Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail "hacked by News of the World"

[WWWeed]

I'm not arguing for or against regulating the press. I am saying using the 'freedom of the press' as an excuse against regulation is an erroneous one.

There is a fine line. As someone suggested an unregulated press is required to regulate the government, but at the same time we cant have journalists obtaining stories at any cost.

 

[London_Calling]

I'm not sure about the regulation issue. What went wrong here was the law was not enforced - there is a law, specifically RIPA.

The Met turned a blind eye and took bribes, and newspaper features culture propagated on the back of that.

 

[_angel_]

From Billy Bragg, Here's the new song I wrote yesterday and debuted tonight: Never Buy The Sun

What did the poor people of Garforth ever do to deserve this?

 

[DotCommunist]

leave him alone, its not as bad as 'sexuality'

 

[_angel_]

we get the press we deserve, and an awful lot of people deserve the notw.

How does this actually work as an argument? Some people like A so a lot of other people, who don't, have to suffer because of it. This is the same argument about goverments.... so about 1/4 to 1/3 of people actually vote conservative, the other 3/4 "deserve" the tories. Where does this argument actually end?

 

[London_Calling]

It's also bogus when the law isn't being enforced; it's more accurate to say 'we' get the press bribery of the Met allows.

 

[Louloubelle]

I would be interested to hear from any cop posters here regarding the claims by the NOTW that they were responsible for exposing many evil criminals.

For example, they claim to have exposed a Bulgarian network of pimps and people traffickers here http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/notw/exclusive/e_news/1011377/ePaper-article.html

I am curious as to how many of these exposes have resulted in criminal convictions and how many have hindered investigations. I understand that newspapers investigating and reporting serious crimes often put an embargo on stories, and first submit their intelligence to the cops for them to investigate prior to publication. I also understand that the NOTW is one newspaper that cops (apart from the corrupt ones obviously) do not have a cooperative relationship with. I was once told be a cop, long time ago mind, that the NOTW cared less about securing convictions and more about selling newspapers and that I should never, ever trust them. Not a big surprise to anyone, however I am still genuinely interested to check out whether the NOTW claims to have foiled the activities of child abusers, people traffickers and other serious criminals are completely untrue, partially untrue or whatever.

I imagine that their claims are bullshit but I would really like to know the truth.

edited to add

in the above story about people traffickers the following text appears

He agreed to sell our man four girls for 9,000 (£8,100) and warned him to ship them individually to avoid suspicion.

Nasko shook hands with our man and said excitedly: "Our empires can prosper."

Not if we can help it. Our evidence is available to the authorities

So it seems that the NOTW published this story first (presumably because it was their final edition) and then announced that "Our evidence is available to the authorities" rather than to pass the evidence on and then wait before publishing the story would not impede a police investigation.

Just thinking aloud.

 

[Geri]

leave him alone, its not as bad as 'sexuality'

Your laws do not apply to me

 

[ViolentPanda]

schaudenfruede for the masses.

Not really, not unless you're using a novel definition of schadenfreude, anyway.

it caters for a base human characteristic...

...And?

Sexual activity "caters for a base human characteristic", but I presume you're not saying that people should stop fucking?

You're getting the baby and the bath-water mixed up. Legislate against the media being able to commit criminal actions under the guise of "public interest" by all means, but don't try to stop people being people. You'll be on a hiding to nothing.

and shouldn't be allowed monopoly or political influence.

That much is quite obvious, from history as well as from current events.

 

[smokedout]

I see they have gone for a 'look at how much good we have done' angle, obviously failing to mention all of the shit storms they have caused and families they have ripped apart.

The only adverts in the final edition are for charities (to make NI look sympathetic) and other NI companies!

lots of ads in the magazine though

 

[ViolentPanda]

i just think it does equate to their prejudices and baser instincts however

No, it equates to your perception of "their prejudices and baser instincts", which is a different thing altogether.

You're offering a representation of NOTW readers as a somewhat homogeneous mass with broadly similar views, when News International's own research doesn't bear that out.

 

[Voley]

Fucking hell, Billy Bragg's got even shitter.

 

[ymu]

Somehow the Telegraph manages to get an interview with Met Assistant Commissioner John Yates - he who decided not to re-open the investigation.

Summed up in his own words - how the hack must have enjoyed putting in this self-destructive sentence:

Fuckin' hell. He's basically saying "I was too important to look at actual evidence".

“To have given the go ahead for a full review of a case of that nature would have involved four or five people and five or six months work and a lot of resources and in July 2009 why would I do that?” With assurances from the CPS and investigating officers, Yates concluded rapidly there was nothing to be gained from opening the case up again.

