:00:00. > :00:00.investigation. Is a much still to do, thank you for the update. ``
:00:00. > :00:11.still much to do. It is time for this week's Meet The Author.
:00:12. > :00:14.Four weeks ago, Andy Coulson, once editor of the News of the World and
:00:15. > :00:16.the government's director of communications no less, was
:00:17. > :00:19.convicted and jailed for conspiracy to hack phones. In the previous
:00:20. > :00:21.three years, scores of other journalists have been arrested by
:00:22. > :00:23.police investigating allegations of widespread criminality. Phone
:00:24. > :00:31.hacking. Computer hacking. Bribing officials. Some are still facing
:00:32. > :00:38.trial. Britain's biggest selling newspaper, News of the World, having
:00:39. > :00:40.closed after 160 years. And a hard`hitting government in quietly
:00:41. > :00:42.and Lord Justice Leveson shone a searchlight on the manifest
:00:43. > :00:46.shortcomings of newspapers and on relations between the press, the
:00:47. > :00:53.police and politicians. Much of this came about the cause of one man,
:00:54. > :00:57.Nick Davies. An investigative reporter with The Guardian. Now he
:00:58. > :01:00.has written a book, Hack Attack, subtitled how the truth caught up
:01:01. > :01:03.with Rupert Murdoch. It tells the inside story of an investigation
:01:04. > :01:07.which lasted more than six years into what happened at the News of
:01:08. > :01:18.the World and the company that owns it.
:01:19. > :01:23.Nick Davies, this was an extraordinarily long investigation
:01:24. > :01:28.for you, over six years. An enormous amount of work. It is more or less
:01:29. > :01:32.finished for you now. Are you pleased? Or do you think there is
:01:33. > :01:37.still a lot of unfinished business? Two different questions in there.
:01:38. > :01:41.First, lots of unfinished business. There is at least 11 more criminal
:01:42. > :01:44.trials coming. Lots of people lining up still in the civil courts to sue
:01:45. > :01:47.because they had their phones hacked. There are all sorts of
:01:48. > :01:50.potential knock`on effects for Murdoch and his company. Some
:01:51. > :01:54.possibility of his global parent company being prosecuted in the
:01:55. > :02:00.United States. So it is an extraordinary story. I would think
:02:01. > :02:04.it has another two or three years to run. As to whether or not I am
:02:05. > :02:07.pleased, it is a weird frustrating business being a writer. You stuff
:02:08. > :02:13.information out into the public domain. And then, it is completely
:02:14. > :02:20.unpredictable and uncontrollable as to the impact of that information.
:02:21. > :02:25.So, in some ways, the stuff I have exposed has had a bad effect. For
:02:26. > :02:29.example, I wish that the Murdochs had not closed the News of the
:02:30. > :02:31.World. There were lots and lots of problems with that newspaper
:02:32. > :02:35.internally. It was breaking the law. It was ruining people's lives. But
:02:36. > :02:38.still, it was highly regrettable that, in an extremely selfish and
:02:39. > :02:40.ruthless move, the Murdochs closed that newspaper. And threw several
:02:41. > :02:46.hundred people out of work. Really to protect their own position. One
:02:47. > :02:50.of the things that comes out of the book is that, for most of the time,
:02:51. > :02:53.the revelations that The Guardian was producing about phone hacking at
:02:54. > :02:56.the News of the World. Numbers of celebrities targeted and so on. You
:02:57. > :03:01.were putting all this out there. And nothing was happening. Nobody seemed
:03:02. > :03:04.to be responding. Yes. Well, the problem was, and to some extent
:03:05. > :03:07.still is, that other newspapers in Fleet Street don't want the story
:03:08. > :03:10.covered. So lots of other newspapers in Fleet Street were hiring private
:03:11. > :03:13.investigators who were doing illegal things. So there was a little bit of
:03:14. > :03:17.a problem there. Some of those newspapers were active supporters of
:03:18. > :03:19.the Conservative Party. And they did not like the fact that the
:03:20. > :03:23.Conservative leader, David Cameron, was in a position of jeopardy.
:03:24. > :03:26.Because he had hired the former editor of the News of the World,
:03:27. > :03:29.Andy Coulson. So there was a resistance to covering the story. An
:03:30. > :03:40.active decision really not to pursue it. Now, that all changed in July
:03:41. > :03:42.2011. You published the news that Milly Dowler, the 13`year`old murder
:03:43. > :03:46.victim, had had her voice mail hacked. And you say in the book
:03:47. > :03:50.there was a white flash, and mighty explosion. Yes. Which is putting it
:03:51. > :03:52.mildly. What was it about that particular revelation that, after
:03:53. > :03:56.three and a half years of publications and investigations,
:03:57. > :03:59.changed everything? I think, if we had just published the Milly Dowler
:04:00. > :04:03.story, it would not have had that impact. It was because it was at the
:04:04. > :04:12.end of this long sequence of revelation. But the key thing about
:04:13. > :04:16.the Milly Dowler story was that this was a victim who was not a celebrity
:04:17. > :04:20.or a public eager. `` public figure. This was an ordinary civilian. And
:04:21. > :04:23.furthermore a child. And furthermore a child who had been abducted and
:04:24. > :04:28.murdered. And it was just a step too far. That this newspaper should
:04:29. > :04:31.think that was a legitimate target. And it was extraordinary reaction.
