Episode 1 The Phone Hacking Inquiry

the first week in to be Leveson Inquiry Ross Hawkins looks back at

the heart out. The transaction was wrong, shameful and should never

have happened. What you cannot buy, you Pope York, often through

deception and lies. What she cannot be -- approach your, you still.

film star, the supermodel, the novelist, the singer. The court has

heard how their lives were laid bare in the newspapers. But it all

began with a 13-year-old girl. They call it the tipping point, one

alleged crime among thousands, but the one that mattered. Milly Dowler

had been missing just a few days when the News of the World hacked

into her mobile phone. There was outrage and soon after this

decision: We do need to have an inquiry into what has happened.

That inquiry would coming two parts. Once the police and the courts had

finished their work it would examine wrong doing at News of the

World. But first it would look at how the press worked, how it dealt

with police and politicians. Embarking on a mammoth task.

heart of this enquiry may be one simple question: Regards the

Guardian's? On day one, the suggestion that those guardians had

become too powerful. This may be one reason why politicians have not

been overly keen to take steps to call into question. They fear that

by doing so the press would withdraw support for them on a

subject them to close personal scrutiny. If that that analysis is

right to it might also be said that this inquiry should have the same

concerns. And conversely the public may feel that this enquiry may pull

its punches for the same reason. I am however able to me put any such

concerns in the bad. Journalists had used a private investigator in

Hampshire to get information from their own accounts and credit card

statements. In the previous three years alone 305 different

journalists had asked Steve which more for a total of 13,343

different items of information. These 305 journalists worked for 21

newspapers and 11 magazines. Names written in the corners of pages in

the notebooks of another private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, who was

jailed for plotting to hack phones, suggested that News of the World

was not the only paper involved. Acorn and name in a notebook simply

states, The Sun. It does not specify an individual working there.

We have received documentary evidence of another name relating

to Zohar Zemiro. They those notebooks so this journalist, Clive

Goodman, was not the only one in Rupert Murdoch's firm behaving like

that. It is clear that Goodman was not a rogue reporter, we have at

least 27 other News International employees. The lawyer for the

Metropolitan Police later told the enquiry that some of those names

were possibly News of the World employees. But when the man

representing News of the World's publisher arrived he came with an

apology. Phone hacking was wrong, shameful and it should never have

happened. News International apologises unreservedly. Nothing

that it has said on its behalf during this enquiry is intended to

detract from all qualify that apology in any way. I must add that

we accept that phone hacking at the News of the World was not the work

of a single rogue reporter. We accept that there was no public

interest justification for it. We further accept that it was not the

subject of a proper and thorough investigation until the

Metropolitan Police began operation Weeting in January this year

following the supplier of material to them by News International. In

addition we regard as wholly unacceptable the commissioning of a

private investigator to carry out surveillance of lawyers acting for

claimants or of Members of Parliament on the Select Committee.

I should say that watching what people are getting up to is an old

fashioned and perfectly proper journalistic practice in many

circumstances. But in this instance it was not journalism at will and

it was unacceptable. And later this warning. I am not going to give any

guarantees that there was no phone hacking by or for the News of the

World after 2007. The press knew why they were coming here and they

were not taking it lying down. A man representing the Mail said they

did not behave like News of the World. A no journalist at

Associated Newspapers has engaged in phone hacking. It does not to

bribe the police officers. And, in particular, it condemns the

shameful practice of packing the mobile phones of the victims of

crime or of their families. The activity which Stephen Whitmore was

hired to undertake almost a dead wood ago was primarily to obtain

addresses and telephone numbers, most of which could legally have

been obtained if the individual had had the time to research it. And

his assistants was required as far as associated journalists were

concerned, to help trace people quickly, usually to verify facts or

to comment on stories that were written or in progress prior to

publication. And when, on day three, journalists spoke, they came not to

praise but too damn others in their trade, some of them they suggested

were afraid of their buzzers. reality is that speaking out

publicly is not an option for many journalists who would feel at

losing their jobs or making themselves unemployable in the

future. In our experience that fear has been a significant factor in

inhibiting journalists from following ethical principles in the

workplace was in media organisations hostile to the

concepts of trade unions, that is a problem. Where does the power

Reside? Not at the bottom where the majority were to get the job done.

But at the top. The expectation was, deliver the goods, and get the job

done, bringing the story, whatever the means. No British news editor

apparently considered it interesting that a former News of

the World journalist was in November 2009 awarded the stunning

some of �800,000 for suffering what an employment tribunal regarded as

a culture of bullying by its then editor Andy Coulson. This record

pay-out and verdict on a man who was about to work through the front

door of Number Ten were not judged newsworthy. We have just heard this

from the general secretary of the Union, a culture of bullying in any

organisation is important. It may be pertinent to ask whether

journalists felt intimidated and the things they need to be wrong.

