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

[Pickman's model]

Ffs - take it somewhere else. Can we keep this thread focused on the actual subjet - a huge and fast moving news story - not whatever it is you are whinging about?

quite.

 

[gavman]

Anyone who sees differences and chooses to ask "why?".



Clearly.



It's true for anyone who wants to do so.



So you keep saying, but you provide nothing to substantiate your opinions except...your opinions. No facts, no data at all.

You talk about "critical thinking" as though it's a skill divorced from everyday life. It isn't. The man who studies the form of horses in order to back a horse more likely to place learns to think critically - to weigh evidence from different sources and attribute values to that evidence.

You set yourself up as an "enlightened" spectator and pass judgement on these "many" 9according to you) people who don't engage in critical thinking, but by your own lack of engagement in critical thinking on the subject, you show yourself to be guilty of what you abhor.

so how much critical thinking is going on at the heart of the anti-paedophile campaigns, or even the debate on drugs, as conducted by the tabloids?
or rational debate?

the hysterical idiots drown out reasoned debate, and i'm absolutelyfree to call them that because i suffer the hounding from the police forces working to their idiotic anti-soft drugs agenda
i don't need to see an academic paper on something to form an opinion. when being poked with a sharp stick i don't need any back up to say 'i'm being poked with a sharp stick'

and i never set myself up as 'enlightened', i just used the test of how an enlightened person might respond

 

[Pickman's model]

so how much critical thinking is going on at the heart of the anti-paedophile campaigns, or even the debate on drugs, as conducted by the tabloids?
or rational debate?

the hysterical idiots drown out reasoned debate, and i'm absolutelyfree to call them that because i suffer the hounding from the police forces working to their idiotic anti-soft drugs agenda
i don't need to see an academic paper on something to form an opinion. when being poked with a sharp stick i don't need any back up to say 'i'm being poked with a sharp stick'

and i never set myself up as 'enlightened', i just used the test of how an enlightened person might respond

i'd lay off the 'soft' drugs if i were you. in your case, the drugs don't work they just make you worse

 

[gavman]

i'd say drugs are what you need, but that would imply i cared

 

[elbows]

my feelings too elbows - am i being too optimistic do you think?

May as well be optimistic when the opportunity arises. Id rather have my hopes dashed later than never to have felt hope in the first place.

 

[ericjarvis]

Why do the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday journalists get given numbers on that list, but everybody else is listed by name?

Because when it comes to the crunch, the Guardian is staffed by journalists too. Which is why they revert to type and protect the privacy of other journalists but don't give a damn about anyone else.

 

[laptop]

It's also of course possible that the Guardian doesn't have the names.

Who recalls when and how and by whom the hacking of Mail hacks was revealed?

 

[ericjarvis]

I can't get passed this. It's fucking obscene alright. And if it's the Sunday Times and not notw....the political side of these things is terrifying.

This isn't a free press, this is a savage, political animal.

It has to end.

You are finally getting to grips with the full horror of it. It really is that bad, and it has been that bad for decades. See if you can get hold of a DVD of the TV show Hot Metal from 1986. Then bear in mind that was actually a fairly gentle parody. Watch The Thick Of It, then bear in mind that they are struggling to write a new series because they can't dream up fictional ideas that are anywhere near as bad as the reality, and because Armando Ianucci spends most of the time too angry to come up with anything funny (an old friend of mine is a senior member of their production team).

What disgusts me most is that although not every journalist is that bad, one hell of a lot of them have known all along how bad things were and preferred to show solidarity with their own profession rather than tell the public the truth as should have been their primary obligation.

 

[ericjarvis]

Yes, that Brown said nothing because he was scared. fwiw I don't buy into the whole "they had something on him" line. I think the answer is much more simple than that. He kept quiet because some in the shadows of the party, told him, "attack NI and say goodbye to a labour victory". This is what they believed. This is what Blair believed and the lesson of the infamous Kinnock front page is one that has reached the level of lore within the Labour party, piss off Murdoch and lose the election. This was the mantra, this was the legend and the myth and they followed it and in doing so they made the myth a reality. There is no need for a corpse under the floorboards or a set of compromising photos in the drawer. This.the belief that Murdoch makes the kings, was enough. Brown was told, and Brown did as he was told.


And Murdoch fucked him anyway.

Precisely.

Way back in 1986 that was the line coming from Philip Gould and co. Treat the tabloids as a force of nature and never attempt to show them to be wrong. Though it wasn't until Blair became Labour leader that the whole party was pretty much held to that approach.

I thought it was stupid then, and I certainly haven't changed my opinion since. Basically, by never taking on the press they gave effective control of the country over to newspaper editors and proprietors, because as soon as something was printed as news the Labour Party would immediately accept it regardless of whether or not it had any foundation in fact. All in order to have a bunch of people who have absolutely no use for the Labour Party anyway not stick the boot in quite yet.

 

[ericjarvis]

There was always the "gay rumour"

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7501.html/

The "Brown is gay" rumour always struck me as macho idiots assuming that any bloke who doesn't try to shag every woman he encounters MUST be gay. There never seemed to be anything other than that to it.

