24/06/2014 Newsnight

the Prime Minister's former Lieutenants in jail. I was given

assurances that he didn't know about phone hacking, that turns out not to

be the case and I was always clear if that happened I would apologise

and I do so unreservedly today. He may be happier that his close

friend, Rebekah Brooks, is cleared. She said she didn't know what was

going on. So how did she get to the top of News International? Rupert

did say to me, and this would be an exact quote, he said "she social

climbed her way up my family". On tonight's Newsnight we will hear

from victim, politician and the journalist who first broke the

story. Good evening, guess who said "a

newspaper can create great controversy, light on injustices,

just as it can hide things and be a great power for evil"? It was Ruperp

Murdoch, the head of the -- Rupert Murdoch. The conviction of two men

for the little known crime of listening to a voicemail, he claimed

was down to one rogue reporter. A seven month criminal trial later and

many arrests, tonight it is the Prime Minister who is saying sorry.

The man he trusted enough to take into Number Ten was the former News

of the World editor, Andy Coulson, who was today found guilty of

conspiracy to hack phones by an Old Bailey jury. But his then boss,

Rebekah Brooks, was cleared. We have been following this case all the way

through for us. An extraordinary day, what are we to make of it? It

is a hugely dramatic day, of course, it is a ?30 million police inquiry

lasting years. It has had nearly an eight-month trial costing tens of

billions more. Huge reputations at stake, it is the sharp end of one of

the biggest media scandals Britain has ever seen. Only one, thus far,

only one guilty finding, Andy Coulson. Quite sensationally in some

respects because there was huge expectation around this, Rebekah

Brooks and most of the others found not guilty on the counts they faced.

There will be questions for the prosecuting authorities. But

nevertheless, we have also been given a glimpse, you mentioned it in

the introduction, of the sheer scale of what has gone on here. Royal

phone hacks, 200+, David Blunkett personally, 300+, this was an

industrial scale operation. As much as we now know how big the scale

was, there is potentially more to come, where to next? In terms of the

company, well there are more trials to come, they start in the autumn

and run into 2015. Les Hinton has been interviewed under caution, the

Guardian are reporting that the police want to talk to are you you

Rupert Murdock personally, the questions go back to David Cameron,

how he hired Andy Coulson and how he took him into Number Ten, against

advice at every stage who said he had to be really, really careful

about this. It was an awkward promise for David Cameron to keep,

but keep it he did. Apologising this afternoon for firing Andy Coulson in

the first place. In his words, "giving him a second chance". He's

not the first politician who called on the arch skills of Fleet Street

editors to help them get elected, but neither he nor Coulson can ever

have thought in their worst nightmare that it would turn out

like this. ??FORCEDWHI

From court into a media frenzy, and then what? Prison? We await the

judge's sentence. But the verdict, guilty, of conspiring to hack

phones. In one e-mail Andy Coulson instructed one of his News of the

World reporters "do his own". But it was Coulson who was done for. As

David Cameron finished his speech launching the Conservative's

manifesto in 2010, his Director of Communications was in the

background, always in the background, steering journalists and

perhaps enjoying the thought that he and his boss were on their way to

bigger and better jobs. But now, it is the man who appointed him who is

having to answer difficult questions. I take full

responsibility for employing Andy Coulson. I did so on the basis of

undertakings I was given by him about phone hacking and those turn

out not to be the case. I always said that if they turned out to be

wrong I would make a full and frank apology, and I do that today. I'm

extremely sorry that I employed him, it was the wrong decision, and I'm

very clear about that. How much damage do you think you did the

Prime Minister Mr Coulson? The Labour leader is equally clear this

is not the end of the questions for the Prime Minister. We now know that

he brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street. David Cameron was

warned about Andy Coulson, the evidence mounted up against Andy

Coulson. David Cameron must have had his suspicions about Andy Coulson,

and yet he refused to act. Now I believe this isn't just a serious

error of judgment, this taints David Cameron's Government. We now know

that he put his relationship with Rupert Murdock ahead of doing the

right thing when it came to doing the right thing with Andy Coulson.

