:00:08. > :00:13.Now on BBC News, it's time for the Phone Hacking Inquiry.
:00:14. > :00:20.Id you have any particular or any regard to issues such as privacy?
:00:20. > :00:29.Not really, no. I can't remember what the word
:00:29. > :00:34.means, no. I believe the Sun can be a real powerful force for good.
:00:34. > :00:40.Ugly spin being put on a lot of this stuff because it sells papers
:00:40. > :00:44.better. I felt such a sense of invasion. I desperately wanted to
:00:44. > :00:48.shout out "it's not true "requests but when it's your voice against
:00:48. > :00:53.the powerful media. This hasn't been a trial, but for those accused
:00:53. > :00:57.by the Leveson witnesses, it might have felt like one and, for all the
:00:57. > :01:02.influence, for all the readers, the newspapers haven't had much of a
:01:02. > :01:06.chance to answer back until this week. Until this man got a say. 13
:01:06. > :01:11.years the Editor of the Sun, sister paper to the News of the World and
:01:11. > :01:17.never one to mince his words. If we manage to give a black eye to
:01:17. > :01:21.our rival, we'd be delighted with that. Talking on day 22 at the
:01:21. > :01:31.inquiry about how he did business. Did you have any particular regard
:01:31. > :01:36.to issues such as privacy? really, no. You say in your seminar
:01:36. > :01:43.that I should make it clear this is in the context of a particular
:01:43. > :01:46.story, the Elton John story which culminated in, as we know,
:01:46. > :01:49.litigation and compensation paid to Mr Elton John. My view is that if
:01:50. > :01:59.it sounded right, it was probably right and therefore we should lob
:01:59. > :02:04.it in - do you stand by that? I do. Sometimes the things that got
:02:04. > :02:11.lobbed in weren't true, like the story about Elton John. In that
:02:11. > :02:17.case, Rupert Murdoch wasn't happy. The phone then rang at 1.0 1 and 7
:02:17. > :02:24.seconds and I then received something like 40 minutes of non-
:02:24. > :02:30.stop abuse for the issue. It wasn't so much the money, of course, it
:02:30. > :02:35.was the fact that the shadow which it cast over the paper. So the idea
:02:35. > :02:41.that Rupert Murdoch simply took these things on the chin as part of
:02:41. > :02:44.the commercial battering of life was wholly ridiculous. Then he said
:02:44. > :02:48.tabloids always had been harshly judged. If you had Tony Blair's
:02:48. > :02:54.mobile number and hacked into it and found he was circumventing the
:02:54. > :02:59.Cabinet in order to go to war, as has now emerged in the Iraq inquiry,
:02:59. > :03:06.and you published that, if you publish it in the Sun you get six
:03:06. > :03:12.months jail, or the Guardian, you get a Pulitzer prise. Take the
:03:12. > :03:18.Milly Dowler deletions of the calls. Had that been the Sun, it would
:03:18. > :03:23.have been coming very close to being shut down. Ie had they got
:03:23. > :03:32.that story wrong. The Forwardian sticks it away on page 10 and hopes
:03:32. > :03:41.to get away with it. There was a photo from the funeral of Anne
:03:41. > :03:45.Diamond's baby boy. 13 years of working with Rupert Murdoch, you
:03:45. > :03:50.never said go get anybody. The second one the following day, they
:03:50. > :03:53.were so upset, they sat down with Sun executives and sat down with a
:03:53. > :03:56.charity campaign which raised �250,000 and lasted five to seven
:03:56. > :04:01.years, so why would this conversation be any truer than the
:04:01. > :04:07.two points. She's a devalued witness. Lord Justice Leveson said
:04:07. > :04:11.he shouldn't have made the comments. His most colourful story dated from
:04:11. > :04:14.1992 when Britain fell out of the exchange rate mechanism, the
:04:14. > :04:20.Chancellor tried to explain in public and the Prime Minister of
:04:20. > :04:27.the day, John Major, got in touch for a quiet chat. He called me up,
:04:27. > :04:32.why he'd call up the Editor of the Sun when involved in this I've no
:04:32. > :04:39.idea, he said "just culling you up to find out how the story is going
:04:39. > :04:43.to play in the paper tomorrow?" -- calling you up. On that basis I
:04:43. > :04:48.said, I've got a (BLEEP) list on my desk and I'm going to pour it all
:04:48. > :04:52.over you. He looked happy with his evidence, but he hasn't edited a
:04:52. > :04:56.paper for almost 20 years, the Current Sun staff said things
:04:56. > :05:06.changed since his day. The showbiz editor said journalists took time
:05:06. > :05:06.