I think what Brown was more worried about was a concerted campaign to claim that because he had taken medication for stress related problems he was a lunatic unfit for high office. Something that may well have been threatened a couple of times during his time in number 10.

 

[gavman]

Because when it comes to the crunch, the Guardian is staffed by journalists too. Which is why they revert to type and protect the privacy of other journalists but don't give a damn about anyone else.

i find this aspect rather depressing, even amongst all the other shit- that limit to their outrage, evidenced when russbridger is interviewed. he seems right on it, then pulls all his punches towards his own profession

 

[gavman]

What disgusts me most is that although not every journalist is that bad, one hell of a lot of them have known all along how bad things were and preferred to show solidarity with their own profession rather than tell the public the truth as should have been their primary obligation.

you've nailed it there

 

[ymu]

Because when it comes to the crunch, the Guardian is staffed by journalists too. Which is why they revert to type and protect the privacy of other journalists but don't give a damn about anyone else.

That seems vanishingly unlikely given that we're talking about Mail journos here, and the Guardian is one of the only papers that is quite happy to report on how widespread the practice is, probably because there is just one entry for the Observer and none for the Guardian in these documents.

If the names were in the public domain yet, I think they'd have printed them.

 

[ymu]

Just found this (on the days before 'hacking' as such was possible):

At the outset, in the 1980s, much of their work – such as obtaining ex-directory numbers or helping find addresses – was relatively routine. Sometimes it involved covert surveillance, even though it was not always for reasons that could be justified in the public interest. An outside agency was employed to establish that Freddie Mercury had HIV. One former journalist told how the bar belonging to the brother of a television personality was bugged. "Half the dressing rooms on [the television soap] Eldorado were also done," he said.

But the arrival of the mobile phone added a new dimension. "It used to be much easier to listen to live phone calls when it was the old analogue cell system," one former journalist said. "In the early 1990s there used to be an advert in the Exchange and Mart from a mobile shop in Bridgend which offered for sale an old Motorola carphone-type phone which had been doctored with a serial cable that could be connected to your PC. With the software provided you could use it as a live scanner showing people's numbers and listen in to calls via the PC."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/09/phone-hacking-scandal-rupert-murdoch

 

[little_legs]

Respectfully, agricola, I don't understand your obsession with Tom Baldwin. I've read the links you provided (the Conservative Home one was authored by Aschroft) and I've read the Sunday Times and the Indy articles about the evidence of multiple "infringements of the law" Aschcroft is threatening to hand over to police.

Allegedly, Aschroft 'has been provoked by Miliband's attacks on David Cameron for employing Andy Coulson' and that's all very good. My question is why delay it, why not do the right thing and hand the evidence to police now? If Aschroft's evidence is sound, I'd like Baldwin to be exposed asap. Let's just hope the police treats Aschroft's evidence as competently as as they have all previous complaints until now.

Personally, I would not have a problem if Baldwin had poisoned Aschcroft. I would actually write a thank you letter to Baldwin if he did that.

 

[ymu]

Interesting version of events from the Brown camp pov.

Ever since the Sun dramatically withdrew its support from Labour in September 2009, Brown has no doubt felt the paper not just betrayed him, but killed his premiership. Like Tony Blair, he had done his best to cultivate good relations with the Murdoch executives, just as he had worked hard over the years to persuade Paul Dacre at the Daily Mail that he was a moral and serious figure.

The loss of the Sun's support mattered less for its editorial comment than for the way in which the paper then slanted its daily coverage, for instance, pursuing Brown for letting down British troops in Afghanistan.

But it would seem the loss of trust between Brown and News International preceded the Sun's defection. Two months earlier, after Guardian revelations about phone hacking and the mounting evidence of a News International cover-up, Brown started to agitate for a judicial inquiry. For at least a fortnight he was in discussion with the home secretary, Alan Johnson. Brown and Lord Mandelson held discussions with Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, to get a clearer understanding of the scandal.

Labour says Sir Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service, blocked the inquiry. The civil service says O'Donnell resisted Brown's idea on the basis that it would be drawing the judiciary into a political process less than a year before a general election. Johnson also found himself hemmed in by civil servants, so he looked at whether an independent investigation could be launched into the original police investigation. The plan for an inquiry fell away.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/11/gordon-brown-sun-destroy

 

[ymu]

More worms turning.

A bitter internal wrangle has broken out at News International over who saw emails retrieved by the company four years ago which suggest that News of the World journalists approved payments to police.

The emails were recovered during a 2007 internal investigation into claims that phone hacking was widespread at the paper.

One of the executives involved in the inquiry, the former head of legal, Jon Chapman – who left the company last week – is understood to be considering legal action against the Times after the paper linked his departure to the investigation.

Chapman, who is on gardening leave, could not be reached for comment.