And David Cameron received multiple warnings from Nick Clegg and Paddy

Ashdown, by the at the ender of the Guardian and the then enity Prime

Minister, John Prescott. Also by senior Conservative backbenchers,

all telling the Prime Minister do not have anything to do with this

man. He would have seen with people advising him against Coulson the

voice of snobbery, and he wanted to have that connection. He basically,

it is not that he wanted the Sun's vote, but he wanted the vote of Sun

readers and even people who didn't read it, he thought would bring

them. Even friends of David Cameron are puzzled how determined he was to

bring a man with such a checkered past with him beyond the gates into

the heart of his administration. When he got there, why wasn't Andy

Coulson subjected to the same level of official vetting as previous and

subsequent directors of communication. Was it, as some

believe, that they didn't want to know the truth? I swear by Almighty

God that the evidence I shall give... The Prime Minister was asked

about the failure to vet Coulson to the highest level during the

evidence he gave to the Leveson Inquiry. The issue of who was vetted

to what level is for the Civil Service not the Prime Minister. The

decision was taken by the Permanent Secretary at Number Ten, Jeremy

Heywood, not by me. Having looked at all of this I'm convinced this is a

complete red herring. The decision was made properly by the Civil

Service, it wasn't abnormal. Mr Cameron will no doubt face more

scrutiny about his decision to hire and keep Andy Coulson tomorrow at

Prime Minister's Questions. With us now are Harriet Harmen, deputy

leader of the Labour Party, and John Wittingdale. David Cameron said he

would apologise if this is what happened, he has done that, he has

been very clear about that, he didn't stint in his apology,

shouldn't this be the end of the story for him? No, I don't think so.

I don't think that makes it OK at all. I mean in the first place why

did he place so little concern on what had happened to those victims,

the Dowlers, the McCanns, who had been victims of crime and then had

their lives turned more upside down and their privacy invaded and their

pain and suffering made worse by abuse of the press. That already was

known about and that was accepted. And he swept that aside because he

wanted to have Andy Coulson by his side in Number Ten and the second

thing I think that is really not OK to accept is the idea that David

Cameron was some how niave, trusting, he wanted to give him a

second chance like some kind of probation officer. That does not

wash. He was not somebody who admit what had he had done and was turning

over a new leaf, he was somebody who had not accepted what he had done.

And the reason why Cameron gave him this second chance and ignored the

concerns of the victims is because he wanted to have Andy Coulson by

his side and a good link in to Murdoch, that is how it looks to me.

In the same way many Labour politicians have too, we will come

to that in a minute? We are talking about somebody who is a criminal. It

is easy to criticise David Cameron with hindsight, when the fullness of

the revelations came out, he ordered the Leveson Inquiry, and he now has

backed the royal charter, the cross-party attempt to clean up the

press. What do you actually want him to do now? Well, it wasn't that this

only came out afterwards. He was warned before he took Andy Coulson

into Downing Street and even after he was in Downing Street and

evidence and the allegations mounted, like the whole front page

of the New York Times. He turned his face against it. What do you want

him to do now, order an inquiry into the vetting of Andy Coulson? It is

strange that there wasn't proper vetting of him. What he should

acknowledge is actually he did it to curry favour with the Murdoch press,

he said I did it, I was too trusting and I will apologise. What he wasn't

admit is he was prepared to have the office of Prime Minister and Downing

Street sullied because he wanted to curry favour with the Murdoch press.

