Events | 2009.11.08
Nick Davies: Only serious blow is to watchdog's credibility
The Press Complaints Commission has thrown plenty of punches from different directions, but not a single one has hit the target. In spite of all the angry language, its report has failed to dislodge a single factual claim in our story about the News of the World.
It sets out to answer only two questions. The first amounts to a bizarre exercise in shadow boxing, attacking a version of the Guardian\'s story that does not exist: "Have journalists carried on hacking phone messages since the PCC issued new guidelines in 2007?"
The PCC tries hard to suggest that the Guardian made a claim to this effect, and spends pages insisting the contrary. Maybe it is right. Maybe not. We don\'t know: we never addressed the subject. It isn\'t in our story at all.
After this frantic pounding of a shadow on the wall, the PCC addresses a second question: "Did the News of the World mislead the Press Complaints Commission during its first inquiry into phone-hacking, back in 2007?"
Here is a knock-out blow, with the PCC appointing itself referee and granting itself the right to ignore evidence, including that which it itself collected. The paper originally claimed that its royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was the only journalist involved in phone hacking. However, we produced an email containing the transcript of more than 30 voicemail messages intercepted from the mobile phones of two victims. This email was written by a reporter for the attention of "Neville". Neville Thurlbeck is a senior journalist on the paper. We said that this showed that Goodman was not the only journalist involved and, therefore, the paper, albeit in good faith, had failed to tell the PCC the truth.
The PCC fails to demolish that claim, quoting the paper\'s current editor, Colin Myler: "Our internal inquiries have found no evidence of involvement by News of the World staff other than Clive Goodman." The PCC concludes that it was not misled, because "while people may speculate about the email referencing \'Neville\' … the PCC can only deal with the facts that are available."
While the PCC is boxing away, it ignores more important questions. For example, it fails to address the failure of the inquiry the PCC ran in 2007 – a failure bound to occur because it decided not to interview a single executive or journalist from the News of the World other than the newly incoming editor, Myler. In 2007, the then chairman of the PCC, Sir Christopher Meyer, said he would investigate "the entire newspaper and magazine industry of the UK to establish what is their practice".
It hasn\'t done that, and now claims that "it was not the commission\'s intention — nor was it within our remit — to try to duplicate the police investigation by trying to establish whether there had been other transgressions".
It discussed an allegation by MP Adam Price, a member of the media select committee, that a story about Prince Harry and Prince William must have been obtained by hacking. It quotes Myler\'s denial – and yet does not record the fact that, in front of that committee, the police revealed they had found evidence of the newspaper\'s private investigator hacking the voicemail messages of both princes – something never revealed before.
It refers to a second document produced by the Guardian: a contract signed by a News of the World editor offering £7,000 to the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to deliver a story about the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, Gordon Taylor, whose voicemail we know was being hacked. And yet the PCC accepts without criticism the paper\'s claim that it cannot discuss this because of a confidentiality agreement with Taylor.
The PCC makes an issue of the fact that the Guardian would not disclose the identities of the two people who had access to Scotland Yard\'s original inquiry, both of whom estimated that thousands of people have had their phones hacked. And yet, it gives no weight to the evidence taken by the select committee naming a Scotland Yard detective as estimating that there were up to 6,000 people whose phones had been hacked or intercepted. Nor does it mention the decision by the director of public prosecutions and the police not to investigate all the potential victims, just a small sample.
It fails to say anything about the astonishing memo submitted by Scotland Yard revealing that it had approached not only members of the royal household, but also members of the military, the police and the government to warn them about attempts to intercept their voicemail; that they had alerted the security services; that they had also passed more material about other potential victims to mobile phone companies; and that they were reviewing all the material in order to contact yet more suspected victims.
It makes no comment on the wall of secrecy the News of the World has erected – the payment of more than £1m to keep secret three cases in which they were sued for hacking voice messages; the payment of tens of thousands of pounds to Goodman and Mulcaire in settlements with confidentiality clauses; the threat to injunct Taylor\'s solicitor to stop him representing other clients; the paper\'s failure to warn the PCC, the select committee and the public that the Taylor case had revealed their original version of events as misleading.
But the fight is not over. As a result of the Guardian stories, we know that the hacking involved more victims and more journalists than the News of the World and the PCC originally claimed. Scotland Yard is still holding a vast collection of paperwork seized from Mulcaire and Goodman. Lawyers for various public figures are asking for access to information. The PCC may yet discover that the only real victim of its attack is its own credibility.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/nick-davies-responds-pcc-report