Colin Myler, the NoW's editor at the time, who also took part in the 2007 investigation, is expected to say the content of those emails, which were recovered by the company's then director of human resources, Daniel Cloke, were never shared with him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/denials-recriminations-ni-executives-emails

Turns out sacking people doesn't shut them up if the media have an interest in reporting what they have to say. Who'd have thunk it? Not Murdoch, apparently. He appears to have totally lost it.

 

[killer b]

Interesting version of events from the Brown camp pov.

so brown's saying they tried to do the right thing, but were foiled by sir humphrey? i guess the suggestion now is that NI changing from labour to tory shortly after this was as much about making sure there's a new, more pliable govt in downing street as it was about chasing a change in the public mood?

we can only hope some record emerges of a conversation between cameron & someone at NI on the subject...

 

[claphamboy]

My brother told me last night that when he phoned his boss last week, it went to voicemail and he lol'ed on hearing 'please leave a message and the News of the World will get back to you'.

 

[ymu]

so brown's saying they tried to do the right thing, but were foiled by sir humphrey? i guess the suggestion now is that NI changing from labour to tory shortly after this was as much about making sure there's a new, more pliable govt in downing street as it was about chasing a change in the public mood?

we can only hope some record emerges of a conversation between cameron & someone at NI on the subject...

I don't think so, no. That would be to buy into the myth that Murdoch does actually choose the govt. What he does is plump for the front-runner once it's obvious which party will win, and then sets about making sure they do his bidding.

Brooks has a reputation for schmoozing people beyond all reason. There's some story about a Tory MP she did over on his family life, who rang the next day to thank her for handling it so sensitively.

 

[killer b]

I don't think so, no. That would be to buy into the myth that Murdoch does actually choose the govt. What he does is plump for the front-runner once it's obvious which party will win, and then sets about making sure they do his bidding.

you and I don't buy into it - but several successive governments did, and possibly news international believed it themselves... in which case the effect is identical.

 

[two sheds]

I don't suppose any of these e-mails will ever become public under freedom of information will they? I mean, I seem to recall reading of a ruling that the East Anglia university climate research should be made public, and surely the papers are similarly all involved in 'research'.

I for one would be happy to show my public spirit and help out with a trawling operation if the Guardian ever did what they did to the Sarah Palin e-mails .

 

[butchersapron]

I don't suppose any of these e-mails will ever become public under freedom of information will they? I mean, I seem to recall reading of a ruling that the East Anglia university climate research should be made public, and surely the papers are similarly all involved in 'research'.

I for one would be happy to show my public spirit and help out with a trawling operation if the Guardian ever did what they did to the Sarah Palin e-mails .

That was in the US and related to a public body. Not going to happen here. FOI is only for public bodies.

 

[ymu]

you and I don't buy into it - but several successive governments did, and possibly news international believed it themselves... in which case the effect is identical.

I don't think 'several successive governments' did buy into it though. The myth was born in 1992, but it suited Blair to make Labour buy into it, and I'm fairly convinced by Broon the hapless naif. The Tories have never needed to buy into it. Murdoch is a Thatcherite through and through. They're kindred spirits, and half the current cabinet had a crush on her at school.

 

[ymu]

That was in the US and related to a public body. Not going to happen here. FOI is only for public bodies.

It was in the UK, and the University of East Anglia is a public body.

Otherwise, spot on. Early start?


@two sheds

IIRC the information that was publicly available was already in the public domain because that was their policy already - the only data they hadn't published was owned by other bodies that refused to release it.

 

[butchersapron]

I think he meant in terms of their relationship with the electorate, not personal convictions. And they did/do.

 

[butchersapron]

It was in the UK, and the University of East Anglia is a public body. (The information that was publicly available was already in the public domain though - the only data they hadn't published was owned by other bodies that refused to release it.)

Otherwise, spot on. Early start?

Alaska is in the uk now then?

 

[ymu]

Alaska is in the uk now then?

Ah, apologies. I missed that it wasn't a response to the whole post.

 

[killer b]

I don't think 'several successive governments' did buy into it though. The myth was born in 1992, but it suited Blair to make Labour buy into it, and I'm fairly convinced by Broon the hapless naif. The Tories have never needed to buy into it. Murdoch is a Thatcherite through and through. They're kindred spirits, and half the current cabinet had a crush on her at school.

ok, but the clear implication of the what the brown camp is saying is 'we tried to go up against them, and got thrown out of government for our troubles'. that's what they're saying, regardless how true it actually is.

edit: also, cameron's clearly shitting himself about something...

 

[ymu]

ok, but the clear implication of the what the brown camp is saying is 'we tried to go up against them, and got thrown out of government for our troubles'. that's what they're saying, regardless how true it actually is.

That bit is true (although he'd have broken for the Tories anyway, unless Brown looked like winning). It's the bit about Murdoch telling the electorate who to vote for, rather than Murdoch knowing fine well which way the wind is blowing before declaring his support, that is a myth. Backing Labour for 1997 was a no-brainer. As it was in 2001 and 2005. Backing the Tories for 2010 was also a no-brainer (but Cameron nearly managed to fuck that one up).

He makes/breaks reputations. Not governments.