“In terms of proper use of our resources I am not going to re-investigate, for the same offence.”

But as queries poured in from celebrities and politicians asking if they had been victims of hacking, Yates realised the evidence in the bin bags needed to be entered on to a computer database. He employed a team of ten to input the information but still failed to re-open the investigation. “I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags. I am supposed to be an Assistant Commissioner. Perhaps I should have been more demanding. I am accountable, and it happened on my watch, and it’s clear I could have done more,” he said.

“If I had known then what I know now of course we’d have widened it. I could have handed it over to the specialist crime directorate.” The decision, he admitted, “was a pretty crap one”

 

[ViolentPanda]

we get the press we deserve, and an awful lot of people deserve the notw.
it reflected their world view back at them, as do all papers.

Inaccurate.

Newspapers aren't a reflection of their consumers, their representations of the interests of power dressed in whatever clothes it's convenient to wrap them in, in order to "sell" them.

That the media (and bear in mind that the word "media" connotes "mediation") is able to do so is more to do with how individuals interpollate with the ideas and identities represented by that media than with the media reflecting their own prejudices back at them.

For example, The Daily Mail's support of Oswald Mosley didn't reflect the support of the Mail's readership for Mosley, far from it. The BUF never had membership numbers or donation figures representing more than an insignificant fraction of consumers of the right-wing media of the time. It reflected the publisher's support for both Mosley's programme and for Mosley as a fellow member of the ruling classes.

the shit in papers is a direct reflection of the shit in people, and at some point this general outrage needs to be tempered by that knowledge. even killing off the murdochs won't change that, someone will replace them to cater to the same market. the digger is just someone who operates a daily, mass opinion poll.
he knows better than anyone what people are interested in, he gets the results every day. certain types of story sell, so those are the ones that get printed. certain names sell papers, as do certain things. so long as the scandal sheets have no political power, they can continue to trade in embarrassing gossip.
but that sort of salacious detail is used to influence politics, so something has to change.

It's nice to know you're so optimistic about humankind.

You're projecting your own perceptions and experiences onto an entire nation. That's not particularly sensible.

 

[claphamboy]

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=11921519

lots of ads in the magazine though

The magazine would have gone to press well in advance and inserted as the rag came off the press.

 

[ViolentPanda]

clearly i said censorship and regulation are two different beasts. Should hari's articles be monitored for accuracy, for reflecting in a truthful way the events he recollected, for not misrepresenting those he is quoting and for not deliberately misleading his readership in the words he uses? Who does the monitoring? The court of public opinion relies of him being found out. Should he have been stopped from publishing stuff about Negri the was clearly untrue?

of course hari saying 'negri is a bit shit' is his opinion and he is welcome to it.

I'm not arguing for or against regulating the press. I am saying using the 'freedom of the press' as an excuse against regulation is an erroneous one.

Thing is, a decent editor who cared about accuracy would have spiked Hari's flights of fancy soon after he first indulged in one. His editor's failure to do so was as good as an endorsement to carry on. Back in the days of steam-driven presses and manual typewriters (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit!) most newsrooms of publications that liked to consider themselves reputable had people who did fact-checking, making sure that a reporter had spoken to interviewees, as well as checking the "back-story" for accuracy. Hari would have been somewhat less likely to get away with his fantasies pre-Wapping than post-Wapping.

 

[laptop]

Deleuze told us that for something to constitute an event, it must go all the way down...

We can draw a line from Thatcher to the Murdoch press and from Thatcher to the ‘Big Bang’, in which Britain’s old-boy merchant banks began their 25 year journey to becoming the Americanised investment banks that had to be rescued in 2008...

 

[temper_tantrum]

Yates & the other copper were under threat of being done over for extra-marital affairs by the NOTW. I'm sure that played no part whatsoever in their decision to back off on the investigation.
Sorry if that's been mentioned already.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

I just realised that the Dowler family were informed about the hacking in April so clearly Nick Davies was sitting on the info for months waiting for the trial to finish. What great timing.

 

[AKA pseudonym]

From Guardian Live : 1.18pm: Have staff who put together the News of the World's last ever crossword included some subtle hints for News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, the former editor who told them that the newspaper was to be shut down today?