:05:06. > :05:10.to think about ethics, even though the pressure remained. Playing
:05:10. > :05:13.senator for forward for Manchester United, if you don't score, you get
:05:13. > :05:17.the hair trier treatment or get dropped and I have to deliver
:05:17. > :05:21.exclusives. That's my job. Pressure that meant some stories got
:05:21. > :05:28.published without phoning anyone to check the facts. I'll write ten
:05:28. > :05:34.stories a day on average, so over a week, 60 stories, 3,000 a year. A
:05:34. > :05:39.lot ot material goes through. -- lot of material. The more trivial
:05:39. > :05:43.stories, the Shorts, as we call them, we might not call in them.
:05:43. > :05:49.Decisions about what got printed were carefully considered, said the
:05:49. > :05:53.Sun's Royal editor, more so perhaps than in Elvin McKenzie's view.
:05:53. > :05:58.adopted the view on many occasions to lob the story in, I would be
:05:58. > :06:01.lucky if I was even working in Tesco's myself. It doesn't work
:06:01. > :06:05.like that on Royal stories and frankly not on Fleet Street any
:06:05. > :06:10.more. Royals had particular influence, only rarely did the
:06:11. > :06:15.paper ignore a request from Clarence House not to publish.
:06:15. > :06:19.Prince Harry was in Las Vegas recently and we ended up pulling a
:06:19. > :06:24.front-page at 7.20 on a Monday night because there were pictures
:06:24. > :06:30.of him taken inside a club with 300 people in there. The Palace said to
:06:30. > :06:34.me, he was sitting there like anyone his age having a beer and
:06:34. > :06:38.the Palace's argument was, that's a reasonable expectation of privacy
:06:38. > :06:42.and we'd rather you didn't use the pictures. As the news changed, so
:06:42. > :06:47.did the rules. While they printed a picture of the Duchess of Cambridge
:06:47. > :06:51.shopping after her wedding, they turned down a similar photo later
:06:52. > :06:54.on. The man in the Editor's chair at the biggest selling newspaper in
:06:54. > :06:58.the country. There were no stories of abusing a Prime Minister from
:06:58. > :07:04.him. Instead, like his staff, he emphasised caution and a
:07:04. > :07:08.willingness to listen and to learn. During the riots, I prepared a
:07:08. > :07:12.front-page which had a list of individuals who'd been arrested in
:07:12. > :07:19.the riots because the variety of their professions was quite
:07:19. > :07:24.fascinating, I felt, because there was a lifeguard and another was a
:07:24. > :07:27.teaching Assistant who I described as a teacher in the headline. I
:07:27. > :07:31.received a number of complaints the following day from readers who felt
:07:31. > :07:35.it was unfair to describe a teaching assistant as a teacher for
:07:35. > :07:39.the purposes of a headline, so I noted that and won't do it again.
:07:40. > :07:44.They didn't hire private investigators either, he said.
:07:44. > :07:48.have been used in the past without the permission of the Chief
:07:48. > :07:53.Executive officer, but now there are new controls in place. Have you,
:07:53. > :08:01.in your career, of the Sun, ever used private investigators? Not to
:08:01. > :08:08.my knowledge, no. Even to discover ex-directry numbers, for example?
:08:08. > :08:12.I've used search agents in the past, but I wouldn't describe them as
:08:12. > :08:15.private detectives. And can these search agents be used at News
:08:15. > :08:20.International even now with or without the express permission of
:08:20. > :08:25.the Chief Executive officer? Yes, search agents can. There is a
:08:25. > :08:32.distinction. Those search agents cost the paper �165,000 last year.
:08:32. > :08:36.But the inquiry heard for the first time a lengthy defence of a current
:08:36. > :08:39.tabloids work. Yes, I think it's important to emphasise that I do
:08:39. > :08:44.believe the Sun can be a real powerful force for good and these
:08:44. > :08:48.campaigns are an example of that. Help for Heroes has raised �120
:08:48. > :08:53.million which is the latest figure for injured servicemen and it's
:08:53. > :08:58.raised the profile of our brave injured soldier who is were, it
:08:58. > :09:02.must be said, perhaps a little neglected before that campaign.
:09:02. > :09:09.I think it's extremely important to emphasise the positive, as well as
:09:09. > :09:13.be aware of the negative and nobody should think that because
:09:14. > :09:20.inevitably this inquiry is focusing on concerns which represent the
:09:20. > :09:24.negative, it's not a very important part of the job to balance that
:09:24. > :09:30.with the positives, the examples of which you have just provided.