What came out in the Leveson Inquiry was the extraordinary close knit

relationship of new Labour with the Murdoches, we heard Gordon Brown's

wife a pyjama party with Rupert Murdoch's wife. You can't have it

both ways? There is two separate things, was this a different order

of things? I think it was, this was criminal activity. This wasn't just

cosying up at parties, this was inviting into the heart of Downing

Street somebody who had been engaged in criminal activity which had

caused people to suffer. Secondly, it is the case and this has been

acknowledged and we have been quite clear on this, is there is a problem

if there is a monopoly ownership of the press and the press becomes too

powerful and more powerful than those who are elected. David Cameron

did not know of cour because that conviction only happened today, he

didn't know about that at the time. What he did know is that actually

whilst Andy Coulson had been editor, criminal activity was going on. This

trial has not even concluded. They were already convicted while he was

editor. If your issue with this is how it exposed the closeness of the

links, and the links between News International and the Conservatives

were so inappropriate, why is your current leader allowing himself to

be photographed holding up a copy of the Sun if the links are so

terrible? What we are talking about is one newspaper owner having too

much power. Nobody is boycotting the Sun. I disapprove of page 3, but the

Sun readers are people we need to be communicating with, that is

completely different than actually hiring someone who is presiding over

criminal activity. Harriet Harmen is right, it was a terrible error of

judgment for David Cameron to hire Andy Coulson? David Cameron has said

it was a bad decision, but at the time you have to remember all we

knew was one reporter had been convicted of phone hacking of the

aides to the Royal Family. We didn't know anything about the Dowler, we

didn't know about the huge numbers of victims which were subsequently

revealed by the Mulcaire papers. We knew that a reporter had been

convicted and Andy Coulson not only told David Cameron, he then came

before my Select Committee after that and said categorically he had

no knowledge and involvement in phone hacking. By the time he went

into Number Ten and Downing Street that is something of a different

order. But there were people including you... He was still saying

he had no knowledge and involvement. There were people in the party

warning David Cameron, were you one of them who warned him to go careful

carefully? The only thing I said is here is somebody who decided to

resign from the newspaper because somebody in his employment had been

convicted of a criminal offence. I think that was the correct decision,

my committee concluded even though we couldn't demonstrate any evidence

to prove he had known, nevertheless he was right to resign. The judgment

about whether or not to take him on was one which David Cameron made and

he said in his own words that he thought he deserved a second chance.

I didn't directly speak to him, I personally felt I wasn't sure

whether the message was the right one. But I fully understand that

whether the message was the right felt he would give him a second

whether the message was the right difficult to condemn someone.