:04:32. > :04:34.Because it pulled in other newspapers to start working. There
:04:35. > :04:37.was a whole other guy mentioned to this as well. That it isn't just the
:04:38. > :04:40.story about journalists behaving badly. I have said right from the
:04:41. > :04:44.word go. What makes this worth pursuing is that it is a story about
:04:45. > :04:48.power. And the abuse of power. That story takes you into what in the
:04:49. > :04:51.book I keep referring to is the power elite. This immensely wealthy
:04:52. > :04:53.and powerful media mogul. He is able to connect into the political world.
:04:54. > :04:56.And have extraordinary influence over the way that political world
:04:57. > :05:00.makes decisions. And then the kind of ripple effects of his power. When
:05:01. > :05:03.you come to look at the police and their failure to investigate him
:05:04. > :05:11.over the years. Their failure to tell the truth when we started
:05:12. > :05:14.digging it out. And they are on the sidelines, also the failure of the
:05:15. > :05:17.press regulator. And all of those failures reflect the power of that
:05:18. > :05:20.man and his organisation at the centre of the story. Your work is
:05:21. > :05:26.clearly an excellent example of what investigative journalist can do, if
:05:27. > :05:30.he is persistent enough. If he is dogged enough. There are people,
:05:31. > :05:34.though, that say one of the outcomes of all of this may be a chilling
:05:35. > :05:37.effect on the freedom of the press. You have journalists who have been
:05:38. > :05:42.arrested. And may go on trial. Some who have been convicted. You have
:05:43. > :05:48.Max Mosley, who bankrolled a lot of the legal cases by victims of phone
:05:49. > :05:52.hacking. He went to the European Court of Justice to try to persuade
:05:53. > :05:54.the court that they should instigate a legal obligation for newspapers to
:05:55. > :05:57.contact people in advance. All of this could have a chilling effect on
:05:58. > :05:59.investigations. Including perfectly legitimate investigations. Not
:06:00. > :06:06.merely those into the private lives of people. I don't see why this
:06:07. > :06:08.should have any kind of chilling effect on decent investigative
:06:09. > :06:11.reporting. To the extent that reporters have been arrested for bad
:06:12. > :06:15.things they have done. It is because they have broken the criminal law.
:06:16. > :06:17.If reporters were being arrested for acting as reporters. Writing stories
:06:18. > :06:19.that the government didn't like. That would really, really be
:06:20. > :06:23.alarming. But reporters are not above the law. We are not supposed
:06:24. > :06:29.to be above the law. We have a couple of special legal privileges.
:06:30. > :06:32.But if we go out and hit people, for example, to get a story, we deserve
:06:33. > :06:38.to be arrested. We are not entitled to hit people to get stories. Or to
:06:39. > :06:41.hack phones or e`mail or live phone calls, or any other things I
:06:42. > :06:45.describe in the book. So legitimate journalism is not threatened by
:06:46. > :06:49.this. I would go a step further and say that one of the good things that
:06:50. > :06:51.could emerge from this is if we instituted the kind of regulator
:06:52. > :06:53.that Lord Justice Leveson suggests. That is completely independent of
:06:54. > :06:59.Fleet Street. And completely independent of government. If we set
:07:00. > :07:01.up that system, he wants an arbitrator which would settle
:07:02. > :07:04.disputes about libel and privacy. That would then free us from the
:07:05. > :07:07.chilling effect of the courts. Because you will know as a
:07:08. > :07:10.journalist. One of the worst things we have to work with in this country
:07:11. > :07:13.is libel law. It is so time`consuming and expensive. And so
:07:14. > :07:16.potentially destructive. If you set up Leveson, you go through an
:07:17. > :07:19.arbitration arm. Suddenly we are free of that chilling effect. It
:07:20. > :07:21.could get much better. But we're not going to get what Leveson
:07:22. > :07:26.recommended, are we? The newspapers won't accept it. And politicians are
:07:27. > :07:32.not in a position to insist. Absolutely fascinating. Because what
:07:33. > :07:34.you're seeing is an example of Fleet Street's power and the way that
:07:35. > :07:38.politicians genuflect and back off when Fleet Street gets angry. It is
:07:39. > :07:41.precisely that kind of behaviour that makes Leveson necessary. And
:07:42. > :07:45.precisely that behaviour which will probably stop it being implemented.
:07:46. > :07:54.So in the long run, will anything change? Will they all go back to
:07:55. > :08:00.their bad old ways in due course? A lot of the dark ways in Fleet Street
:08:01. > :08:03.have not gone away at all. The propensity to engage in aggressive
:08:04. > :08:08.falsehood and distortion is still there. You saw how they rained down
:08:09. > :08:11.on Leveson with that. I think the criminal activity is probably fallen
:08:12. > :08:14.to about zero. Longer term, as the trial is probably fallen to about
:08:15. > :08:17.zero. Longer term, as the trials pass into history, I would come
:08:18. > :08:19.back. Nick Davies, thank you very much indeed.