The Independent's Whitehall Editor, Oliver Wright, has pointed out a few interesting elements of the quickie crossword on page 47. Its clues include:

Across
• Brook (6)
• lamented (8)
• Prestige (6)
• Stink (6)
• Catastrophe (8)

Down
• Digital protection
• Less bright
• Chair
• Pest
• Cease
• Criminal enterprise

 

[Treacle Toes]

From Billy Bragg, Here's the new song I wrote yesterday and debuted tonight: Never Buy The Sun

Benjamin Zephaniah

'The Blinding Sun'

I believe the Blacks are bad
...The Left is loony
God is Mad
The government’s the best we’ve had
So I read The SUN.
I believe Britain is great
And other countries imitate
I am friendly with The State,
Daily, I read The Sun
I am not too keen on foreign ones
But I don’t mind some foreign bombs
Jungle bunnies and play tom-toms,
But, I read The SUN
Man, I don’t like those Russian spies
But we don’t have none
I love lies,
I really do love Princess Di
I bet she reads The Sun
Black people rob
Women should cook
And every poet is a crook
I am told -so I don’t need to look
It’s easy in The SUN
Every hippie carries nits
And every Englishman loves tits
I love page three and other bits,
I stare into The SUN
I like playing bingo games
And witch-hunting to shame a name
But why aren’t newspapers all the same?
So why not read The SUN.
Don’t give me the truth, just give me gossip
And skeletons from people’s closets
I wanna be normal
And millions buy it,
I am blinded by The SUN

Billy Bragg is bit late.

 

[revlon]

Billy Bragg is bit late.

but he probably got there first

 

[Pickman's model]

Billy Bragg is bit shit.

*corrected for you*

 

[laptop]

Paul Mason takes a theoretically anarchist line:

The Murdoch empire fractured, a Conservative prime minister attracting bets on his resignation, the Metropolitan Police on the edge of yet another existential crisis and the political establishment in disarray.

A network of subversives would have counted that a spectacular result to achieve in a decade, let alone in a single week. But it was not subversives that achieved it - the wounds are self-inflicted.

...
It is like a nightmare scripted by Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek: key parts of the political machinery of Britain are wavering.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14093772

 

[London_Calling]

It's an interesting piece - possibly optimistic. As a (somewhat mature ) student of drama, I rather liked this:

Once it was only at places like National Theatre, with plays by David Hare and Howard Brenton, where you could see such stories aired (Hare's Pravda, about Murdoch's takeover of the Times, is worth re-reading; the script was sent by the playwright to the Culture Secretary as a submission in the BSkyB case.) Now it is everywhere, from the Batman movies, to The Matrix, to the Bond movies - leave aside series like State of Play.

It has been remarked (by Richard Bacon, I think) that these scandals are like The Wire, working series by series through every institution. But the last series of the Wire is five years old. We know the whole story already

 

[agricola]

Fuckin' hell. He's basically saying "I was too important to look at actual evidence".

He is not wrong about that - (its a shame D_B isnt still around as he would be especially useful on this) one would assume that all the actual detective work is done by people (much) further down the food chain, all he will get are summaries of what has been discovered, presented at briefings which he would have had to fit in around other stuff, nearly all of which would be of considerable significance (as an example, the Cash for Honours inquiry was going on at much the same time as this* was).

He probably did either make, or sign off on, the decision to complete the investigation before all the data had been inputted and its significance realised, though.

* edit - that is, the first investigation, which resulted in Goodman and Mulcaire being jailed.

 

[London_Calling]

^ In this context, I think it's also worth noting temper_tantrum's post at #3318

Yates, subsequent to the original investigation into hacking, got divorced after 25 years in 2008-ish. He was having a relationship with a police press sec, probably among others.

 

[laptop]

Meanwhile, the Guardian's Acting Legal Correspondent is about to publish a piece saying, as I understand the teaser, that the NotW employee who wasn't involved in illegal acts can sue News International for:

the "stigma" of being associated with the ex-employer that put them at a "serious disadvantage" of finding new work.

Relevant case is from the BCCI fallout: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldjudgmt/jd970612/malik01.htm - it was held that employees of the thoroughly corrupt bank could sue it for something akin to defamation:

Employers must take care not to damage their employees' future employment prospects, by harsh and oppressive behaviour or by any other form of conduct which is unacceptable today...

Much fun for m'learned friends

 

[agricola]

Much fun for m'learned friends

They have fucked that bit up royally - dont they also have to pay 180 days wages rather than the 90 they initially offered, because there was no actual consultation prior to them closing the paper?

 

[laptop]

dont they also have to pay 180 days wages rather than the 90 they initially offered

I'm not sure what's due in law under these circumstances. I do know that in other cases companies have found it worthwhile to offer twice the amount the redundant person first thought of, to avoid the grief and expense of finding out