whether the message was the right signals to get that message back,

whether the message was the right and there were people

whether the message was the right Conservative Party warning him? I

had been told by Andy Coulson, in a full, formal hearing of the Select

Committee that he had no knowledge or involvement. Therefore of course

we assumed that he must be telling the truth. This whole thing about

second chances, either this is the earliest point either Andy Coulson

did not know what was going on in his newspaper at the very best he

had no idea, so why give him a second chance and make him Director

of Communications in Number Ten. It doesn't wash. We must be careful

here because the proceedings are not complete. Before we close, Harriet

Harman, all the parties have said at the time of Leveson that this was a

moment, once and for all to sort out press standards. Do you believe what

the press has come up with meets the requirements of Lord Leveson? One of

the things about the framework that was agreement by all parties in the

House of Commons and House of Lords is we shouldn't be judging

House of Commons and House of Lords regulator, we should have an

independent recognising panel set up and they will judge whether the

regular Tatar the press come -- regulator the press come forward is

part of the Leveson principles. The regulator has not yet been appointed

and they will look at any regulator put forward for recognition and say

is it independent, does it give people a fair deal. After all of

this, still a work in progress? Yes and we cannot have business as

usual. Thank you very much for coming in tonight. The outcome

couldn't be more different for Coulson's former boss, colleague and

lover, Rebekah Brooks. When she heard the jury had cleared her and

her husband Charley Brooks she was overwhelmed and had to be helped

from the court by the matron at the Old Bailey. She's free, but she can

hardly return to the life she lived before as the former chief executive

of News International, she was one of the most powerful people in the

land. Rebekah Brooks is a dream client. So she spent 13 days in the

witness box and she was brilliant. Rupert did say she social climbed

her way up my family. She company these people much closer, she had

them all on speed dial. Can Confident, wealthy, a powerful and

influential networker at the highest level. Rebekah Brooks could be charm

itself. A hugely impressive character, in control apparently of

all she surveyed, and what a career, from office runner to chief

executive in just 20 years. The first thing you notice about her is

that fantastic shock of red hair. You know, it is almost as big as she

is. She was desperate to learn. It was an admirable quality that she

had. She was desperate to know what was going on and how it was

achieved, how the package was brought up and ended up in the

paper. In no time at all she was Charli, he's boss as deputy editor

of the Sun, then on to News of the World, and then chief executive of

the whole of News International. In the process she became close to

first Elizabeth Murdoch and then to James, but especially close to

Rupert. Rupert did say to me, and this would be an exact quote, he

said, "she social climbed her way up my family". Now Rupert is funny

because in conversation Rupert almost never says anything positive

about anyone, and is prone to say incredibly negative things about

people he actually is very close to. But I think that's a very precise

description. Remember Rupert is astute about nothing so much as

ambition itself. And he likes ambition. So much so that when the

hacking scandal became a full on corporate crisis, Murdoch senior's

first thoughts apparently were for his protege. When a reporter asked

Rupert Murdoch was his priority, barely visible he gestures towards

Rebekah Brooks and says "this one". For all their closeness and mutual

affection, Murdoch and Brooks were in reality quite different. He saw

himself as the anti-establishment outsider, she meanwhile had become

the consumate new establishment insider, friend and even confidant

of the most senior politicians in the land. She became very close to

new Labour, thanks to her first husband, EastEnders star and top

Labour luvvie, Ross Kemp. In no time at all she was a member of the

family, fiercely protective as "our Tony", as she was heard to call him

and sleepovers with Sarah Brown. And David Cameron was a close friend of

her second husband, Charlie Brooks, all members of the Chipping Norton

set. Brooks had become a power in the land. Then came phone hacking,

three sets of criminal charges, an eight month trial and 13 days on the

stand. Rebekah Brooks is a dream client. She spent I think it was 13

days in the witness box, and she was brilliant. She knew the answers that

she wanted to give. Her personal character came across as being

submissive, kind, quite funny. And the prosecution were left in a

rather unusual position really that quite apart from picking holes in

what she had said, they launched a direct attack on her, saying to the

jury, that was a performance. The prosecution case against Rebekah

Brooks was that despite being on holiday in the week the News of the

World ran a story based on the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, she

had been in close enough contact with the office to know what was

going on. The jury were not convinced. Brooks's defence was not

that phone hacking and the rest didn't happen, rather than she had

known nothing about it. That although she had signed off hundreds

of thousands of pounds worth of payments over the years to hackers

and others, she had done so with no knowledge of who or what they were

for. It is this apparant lack of knowledge, about the financial

details of her business, that would appear to mark Brooks out from other

Murdoch bosses. Murdoch kept terrific tabs on the figures, there

was weekly figures of output, income, how many papers had been

printed, how many ads had gone and so on. These would be supplied to

him and he would question executives if they didn't have information or

not. I think if you look at Rebekah Brooks regime that she had it easier

than the editors of the Sunday Times and other papers. I think he had Mel

bowed and was a lot more relaxed and that had a lot to do with his

personal relationship with her, he trusted her. Acquittal on all

charges leaves Rebekah Brooks vindicated and Rupert Murdoch no

doubt relieved, but must leave open the question of whether she was ever

really the right person to run a newspaper business. The Guardian's

investigative report e Nick Davies broke the story in 2009 that hack

was not limited to one rogue reporter. He's with us now. In the

end one man has been convicted today, five people acquitted,

including Rebekah Brooks. A newspaper closed down, hundreds of

people lost their jobs, didn't really amount to very much did it?

You have got your facts wrong, I'm so sorry. Operation Wheating this

police inquiry charged eight people with phone hacking, and five pleaded

guilty before the trial started. Today you had a sixth person

convicted, it is a little bit misleading because the five people

who pleaded guilty before the trial started are not in the dock. They

charged eight and got six convictions, the editor, three news

editors, two specialist hackers and in addition to the one rogue

reporter originally convicted. A pretty high score. For many people

the real totem of this story, the person who was the chief executive

of the business in question, Rebekah Brooks, walked completely free? We

need to think about Rebekah Brooks's acquittals, here is the thing, I

think public opinion doesn't understand why she was acquitted.

You look at some of the stuff on Twitter today, but there is a really

easy explanation about why she was acquitted which is the prosecution

case was weak. I have spent six-and-a-half years trying to

uncover this scandal, I spent almost all of the last eight months

listening to the evidence. If I was on the jury I would have found her

not guilty. The case was too weak and the state doesn't have a right

to send people to prison unless it can prove its case. This is

important, some people rage out there talking about her being a

witch, what they are doing is hypocrisy, they are behaving like

the worst brutes at the bad end of Fleet Street who have a history of

thinking they know better than juries, and organising lynch mob

justice against her. Go quiet, give her the verdicts, she is entitled to

them. And this, this is not a story about Rebekah Brooks. It is a story

with layers and layers of scandal, which begins with the sheer scale of

crime, at the News of the World and other newsrooms in Fleet Street.

