it s one thing to listen to the voicemail messages of some famous actor or some hard-skinned politician. this was a schoolgirl who d been taken and killed and the messages they would have been listening to were from her parents and her friends, saying milly, where are you? milly, get in touch. they heard a message left by an employment agency inviting her in for an interview, and they thought this was evidence that milly dowler was still alive. they did not go to the police with this information, they did not tell her parents about this information. they sent journalists to stake out the employment agency and sit outside it for several days hoping milly dowler would turn up, they could take a photograph of her and they could sell more newspapers. i was on holiday in spain for a week. my deputy, neville thurlbeck,
convicted, and sent to jail. the editor of the news of the world, andy coulson, resigns. and the line that news corporation put out was this is an isolated incident. it was simply this one investigator, this one reporter. it went no further than that. they had dealt with the problem. it was now history. but it wasn t. hello? it s glenn. glenn, how are you? hello, mate. just a very quick one. voicemail reset on gordon taylor. do not delete anything. yeah. it asks you for the pin, then put his number back. yeah. and there s three messages on there. all right? fan tas tech. a year later, the news of the world is poised to publish a salacious article about a british football association executive named gordon taylor. taylor believes that his phone has been hacked, and he decides to sue the news of the world. the case ended up costing the
a popular defense for murdoch supporters was, we weren t the only ones doing this, everyone was doing this, which in fact might be true, but that didn t make it any less illegal. i mean it was a patent violation of journalistic ethics as well as the law. the editor is the most important person in the building. and the reporter who actually goes out and does the story. oh yes, but it s the editor who appoints him and finds him and trains him. rebekah brooks first came to news international as a secretary. she quickly developed a reputation for her tenacity as a journalist. rebekah brooks is in some ways the sort of archetypal murdoch executive. she s climbed all the way up becoming editor of the news of the world, editor of the sun, and chief executive of new uk which is the holding company for the newspapers. all right, i think it works. it s all in the four-pager, it s highlighted. she was aware of the dark arts. she was a bully, just like
world, part of rupert murdoch s media empire known for their sensationalism, and doing just about anything to get a story. every reporter and every editor had their own moral line in the sand. but there were some reporters and there were some editors where the line was so far distant, you couldn t see it. the news of the world was the number one english paper at that time. it prided itself on being the best newspaper in the world. it was astonishingly influential. when you join the news of the world, you re basically on call 24 hours a day. all s you ve got to do is get the story. the first reporter to knock on the door was the reporter most likely to get the story. as soon as you got in that door, they were going to fold under questioning. if you can catch someone who s instantly grieving and in shock, they ll do anything you want them to. there s a period during the early 2000s when day-after-day, week-after-week, the murdoch
they sent journalists to stake out the employment agency and sit outside it for several days hoping milly dowler would turn up, they could take a photograph of her and they could sell more newspapers. i was on holiday in spain for a week. my deputy, neville thurlbeck, was in charge of the news desk, and it was under his guidance that milly dowler s phone was hacked. neville briefed me, went through a whole list of stories that we were pursuing that week, including milly dowler and the possibility that milly dowler was alive. now, what i should have done is said, drop it, or go to the