A Fairfax Media executive is expected to be questioned by police investigating the News of the World telephone hacking scandal.
The executive, who has also worked in senior positions at The Daily Telegraph since his arrival in Australia in 2004, held senior editorial roles at the News of the World at the time that the paper’s reporters were hacking the telephone messages of murdered girl Milly Dowler.
Scotland Yard yesterday would not confirm whether they had been in contact with the man, but it is understood that all those who held senior editorial positions during the period in question are among those who will be talked to.
The man is well known for boasting of his time at News of the World and the stories he had a hand in breaking.
Telephone calls and emails to the person by Crikey this morning had not been responded to by deadline. Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood also did not return calls asking for comment before deadline.
Meanwhile, the News of the World telephone hacking scandal is taking on ever greater levels of awfulness, such that it is hardly possible to know where to begin the condemnation.
The latest news is that police have contacted the parents of British girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who were murdered in August 2002, believing that their phones might have been hacked. All cases of child murder and disappearance, including the case of Madeleine McCann, will now be reviewed by the team of police officers running the phone hacking investigation.
It is now beyond doubt that this episode will become part of the long term decline of News Corporation as a force in politics and in journalism. It undermines its moral authority, and in the United Kingdom, has meant that most politicians will think twice before cozying up with a Murdoch title.
Whilst the scandal has so far been confined to British shores in light of recent developments the local industry can hardly feel secure that this will remain the case.
Stephen Mayne suggested yesterday that if the Government is looking for an excuse not to give the Australia Network contract to Sky News, the involvement of News Corporation in the phone hacking scandal might give a reason on the basis of probity.
In the UK pressure is building on the Government to prevent Murdoch’s all-but-won bid to take full control of the broadcaster BSkyB. Labour leader Ed Miliband is also calling for the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, News Corporation’s most senior UK executive and editor of the News of the World at the time of the Dowler hackings. A supposed favourite of Rupert Murdoch’s, she has denied any knowledge of the hacking, but the Independent Newspaper is runing a story suggesting that she is being, at best, economical with the truth.
The automaker Ford has pulled its advertising from the News of the World, while several other firms, including npower, Halifax, T-Mobile and Orange, reviewing their options. Other advertisers have said they will await the results of the police investigation.
Respected UK media commentator Roy Greenslade is suggesting that readers not only back calls for an independent inquiry, but also boycott the paper and pressure advertisers to do likewise.
This is also an interesting case of poor issue management. News Corp isn’t the first body to make a hash of managing an issue of course, but one might expect that a big media company would be more adept at handling an issue in the big media. Two possibilities occur to me.
The obfuscation, dissembling and evasion that we observe outside the company might also be happening inside the company. That is, no one inside the company sufficiently senior has examined the issue sufficiently thoroughly to get the full picture and manage it accordingly.
Another possibility is that News Corp is playing the public for fools. That seems most likely to many external observers, but it breaks one of the cardinal rules of issue management. It seems strange that a mostly otherwise competent media company could make and persist with such an elementary media mistake.
In any case, this will be a nice case study for future issue management texts.
Gavin,
This issue is so viscerally disgusting, that it surely must be beyond managing? It’s like finding an old maggot-infested sandwich in your lunch-box. Washing out the lunch-box for re-use is not even a consideration.
One option would be to close down News Corp or the News of the World in shame, but I don’t think either is warranted. So, in the absence of that the issue has to be managed.
Gavin – “playing the company for fools”. Yes they would – it’s pure arrogance. They think they’re beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.