MPs INVESTIGATING allegations of widespread phone hacking by the News of the World were handed documents yesterday revealing that more journalists were involved in the practice than the paper’s owner, News International, has previously admitted.
During testimony to the Commons committee on culture, media and sport, the Guardian investigative reporter Nick Davies produced previously unseen records which showed that two senior figures on the paper as well as a junior reporter had a role in obtaining the contents of private voicemail messages through a private investigator.
News International has insisted that only one of its journalists, the royal editor, Clive Goodman, had used this illegal method. He was jailed for four months in January 2007 at the Old Bailey criminal court in London, along with a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
Yesterday, Davies handed over copies of an e-mail from an unnamed junior News of the World reporter to Mulcaire that also referred to the paper’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. In the e-mail, the reporter says: “Hello, this is the transcript for Neville.”
Davies told the committee that the e-mail, dated June 29th, 2005, contained “a typed-up transcript of 35 messages which Mulcaire had hacked from the telephones of Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, and Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser at the PFA”.
The second document handed to MPs was a contract dated February 2005 between News of the World assistant editor Greg Miskiw and Mulcaire, who was using an alias – Paul Williams. In the document, Miskiw promises Mulcaire a bonus of £7,000 (€8,170) if he delivers a specific story about Gordon Taylor.
The Guardian revealed last week that Taylor, Armstrong and a third person were paid a total of more than £1 million in costs and damages by the News of the World’s parent firm, News Group, to settle a lawsuit for breach of privacy and to keep it secret.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who was also giving evidence to MPs, said the Taylor story was significant “because it undermines the assurances given both to you and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] about the sole reporter and the sole detective – the so-called rotten apple defence”. He added: “News International have known about the involvement of other journalists, including at senior level, for at least a year. It is believed the [Gordon Taylor] case was settled last September. So that begs the question: why they did not tell the PCC, the regulators, or this committee, of the new facts that have come to light.”
News of the World editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, the paper’s in-house lawyer, will give evidence to MPs next week. – (Guardian service)