Then it is about the historic failure of the press regulator, not

just to deal with the crime but to enforce their own Code of Conduct,

then it is about the historic failure of the police and then

Government. And their relationship with Rupert Murdoch. It is not about

Rebekah Brooks, it is about power. She was someone who was extremely

powerful individual, her career has been destroyed, she's the mother of

a young child, she has walked free from court and in your view the case

against her was weak. Do you feel any sympathy towards her? A healthy

criminal justice system will take evidence, will not do what it did

when it was behaving corruptly in the past and saying these are

important people let's not look at that, and it will pass it on. The

evidence in this case was strong enough for the Crown Prosecution

Service to say this needs to go forward to a Magistrates' Court, and

the magistrates court were right to say it was a prima facia case. The

judge looked at it and thought it chuck it out but said no, to a jury.

Do you have any regret about what happened here at all? Not at all, we

are uncovering a massive scandal. She's entitled to her verdicts, but

what you had here was a criminal justice system finally doing its job

properly. Before you had cover-up and failure at every stage. It was

absolutely right that they brought these charges. You can see that by

the fact that contrary to what Steve said at the beginning, six of the

eight people who have been charged with conspiracy to hack phones are

guilty. 5,500 victims they have identified of the hacking, massive.

There have been, however, many, many journalists swept up in this, many

on bail for years sometimes, then with no charges brought. And also

many who feared that this is damaging the freedom of the press,

and allowed the freedom of the press's enemies, given them a

whacking great amount of ammunition against the press. It hasn't damaged

the freedom of the press to commit crime, to think it is above the law,

to bully the police and Government, and set up a corrupt press

regulator. In all those ways the freedom of the press has been

damaged. I'm really glad. I'm a journalist a spend my working life

in that profession, most journalists are good honest people, there is a

dark end of Fleet Street who have brought shame on the profession and

have corrupted Government and bullied police, it is great to clean

it up. I'm saying give Rebekah Brooks her verdicts, it is not the

story, it is about power. Don't complain about what the police did,

they finally did what the public needed them to do, to run an honest,

thorough inquiry. The trial was a good one. You can't criticise it, a

good judge, excellent jury, a good result here. An acquittal doesn't

mean the system is failing, but it is doing its job and separating the

evidence from the weak evidence. Isn't part of the truth that your

story that changed the dynamic of all of this, the story about Milly

Dowler's voicemail that caused such a public outcry that really got

probably many of the members of the public to notice this for the first

time. On the specifics, the deletion of Milly Dowler's voicemail, it

wasn't entirely and completely accurate. And your paper have made a

very detailed clarification on that. And that's what led to the Leveson

Inquiry, do you accept that? No that is a really complicated way of

putting it. If we are talking about the criminal investigation,

Operation Wheating, which has done all this work, started six months

before we published the Milly Dowler stories, no connection at all.

Secondly, there was a massive crisis before we published the story.

Thirdly, at the end of the day it is a complicated question and you might

not want to get into it, we still don't know the truth about that. The

evidence strongly suggests, we are running a story about it, the News

of the World did manually delete messages, just not the ones that

caused the false hope. We are running out of time, what is next?

We have disclosed in the Guardian that Rupert Murdoch will be

interviewed as a suspect by Scotland Yard. You have got another 12 trials

already scheduled involving another 20 current or former News of the

World journalist, in the background a total of 210 people have been

arrested, including 101 journalists from six different newspapers. There

are decisions yet to be made about whether they should be charged. In

summary you have probably got another two years of criminal

trials, there is masses of litigation still going on with the

victims of hacking queueing up to sue in court. We are a long way from

the end of the story. Thank you very much for coming in.

Throughout her career, Ulrika Johnson has found herself the

subject of red-top gossip columns, she worked as a columnist for the

News of the World for years, but later found the paper had been

hacking her phone. She's with us tonight. You have had years of press

attention, you weren't a stranger to it, how did you realise somebody had

been listening to your private voicemails? Well the police

contacted me in 2011, and so suspicious had I become of just more

or less anyone who calls you with anything bizarre, that I didn't call

them back and they had to make contact with me about three or four

times before they said, no we are really the police and we have some

evidence to show you. That's when they showed me evidence that, of

personal information that somebody or they had on me. How did you feel

when you realised that had actually gone on? Well it made me feel

physically sick, because it was quite, some things were quite

detailed, you know. They had the entry code to my gate at my house.