:09:30. > :09:34.But the views of the judge weren't the press's only problem. Why, for
:09:34. > :09:38.example, should anyone spend money buying one of those when they can
:09:38. > :09:44.read on one of those for nothing? Facts the press aren't even allowed
:09:44. > :09:48.to print. When we were in a position to print the name of the
:09:48. > :09:52.footballer, obviously there had been huge speculation on the social
:09:52. > :09:59.media about his identity, and I sat and wrote the front-page and the
:09:59. > :10:02.headline was "it's Giggs gig". I wrote it and my heart sank because
:10:02. > :10:06.I realised there were several million people out there who
:10:06. > :10:15.already knew that because they weren't sub stkwroct the same
:10:15. > :10:24.restrictions that we'd been under - - Seb ject to. On day 23, the
:10:24. > :10:28.inquiry focused on newspapers that sold less. -- subject. You had this
:10:28. > :10:35.idea of a wonderful scoop the next morning, but then looked down on
:10:35. > :10:42.the other side of the mown tear, that's the risk. So you need to go
:10:42. > :10:47.for a second story -- side of the mountain. No story is going to
:10:47. > :10:52.enter the pages or the online section of the Financial Times. You
:10:52. > :10:56.need to have two sources. Even if the Prime Minister were to speak
:10:56. > :11:03.off-the-record to a journalist and give that journalist at the FT a
:11:03. > :11:08.big story, we would still check it, we'd still talk to other people to
:11:08. > :11:12.verify, to also put the story in its broader context. The broad
:11:12. > :11:16.sheets have their own woes. The editor of the Independent was asked
:11:16. > :11:21.about one of his journalist who is used old quotes in interviews
:11:21. > :11:25.passings them off as his own but who wasn't sacked, a cover-up
:11:25. > :11:30.suggested the inquiry lawyer. surprised you say that there was a
:11:30. > :11:37.cover-up in the sense that we'd had inklings before, because that is
:11:37. > :11:43.genuinely news to me. We had no inclinks of the plagiarism at all.
:11:43. > :11:48.-- inklings. One of the problems with the Johan agair was that
:11:48. > :11:51.nobody had ever complained -- affair. No journalist that he
:11:51. > :11:56.plagiarised, no person that he'd interviewed, no member of the
:11:56. > :12:00.public, no reader and no colleague, nobody had alerted us to the fact
:12:00. > :12:05.that he had drawn this information from somewhere else. If they had,
:12:05. > :12:14.it might have been nipped in the bud as a much earlier stage. The
:12:14. > :12:18.fact was, it continued. For the newspapers that used to inhabit
:12:18. > :12:22.Fleet Street, the rules on what happens when their journalists
:12:22. > :12:26.misbehave could be about to change radically. Horde justice leave sown
:12:27. > :12:31.hasn't made up his mind yet, but we are getting more of an idea about
:12:31. > :12:34.his current thinking. I could visualise a system that has three
:12:34. > :12:41.limbs, the complaint, mediation services, presently what everybody
:12:41. > :12:51.says the PCC does so well, a regulatory mechanism which I don't
:12:51. > :12:51.
:12:52. > :12:59.think the PCC now claims to have done. And an arbitrary mechanism.
:12:59. > :13:05.Not statutory in the sense that it is defined by statute, but
:13:05. > :13:10.statutory in the sense that that provides the compulsory background
:13:10. > :13:15.to appointment of independent people to do all these things.
:13:15. > :13:19.change like that does tend to follow a big scandal. Just ask
:13:19. > :13:24.Members of Parliament. It was the Daily Telegraph that broke that
:13:24. > :13:33.story, paying this inquiry heard, around �150,000 for a computer disc
:13:33. > :13:38.containing the MP receipts and I was concerned it was a hoax. I
:13:38. > :13:43.worked at the Sunday Times were the Hitler diaries hoax took place and
:13:43. > :13:49.the ghosts of that particular situation still roams around the
:13:49. > :13:52.Sunday Times newsroom. I was particularly aware of the
:13:53. > :13:56.possibility of someone trying to stitch me up by providing a hoax
:13:56. > :14:01.material. He was rather less forthcoming
:14:01. > :14:06.about recording Vince Cable by a undercover reporters, saying the
:14:06. > :14:09.minister had declared war on Rupert Murdoch. A story that was first
:14:09. > :14:15.reported on the BBC. He wouldn't say whether he had leaked it to
:14:15. > :14:22.Robert Peston. I can't assist you with that. As
:14:22. > :14:26.you know, call to any journalist is the protection of journalistic
:14:26. > :14:32.sources, whether they are my sources or somebody else's. The
:14:32. > :14:37.only way I answer that question, helpful as I would like to be,
:14:37. > :14:39.would endanger that principle. One venue for the off the record
:14:39. > :14:45.conversation is the political dinner. The current Telegraph
:14:45. > :14:52.editor gave a peek into that world. I've seen the prime minister three
:14:52. > :14:58.times in 2011. Price for dinner. George Osborne a similar number of
:14:58. > :15:03.times. Ed Miliband a similar number of times. With my team, we have had
:15:03. > :15:05.lunch or dinner with three-quarters of the Cabinet and about 50% of the
:15:05. > :15:08.Shadow Cabinet over the previous 18 months.