As suggests the enquiry may blight will ask whether this was the case

within the News of the World. Can safeguards the Bill so that

journalists working under increasing pressure can exercise

some moral choices about the things they cannot square with their

conscience. The answers to these questions about the response to the

phone hacking revelations are vital ones for anyone who cares about the

health of their democracy. Did people both internally and

externally feel a fear of News International? Was its influence

across many aspects of British political and cultural life simply

to dominate? How did News Corp leverage its influence. It was the

experiences of those on the receiving end of a journalistic

muscle that rang loudest. Experiences at the hands of what

was described as a tawdry journalistic trade. The real code

of practice seems to be for such journalists in publishing stories

about the private lives of people in the public eye, that what you

can get away with, you buy. Regardless of whether it is illegal,

it unlawful or just plain wrong. What you cannot buy, you pro cruel,

often through deception and lies. What you cannot pick your, you just

plain steel. And what you want to published but can neither verified

will prove you simply make up. Because it sounds) sells newspapers.

At the heart of his case the experience of this family. By on

21st March 2000 to a 13-year-old girl was abducted and murdered. Her

name was me. -- Milly Dowler. Between March and September she was

still believed to be missing, not just by the public but also by her

family. Five days after her disappearance a mystery caller left

a voicemail message on her phone, apparently inviting her to a job

interview in the Midlands. The call was a hoax. A particularly cruel

and insensitive folks. It was such an awful story that it made the

front pages. A now defunct newspaper put it in their first

edition. While the woman who made that call and thereby caused

distress to Milly Dowler's family was convicted and imprisoned for

five months, what we now know is that another outrage, another act

of Crawley and insensitivity was the one which was no way mentioned

in the News of the World. That was the fact that Glenn Mulcaire,

acting in the course of his work for the newspaper, had deliberately

accessed and listen to the missing girl's voice mails. Worse still, he

had even deleted some to ensure there was room for waiting voice

mails to come through to hope otherwise all-male worlds. Mr Rann

Mrs Dowler will tell you in their own words what it felt like in

those moments when her mother finally got through to her

daughter's boy's mouth after persistent attempts had failed as

the box was fault and the euphoria that this belief created, false as

it was, unfortunately. Perhaps Cyrano words which can adequately

describe how despicable this act was, but the Milly Dowler story is

just one of those you were here. The inquiry would also hear the

story of a business advisor to Elle Macpherson. This field will give

evidence about how she became Elle Macpherson's business advisor but

how when damaging details of her private life started appearing in a

place she was blamed by her employer. This is no ordinary story,

there. The circumstances in which so she was packed off to way clinic

in America because her employer believes that her refusal to accept

that she was responsible was plainly a denial born out of the

strain of caring for her disabled son and a problem with alcohol. She

will explain how she reluctantly agreed to his travel to this clinic

and then when the clinic sent her back because there was no problem

she was in any event sacked by her employer. These are matters she

will graphically describe. Of course we all know now that those

stories in the press were actually the product, not have someone

leaking to the newspapers, but rather the unlawful interception of

her voice mails and her employers Sara pain, mother of Sarah, who was

murdered, the phone that she was given by the pay but may have been

had by Glenn Mulcaire. -- by the paper.

The story which the News of the World plastered across its front

page, with the screaming headline, Formula One boss has it not sick

orgy with five walkers, revealing the details of Max Mosley's sex

life, together with graphic images, has nothing whatsoever to do with

public interest. Max Mosley's work as President of B F I A, may have

involved a public dimension in terms of imposing sanctions on the

Formula One industry, but much, if not more, was about road safety,

which is rather boring, but nevertheless incredibly important.

Max Mosley did not court publicity, neither he nor his wife, nor his

sons, had any interest in being associated with the glamour of

motor sport. However, before the end of March 2008, he may not have

been well known to the average member of the British public, and

that was a deliberate choice, he is well known now, to be honest, who

can look at him without thinking about what he chooses to do with

other consenting adults in private? And then stop and ask yourself this,

is this something that you really feel that you are entitled to know

about? Whatever your answer, you do know it, and once you know it, it

is too late. The fact that he won his case does nothing to remedy

that. Sadly, in Max Mosley's case, and in several other accounts that

you will hear, there is a terrible postscript. In the aftermath of the

trial, his son, who was suffering from depression, died from an

overdose, something which he strongly believes was in some way

attributable to the very public humiliation. The press's reaction

to this deeply sensitive issue highly covers them in more glory.