And apart from anything else lots of numbers and dates and times and

places where you have been. It does sort of immediately you are

thinking, I'm really not very important and not very, well

probably interesting but not very important and significant. It was a

horrible experience and just quite scary. We're going to look at what

is tomorrow's splash in the Sun, you have been the subject of some of

these yourself. But there tomorrow is Rebekah Brooks, a great day for

the red tops, ex-Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks found not guilty. How do you

feel when you look at that after what has happened today? Well, I

guess I was most I guess taken aback by, not taken aback by just the fact

they are claiming this as a victory, and we can't make suggestions she

was acquitted of all the charges, so it is not about whether or not the

trial was right. There is no mention of Andy Coulson

there, of course. I worked for Andy for four-and-a-half years, and

became very close to him and to his family, to his wife. We both have

children with cardiac defects who were treated at the same hospital by

the same surgeon, we had that connection. So for me on a personal

level I'm shocked at what may happen to him. But this is kind of I'm very

surprised by this. It is triumphalist. How do you feel ever

everything you have been through some parts of the press will still

try to you know try to say there has been a victory, doesn't that suggest

to you that they will carry on behaving as they did before? I

genuinely have to believe they won't thank they don't. I think this will

be or has been and will continue to be a huge and very steep learning

curve for them. I would like to think that they have cleaned up

their acts. Thank you very much for coming tonight.

No-one really comes out of this whole mess well, none of our big

institutions any way, whether press, politics or the police. They refused

for a long time to take the complaints of victims of the scandal

seriously. Painful and seemingly Eppingless wranglings on how to tame

the beast to satisfy concerns. Will it change much more the lives of

those affected. Press, police, politicians global

business and a huge public scandal. The phone hacking saga is an

extraordinary story of power and influence in modern Britain. It has

the entire establishment in it up to their necks. So how did that happen?

It goes back to 1969, the Sun, always a floating voter the Sun

famously backed Mrs Thatcher in 1969 and from then on was the newspaper

whose support politicians craved. And so began the process of

relationship building that brought Tony Blair the backing of the Sun in

1997 and David Cameron its endorsement in 2010 and gave senior

News of the World figures unrivalled access to the corridors of power.

Here at Westminster it became known that Sun support was vital to

success. Falling out with Rupert Murdoch and his people wouldn't have

been thought of as especially sensible. To cut a long story short

few people here wanted to know anything about phone hacking, until

Milly Dowler. The vast majority of people in the political world were

happy to hide. They didn't want to get into a fight with Rupert

Murdoch, why would you? That extends all the way up to the Labour Party.

Although Ed Miliband finally behaved courageously and well when the whole

story exploded, the earlier track record isn't so great. He's there

wining and dining with Rebekah Brooks, trying to make friends with

her. He's operating on the same unfortunately twisted logic that

infected David Cameron, we have to have the Murdoch crew on side. So f

that's why the politicians failed, what about the police? Once again

the problem appeared to be proximity to News International. This man quit

as Met Commissioner, when it emerged he had hired Andy Coulson's deputy

at the News of the World as a PR man for ?1,000 day. The man who led the

original phone hacking probe became News International columnist. And

Britain's top antiterrorist officer brought in to review the phone

hacking, it was revealed later was close to social editors at the

paper. He was forced to quit. Do you think they were too close? I

didn't know it at the time, I think that they probably were. It is

interesting, in one sense they were very dismissive of the media, they

were very suspicious of the media. On the other side of the coin, they

thought it was you know in a rather niave way they thought politically

it was important to have the media on side. However, what they didn't

say, they could not see over the horizon that this might be, when

things about, this might be a stick that was used to beat them with. So

it was that repeated assurances from senior police figures that there

really was no greater phone hacking scandal to be uncovered, sounded

increasingly hollow. We now know that those reassurances

were complete rubbish. Phone hacking was more widespread than had been

acknowledged and the evidence for that, 11,000 pages of notes had been

in the possession of the police themselves ever since their original

inquiry in 20006. Why didn't they investigate further? Lord Justice

Leveson looked quite closely at the police operation in 2006/07. He's

right when he says the officers who were actually involved directly in

that inquiry are straight guys, who stopped the job prematurely because

their counter terrorism officers so they had to get off and investigate

mass you are inneder on people. That is right -- murder on people. That

is right. But there are a lot of worrying linger questions. Chief

amongst them, not why Scotland Yard didn't investigate phone hacking

themselves, but went out of their way to stop others from doing so. So

the police and the politicians failed, but hang on, what about the

majority of the Fourth Estate, our free press, the envy of the world.