:15:08. > :15:14.Do you think it gives you influence?
:15:15. > :15:18.Absolutely not. The only reason they have dinner with me is that I
:15:18. > :15:20.run the Daily Telegraph but if I fell under a bus receiving, they
:15:20. > :15:27.would want dinner with the next editor.
:15:27. > :15:29.On day 24, the Daily Mail's picture editor of revealing just how many
:15:29. > :15:33.photos of Philippa Middleton get taken.
:15:33. > :15:38.We have a situation where there must be nine or 10 agencies outside
:15:38. > :15:43.her door every day. She goes to get a coffee. She goes back into her
:15:43. > :15:45.house and you get about 400 pictures of that a day. There is no
:15:45. > :15:49.need, there is no justification to use them.
:15:49. > :15:55.The rules about what the Daily Mail wouldn't print are rather less
:15:55. > :15:58.clear. They said with children bait pixilated their faces, cropped them
:15:58. > :16:03.out entirely or asked agents representing their parents whether
:16:03. > :16:10.they were happy for them to appear. There were exceptions, such as the
:16:10. > :16:15.children of Kate and Gerry McCann. This was a unique situation, a
:16:15. > :16:18.unique story where we were allowed to stand there with the family. We
:16:18. > :16:22.were allowed to photograph the children with the parents' approval
:16:22. > :16:27.in Portugal. Up to that point, I don't remember any objection about
:16:27. > :16:31.using pictures of the other two children.
:16:31. > :16:34.I appreciate on one level this was a uniquely interesting story but on
:16:34. > :16:39.the other level, it engaged the general principles you told us
:16:39. > :16:44.about earlier. It could be said, could it not, but photographs of
:16:44. > :16:49.the parents, in particular out with the children, those photographs
:16:49. > :16:53.should immediately have entered the bone.
:16:53. > :17:01.-- the rubbish bin? Do you agree with that or not?
:17:01. > :17:03.In hindsight, possibly. At the time, as it was at a time, we had
:17:03. > :17:06.photographed the family with the children and there was no objection
:17:06. > :17:10.raised at the time. Hugh Grant suggested the Mail on
:17:10. > :17:14.Sunday had hacked his phone. The paper said this was a mendacious
:17:14. > :17:19.sneer and then pulled that allegation from his website after
:17:19. > :17:26.objections at the inquiry. Giving evidence, its top lawyer said it
:17:26. > :17:30.would stand by those words. Was Hugh Grant not entitled to his view,
:17:30. > :17:34.the inquiry asked. If he was putting this forward as
:17:34. > :17:41.hard fact, he would be going too far. As a piece of speculation, but
:17:41. > :17:47.wasn't unreasonable, was it? But he has used that to accuse our
:17:47. > :17:51.group of phone hacking. I'm sorry, but it is a very serious thing to
:17:51. > :17:57.So you respond by accusing him of perjury?
:17:57. > :18:02.We respond by defending ourselves. On day 25 was the turn of the
:18:02. > :18:07.Express and the start to defend themselves to justify a their
:18:07. > :18:11.coverage of the disappearance of Madeline McCann, coverage that saw
:18:11. > :18:16.the paper was wrongly accused her parents of being responsible, only
:18:16. > :18:20.to say sorry on the front page and pay over half-a-million pounds in
:18:20. > :18:22.damages. The man who edited the Express at the time was there to
:18:22. > :18:29.answer questions about what happened.
:18:29. > :18:33.We published many, many, many stories of all kinds about the
:18:33. > :18:37.McCann family. Many stories were deeply sympathetic, some stories
:18:37. > :18:41.that were not. The stories that were not wear a
:18:41. > :18:43.little bit more than unsympathetic. Some went so far as to accuse them
:18:43. > :18:47.of killing their child, didn't they?
:18:47. > :18:51.This is what the Portuguese police were telling us.
