allegations to Mosley prior to publication. Yet there is a clear requirement for journalists to do so. (It is ironic that a couple of years ago when I wrote a story that called into question the veracity of certain NoW investigations its editor and legal department not only required that I put the allegations to the paper but demanded a right of reply).

This is why the case was lost,one feels,it is unlikely that the ruling will have a long term effect on privacy cases

A book by a non journalist aims to attack tabloid journalism

A book about journalism but not by a journalist is deeply critical of the profession claiming that tabloid journalism is causing suffering in the name of sensationalism.

Peter Burden, interviewed in this morning's Independent,

is so fired up by what he sees as the News of the World's slide into the gutter that he has written a book about it, setting out in remarkable detail how the paper operates and how indifferent he feels it is to the suffering of those it exposes.

He says of the tabloid industry

"I'd always been a news watcher and I was getting more and more appalled at standards which started dropping in the mid '90s. Once it was understood that celebrity trivia was an international commodity – you can sell stories all over the world, which Murdoch recognised and that's why he appointed someone like Piers Morgan as editor – all the emphasis moved to celeb stories, to the cost of the one or two genuine stories they used to do."

Does anyone deserve this?

Much has been written in the Tabloid press about Heather Mills McCartney but some of the words in this morning's News of the World are unforgivable.

The paper claims an exclusive that Mills had a secret lover for six months during her marriage to Sir Paul and

Mucca romped with handsome film editor Tim Steel THE NIGHT BEFORE joining Macca on a romantic Caribbean Valentine's holiday.

Whether right or wrong can the headlines

Rumpy Stumpy and the phrase "The one-legged ex-hooker" ever be justified in the press.

Whilst shopping this morning in a well known Supermarket chain,I was offered a free lip gloss for my Valentine if I bought a copy of the News of the World,perhaps you can guess my reply.

News of the World to launch a new glossy

The media section of the Indy this morning carries an interview with the editor of the News of the World,Colin Myler.

Myler took over at a low point for the paper after its court reporter had been jailed for intercepting royal telephone messages which led to the resignation of its previous editor Andy Coulson.

His tactics have included inviting in the Press Complaints commission for a chat,instilling in his staff the need for quality control

I said to [staff], 'Look, if you're going to do kiss and tells, let's have international kiss and tells, premiership kiss and tells. [Not] some Coca-Cola player who no one has ever heard of... or the vicar who has run off with the church choir organist.

And has tried to broaden its news coverage

"We didn't have enough variety, it was too samey." So the paper under Myler has "more consumer stories and more political stories that I would regard as not just politics with a capital P, but stuff that affects all of us", such as reports on government spending on breast cancer screening.

The Sunday is to launch a new magazine in February called Fabulous.Aimed at the closer market it will carry items on fashion,celebratory and real life.

The return of Maddie Mania

Both the News of the World and the Express lead this Sunday morning with Maddy stories.

By far the more significant,the NOW has an artists impression of a suspect based on

new sensational clues

that the paper has unearthed.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/2001_maddie.shtml

These amount to

Granny Gail Cooper, 50, was staying just 600 YARDS from the McCann family's Portuguese holiday flat when she had THREE separate chilling encounters with the moustachioed mystery man.

Quite why it has taken so long for this to come to light is rather baffling,though the paper maintains

Mrs Cooper rang police on May 7 and gave a statement at her home on May 21 she heard no more. But it is now clear how important her account—and the facial likeness built from it—may be.

Perhaps far more worrying is the front Page of the Sunday Express which reports that the pressure over the last few months on the McCann's

THE lives of Kate and Gerry McCann are moving in “opposite directions” because they have developed strikingly different ways of coping with the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine.

Not surprising really but is it really necessary to inform us of this? The story seems to have come from an amalgaman of comments from family sources.,close friends and neighbours.

The mental and emotional agony they’re going through is unbearable,” said another friend. “We worry that’s it’s putting a strain on their relationship.”

Yes and........

'fake sheikh' strikes again and Express reveals plot ot kill the Queen

Two good stories in the Sunday's to get tongues wagging

This mornings News of the World carries an exclusve by Mazher Mahmood that the father of Liverpool footballer,

is the evil muscle-bound boss of a seedy crack den.The man credited with guiding the £6.7million Liverpool star to success runs the secret drugs empire at his sleazy council flat.
We filmed Gary Pennant there selling cheap rocks of killer cocaine and deadly heroin as a constant stream of addicts and prostitutes shambled in.

The Express meanwhile claims

AL Qaeda terrorists posing as TV crews planned to blow up the Queen by smuggling explosives into last year’s Commonwealth summit.
Two huge outside broadcast vans belonging to the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation were seized after a tip-off from intelligence agents.
As a result, UBC was unable to transmit live pictures of key summit events, including the Queen’s historic address to the Ugandan parliament on November 22.

And two weeks later

It didn't take the News of the World long to agree with the nation and turn on the sailors that sold their story to the papers.

Arthur Batchelor,you may recall was the youngest who was most upset after the Iranians pinched his eye pop.

Well the paper has pictures of the very same lording it up whilst on compassionate leave

"POKING out his tongue and dribbling alcopops, the youngest Brit seaman held hostage in Iran giggles hysterically as a pal holds a toy gun to his throat in a crowded nightclub."


"One Royal Marine said last night: "This is disgraceful—an insult to all his colleagues.
"One minute Batchelor is blubbing like a baby and the next he is taking the p*** out of what happened to him and his mates. They all went through a tough time and many are still traumatised by their awful experience. But to turn it into a joke isn't on."