As Mr Mosley tried to sort out his son's personal effects, he was

mobbed by journalists at the house, even though he had written to

newspaper editors, asking to be left alone. An isolated incident?

No. The same is true of his son's funeral. One of the reporters tried

to pass himself off as a rambler in order to get in and take pictures.

For Charlotte Church, it was her parents who suffered, said the

lawyer, at the most difficult of times. Part of her estate men

concerned a story that was published on the front page of the

News of the World in December 2005, under the headline, church, three

in a bed, cocaine. You might be forgiven for thinking when you saw

the headline, that it was some revelation about the singer herself.

It was not. Although I suspect that was the intention. Instead, it was

a story about her father, having an affair with someone who worked with

him, and in several pages, sensational details of his private

relationship was plastered across the newspaper. The effect on her

parents and particularly her mother, someone the press would call, the

innocent party, was absolutely devastating, and Ms Church will

tell you about this. The newspaper was aware of that effect even at

the time. How do I say that? It transpired that the family

discovered that the story was the product of their personal messages

being an illegally accessed by Glenn Mulcaire. Part of the

information which they would have found that was the fact that surely

pride to the story been published, Charlotte's mother was admitted to

hospital following an attempted suicide. The newspaper I knew it.

In an act of great sensitivity, as in his church will it is plain,

following the article published, the newspaper approached her mother

directly, and persuaded her to give them an exclusive despite her

fragile condition, in part of a packed, in return, they would not

run up another follow-up story about her husband's affair. There

was no effect to trouble JK Rowling, no scandal, just the job of trying

to secure some privacy for her children. The fact that she has

tried to carve out an protect some form, some semblance of normal life

for her children, but has failed to do so, despite her best efforts,

just highlights the excesses of the press. It should not need saying,

and indeed it is part of the PCC code, whatever good that has done

her in the past, that just because children have famous parents, does

not mean they are public property as well. Adults can make choices

that children cannot. And while it the most well-known of hurt

repeated disputes with a certain section of the press, desperate to

overstep the boundaries between her private and professional career, is

the case that she brought against big pictures, a photographic agency,

over a photograph they took, published in the Express, offer

walking on a family outing, sharing some special moments with her

husband and children, this is by no means the only example she would

give of such intrusion. There have still been photographers and press

camped outside her house, with young children had had notes

pressed into her school bag, pictures of them had been snatched,

while they had been enjoying quality time on holiday. And few

parents can no and experience that the case of what the parents of

Madeleine McCann. In September 2008, the News of the World published

Kate's private diary that she had written to her missing daughter. It

was a diary in which she recorded her innermost thoughts, things that

she had written to her daughter, the document so private that even

her own husband had not seen it. But which was taken by the police

in the course of the investigation. How did the News of the World get

this from the police? De dead by the information, obtain net through

some form of deception, we may never know, especially as the

newspaper is defunct. On what basis did they think they could justify

such a staggering intrusion into their privacy? The publication of

this material under the headline, Kate's diary, in her own words,

with a picture on the front page suggesting that she had provided

this herself, left her feeling mentally raped, her husband said.

He will speak for himself next week, as would JK Rowling. Hugh Grant as

well. It was his case that will last week's evidence right up to

date, an experience not known to the public and to the victim's

Council told the inquiry what had been happening to the mother of his

newborn daughter. It was appalling harassment which this lady was

having to endure, simply because she was his former girlfriend and

has had his child. That is not strictly true. The real reason for

the harassment is probably far more sinister, and it is revealed in the

evidence that she gave, namely that she has received threats, because

of the fact that the father of her child has spoken out against the

press. She recalls how while Mr Grant was appearing at Question

Time, discussing the closure of the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch

and press stand is generally, she received a barrage of telephone

calls from a withheld number that someone managed to get it. When she

finally answered, she was threatened in the most menacing

terms, terms which will reverberate around this inquiry, tell Hugh

Grant. Unsurprising it, she was too stressed to call the police. After

the birth of her child, the fact which appears to have been leat

somehow, this hounding turned into a continued pursuit of her and her

child, by paparazzi and other photographers. It became so nasty

that when her mother tried to get evidence of the identity of one of

the paparazzi in the crowd, he then tried to run her over. All that was

one side of the story of course, and Lord Justice Evans and went out

of his way to reassure those concerned that his inquiry it will

leave Britain with a muted and servile press. -- would not leave

Britain. The overwhelming majority of journalism practised in this

country is very much in the public interest, and has the public

interest very much at its heart. Journalists may have their work cut

out convincing everybody that is the case. What is happening here is

an inquiry, of those who feel they have been wronged by the press,