:18:51. > :18:55.Regardless of that, people had already covered that issue. Just
:18:55. > :18:58.wait, Mr Hill. Do you accept that some of your stories went so far as
:18:58. > :19:04.to accuse them of killing their child?
:19:04. > :19:09.I did not accuse them of killing their child. The stories that I
:19:09. > :19:13.around -- that I run were from those who did accuse them and they
:19:13. > :19:19.were the Portuguese police. As executives gave their evidence,
:19:19. > :19:23.it emerged that even in 2010, the firm was still using a company run
:19:23. > :19:27.by the private detective Steve Whitton more who had been convicted
:19:27. > :19:32.for data protection offences five years earlier. The owners of the
:19:32. > :19:37.papers, his movie empire includes adult TV channels, made his
:19:37. > :19:42.entrance, ready to stand up for his staff.
:19:42. > :19:47.Ethical, I don't quite know what the name means. Perhaps you would
:19:47. > :19:52.like to explain what ethical means. We don't talk about ethics or
:19:52. > :19:58.morals because there is a fine line. He said he was sorry about the
:19:58. > :20:01.stories about the McCann family but insisted his titles had been honest
:20:01. > :20:04.and didn't accept the papers made it more difficult to find Madeleine.
:20:04. > :20:08.If people thought that Madeleine had been killed, particularly by
:20:08. > :20:11.her parents but it doesn't matter who, there would be less incentive
:20:12. > :20:21.to try and find her, would you agree with that or not?
:20:21. > :20:27.No. If you take Diana, as an example. These situations where no
:20:27. > :20:32.one actually knows the answer, as it turned out, it just carries on.
:20:32. > :20:36.Mr Desmond, I'm beginning to sound irritated but I am, there is no
:20:36. > :20:41.comparison between these two cases because to be stark about it, in
:20:41. > :20:48.the case of Princess Diana, we have a dead body. What has that to do
:20:48. > :20:56.with the McCann case? There has been speculation that
:20:56. > :20:59.Diana was killed by the Royal Family. You know, the speculation
:20:59. > :21:08.has gone on and on and there has been all sorts of speculation about
:21:08. > :21:14.Diana. And you know what, I don't know the answer. If you go into a
:21:14. > :21:20.bar or a coffee shop or whatever, and you start talking about Diana,
:21:20. > :21:30.you will get a view on Diana and you will get a view, and once again
:21:30. > :21:33.I do apologise to the McCann's, but there are views on the family on
:21:34. > :21:40.what happened. As he backed the then editor of the
:21:40. > :21:44.Daily Express, he questioned the McCann's conduct.
:21:44. > :21:48.We did do everything reasonable, or Mr Hill did do everything
:21:48. > :21:53.reasonable, to make sure he was getting the fact and story across.
:21:53. > :21:58.At the end of the day, the McCann's, as I understood it, although I
:21:58. > :22:06.never met then, were perfectly, if we run it for four months, it took
:22:06. > :22:13.a long time to get involved in a legal dispute with us, they were
:22:13. > :22:17.quite happy, as I understand, in articles being run about their poor
:22:17. > :22:25.daughter. It kept them on the front page. It was only when new lawyers
:22:25. > :22:29.came along who I think were working on contingency, that is a fact.
:22:29. > :22:34.Mr Desmond, I'm going to interrupt you. That is a grotesque
:22:34. > :22:37.characterisation. Your paper was accusing the McCann's at the time
:22:37. > :22:41.of having killed their daughter. Are you seriously saying they were
:22:41. > :22:45.sitting there quite happy rather than entirely anguished by your
:22:45. > :22:49.paper? The editor of the Daily Mail was a
:22:49. > :22:54.fat butcher, he said, and his competitors were idiots.
:22:54. > :23:00.At the end of the day, all the newspapers were doing the same,
:23:00. > :23:04.plus or minus, if there was a major story, and basically, I saw it that
:23:04. > :23:10.we were the only honest ones and straightforward ones. We said, we
:23:10. > :23:15.got it wrong. There is the money for the McCann fund. Let's try and
:23:15. > :23:20.find McCann, the poor little girl. But get rid of it and put it on the
:23:20. > :23:25.front page, up apologise properly, which is what we did.
:23:25. > :23:28.As for the PCC, from which the Express had withdrawn?
:23:28. > :23:33.I thought it was a useless organisation from people who wanted
:23:33. > :23:38.tea and biscuits and phone hackers and it was run by the people who
:23:39. > :23:43.hated our guts, wanted us out of business and trade daily to put us
:23:43. > :23:47.out of business. And yet they would smile matters.
:23:47. > :23:50.When the papers did get to speak, they didn't exactly do so with one