Well most of what was once Fleet Street didn't want to know about

phone hacking at the News of the World either. Traditionally

attacking other newspapers, well just wasn't done. Generalised

stories of press misbehaviour, well, where do you start? And throw in the

fact that no-one wanted to upset the rather comfy apple cart of voluntary

self-regulation under the Press Complaints Commission, and there you

have it. Ignore it and if you are lucky it will go away.

But it didn't. Now there was no ignoring it and the proprietors got

the very thing they had sought to avoid, another major public inquiry

into the standards, practices and ethics of the press. Months of lurid

testimony about press misbehaviour, most of it unconnected with phone

hacking brought Lord Justice Leveson to a series of potentially

far-reaching, and to victims and campaigners, long overdue

recommendations. While campaigners, vim Times and surveys appeared to

show most of the public backed firmer action, many in the newspaper

industry fear press freedom has already been damaged. Our papers

have been cleaned up as never before. It is a miracle that we

still manage to make them good, fun, irrasable products every day. Is it

your view there are many more stories that perhaps should be told

that are not being told? There is a lot more stories either being

sanatised or almost out of existence, because we can't write

the full facts or theying being spiked. # So that's -- they are

being spiked. That is politics, the police and the press. What about the

man at the centre of things, Rupert Murdoch.

He arrived 45 years ago, the arch outsider, he took on and beat branch

after branch of the British establishment. The old press when he

bought the News of the World, and later the Times and the Sunday

Times, and off the back of his success in Britain he went on to

build a huge global media empire. Shaken to the core by phone hacking.

It has been massive, one of the pivitol events in the 60-year

history of this company. It has upset his business in the UK, in

many ways certainly destablised it, maybe in fact destroyed his business

in the UK. It has caused the break-up of his company, splitting

it into the entertainment assets and newspaper assets. And perhaps most

profound of all it has hit his family very hard. It has created

rifts everywhere in the family. It is a family at war with itself now,

all over hacking. The physical home of the News of

all over hacking. The physical home that came with it has gone, but the

all over hacking. The physical home scandal is far from over. In the US

the Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act beckons and here in the UK lots

more trials and even potential corporate liability. This trial,

whatever the outcome must mark the end of the Murdoch era in Britain.

As for the rest of the press, well, they are not quite what they were,

not so much because of hacking and the regulation that will follow, but

because of declining circulations and technology. As for the police

hacking has played into what have become much broader questions of

public confidence. But now the politicians they surely must have

learned their lesson? With us now are Nick fare rary a

former tabloid journal -- Ferrari, a former tabloid newspaper, a former

Star reporter and now film maker, a political philosopher who gave

evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, and the assistant editor of the

Spectator. Thank you for coming in. We heard there already stories are

being sanatised, they are being spiked, they are there are things

the public is not finding out enough about because of changes in all of

this. As somebody who was in the tabloid press and has now foresworn

your past, doesn't that concern you or is that where you want it? I

think you can look at it from the other perpicket -- perspective.

Maybe they were stories that shouldn't be printed at all. If

we're talking about the Sun, Hillsborough, that should have been

spiked and it wasn't. There is plenty of stories that aren't being

written about that should be written about. Snowdon leaks, a massive

press freedom and journalism story you won't read much about it in the

Sun. I think there is two ways of looking at that, I think that maybe

it is time for the Sun and some of the other tabloids to slightly

change their tack. Rather than the easy hits about celebrities but

really investing in proper investigative journal, there is not

enough young journalists going into the industry to do that. Instead it

is the bikini pictures on the beach. I think news land up and down the

land will be asking why, why, why. What haven't we focussed on, and

what hasn't been said is the incredible cost. The Leveson

Inquiry, ?6 million, a headline in tomorrow's Telegraph, ?100 million.

That is well over ?100 million for what? One editor found guilty, five

people cleared, it is clearly bungled, poorly executed and you

wonder why on earth they have done it. It is kept some investigative

reporters in work and they have won some awards, apart from that the

public don't care. Six people have been found guilty before the start

of the trial? They chose not to be put on trial, not found guilty. But

in terms. Impact, we heard there in that film the principal journalist

saying that stories are being spiked and stamped on. Is that a good

thing? I don't know you have to tell me the stories. If you have a

cabinet minister who has a problem with drugs, it is good we know about

it. If you have a Premier League football player running around with

call girls in a hotel, I don't care, it doesn't affect my life. The idea

a prominent politician is thieving or inappropriate behaviour it does

affect my life. Until I have heard the stories I can't comment. In

terms of the affect on the press, the nervousness that has spread, the

problem is, there is a stalemate, because some parts of the pressee,

yes, that is pretty good, and others saying no it is sending a chill up

our spines. Why is there a stalemate in terms of how people are trying to

move on? I don't see that there should be a stalemate. The press

enjoy freedom of expression and nobody has spoken out against that.

Leveson's recommendations were for self-regulation to continue, but

with an audit body to make sure that it was robust self-regulation. This

is a privilege, afterall, that other provisions no longer have. They are

only partially self-regulated. So that the proposed audit body that

Leveson recommended seems to me not something to get timid about. It is

something to, as it were, take in one's stride and create a good press

that really does serious investigative journalism, as you

say. The real thing, not the tawdry celeb stories we are getting. The

majority of the press accepting that, the royal charter, they are

tiny and just not going along with it? At the moment there is only one

body which is IPSO, independent press standards organisation, son of

PCC, and they have said that they won't apply to be audited. I suppose

they are timid that they couldn't meeted standards. Having testified

at Leveson are you satisfied with what you have seen so far. Does it

meet his requirements? What we have at this stage does not meet his

requirements, and I recently put a question in the House of Lords

whether it would be satisfactory if the only self-regulating body for

the press refused to be audited. I can't say the minister was able to

answer that question. So briefly, should the Government force the

royal charter on the press? The whole point about the royal charter

is it is not forced. There is no state regulation of the press

proposed, desspite a certain amount of sleeking. One of the --

shrieking. I can't imagine Fraser Nelson

shrieking. I think there is an unhealthy lack of trust in

politicians, it gave us the opportunity to get their hands on

regulation of the media. I'm not going to get hysterical or say they

can shut down newspapers or force stories to be spiked. At the

Spectator we have seen politicians gleefully seizing then't opportunity

presented by press regulation to try to shut down stories they find

inconvenient. We have had politicians calling our editor

trying to stop writers publishing stories that are just inconvenient.

In your view that's new? Respectfully you can't have a little

bit of regulation, you can't be a little bit pregnant. Either the

Government has got its fingers on it or it hasn't. This idea put forward

by supporters, when they are all eating pizza at 2.00am doing shady

deals where the press aren't invited. It is like an MOT, it is

cobblers, respectfully, it is everything this country has fought

against, thank God. Let's wind back there one second, you will find the

newspaper groups had ten-times as many meetings with politicians as

hacked off or anyone had. The pizza that has been denied it happened,

and it gets repeated and it is the worse way the papers work, they

repeat that again and again and again. They said on my LBC pizza.

What flavour was it, the topping, the details. It doesn't matter.

Isn't it part of being a politician to talk to the press? They have to

have connections, they have to have links do they not? Of course they

do. They have to win elections and they are very dependant on the

media. I think what we have to understand is that this is a power

relationship and what we have to think about is how do we sustain

freedom of expression, which I take to be really important in the face

of those who wish it to be controlled either by the press or by

the politicians. And I think that we have to find a way of mediating

that, Leveson's proposal, taken seriously and not looking at all the

stuff that has been said about it, is actually very clever. It is not

state regulation of the media, it does not permit censorship of

content. You hear already before the full version is up and running we

already have politicians trying to use it to shut down stories that

they don't want to be published? Politicians will always try that.

Politicians run very scared of the press. You have to recognise this.

I'm sure they don't all behave well. We have very good evidence of that

too. But it isn't a one-way story here. And self-regulation is a

privilege we are called to no other powerful body, so I think we have to

think very hard about how we sustain self-regulation without falling into

the area where we have been... Pizza aside, one of the least impressive

things this parliament has done is to force through this legislation

that enabled the royal charter in an afternoon, the day after the press

talks late at night, MPs voted on the legislation with no scrutiny

whatsoever. You talk to many Conservative MPs and they are

horrified. It is not legislation. I sat in the bill, it was debated in

the Commons. How many times do you see parties vote something through

and argue it and the arrogance saying they are above it, saying

they are above parliament. Who elected Rupert Murdoch and others,

they are not elected peers. They get elected every day by their readers.

Don't give me that. Let's see what they are serving up to readers

tomorrow morning. A quick look at the papers, the Sun we have seen.

Rebekah Brooks on the front. That is all I'm afraid we have time

Good evening. In the next few days it looks set to be a little bit

cooler compared to