Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain (44 page)

With Rebekah Brooks gone and its British empire under serious attack from almost all sides, News International adjusted to its new humility in public life. In previous years, ministers and MPs had hob-nobbed with the Murdochs and their executives at lavish champagne receptions at the party conferences but in 2011 it was possible no one would turn up and the events were cancelled. At a special debate on phone hacking on 27 September at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Chris Bryant remarked on the company’s sharp reversal of fortune: ‘This time last year I was thrown out of the party – the News International party. I’m glad to say that at this conference there isn’t a News International party to be thrown out of.’ Tom Watson, who had been the target of a whispering campaign the previous year, suggested that The
Sun
had also been hacking phones. Delegates unanimously passed a motion calling for James Murdoch to resign as chairman of BSkyB.

Nonetheless News International still had some supporters. At the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on 4 October, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, expressed his ardent admiration for Rupert Murdoch at a fringe meeting. ‘I think he is a force of nature and a phenomenon. I think he is a great man,’ Gove said.

What is alleged to have happened breaches every journalist’s rule in the book. However, I don’t think you can look at this episode and all the questions that it has raised, without looking into the context of all of Rupert Murdoch’s career. The investment he has made in quality journalism has meant that as a result we have a flourishing collection of broadsheets, and we also have vigorous tabloids, which hold people like me to account.

The Times
accurately headlined the story: ‘Murdoch’s a phenomenon and I admire him, says minister’. Gove’s experience as Education Secretary might be useful if, as has been suggested, News Corporation makes a move into the educational publishing business.

Despite the support of one of the Coalition’s leading ministers, News Corp could not stem the increasing evidence that its heir, James Murdoch, had seen or known about the ‘For Neville’ email – which indicated widespread wrongdoing at the
Screws –
before he signed off the £425,000 settlement to Gordon Taylor.

In early October 2011, Tom Watson’s phone rang. In a soft and precise Wearside accent, the caller said: ‘I’ve got some information for you.’ A rendezvous was arranged for the following Monday, 10 October, at a 1930s detached house in the south London suburbs. For the first time in months, its occupant was wearing a suit. After he brewed some coffee, Neville Thurlbeck told his story.

For two years, much of the media had suspected he was a phone hacker, that he was the Neville in the ‘For Neville’ email. But although he was, he wanted it to be known that he had never hacked any phones or ordered any phones to be hacked, and he wanted Watson to help clear his name.

Thurlbeck was furious with his former employers. In April, he had been arrested and in September, after twenty-one years’ service at the
News of the World
, he had been sacked without a pay-off. On the basis of his £96,000-a-year salary as chief reporter, he calculated he should have received a redundancy payment of £245,000.

Coolly and precisely, he gave his account of what happened inside the
News of the World
. In early 2005, seeking to become a freelance seller of stories as well as a researcher, Glenn Mulcaire had offered the executive news editor, Greg Miskiw, a story about the PFA’s chief executive, Gordon Taylor, which he said he had picked up at a PFA dinner. In February 2005, Miskiw had agreed to buy the story, signing the contract with Mulcaire later found at his house by police, but Miskiw had shortly thereafter left the paper, in July 2005. Sensing that he would not get paid, Mulcaire had contacted Thurlbeck, but Thurlbeck was not interested. He told Watson: ‘It’s about an F-list personality that nobody’s ever heard of unless you closely follow football. It’s overpriced at £12,000 … I think it’s never going to get into the paper because it’s a poor celebrity, it’s too expensive and the editor will say “no”.’ So he recommended Mulcaire contact another, more senior,
NoW
journalist – who was interested and dispatched Thurlbeck to ‘doorstep’ Taylor’s colleague, Jo Armstrong in Blackburn. The email containing extracts of Taylor’s hacked messages was ‘For Neville’, Thurlbeck said, only in the sense that the gist of its contents were to be relayed to him.

When in early 2008, the police disclosed the ‘For Neville’ email to Mark Lewis, the paper was deeply worried. According to Thurlbeck, Tom Crone had confronted him about the email, saying: ‘Neville, we’ve got a problem because of this, what’s this all about?’

‘I looked at it [and said]: “I don’t know, Tom, I never received it. Tom, this had nothing to do with me …” He said: “However, this shows that this had gone through the office … so clearly News International are culpable and we’re going to have to settle. And I’m going to have to show this to James Murdoch.” ’

Thurlbeck went on: ‘The reason I can remember him saying that was because I said to him: “Please, do you have to show him this? Because he’s going to assume the worst of me and he’s going to think it’s all to do with me. Is there any way we can get around this?” And he said to me: “Nev, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to show him this because it is the only reason why we’re having to settle. I’ve got to show him this.” ’

Thurlbeck stressed: ‘This is not some vague memory. I was absolutely on a knife edge. He [Crone] was going to show this to James Murdoch. There’s only going to be one conclusion he’s going to jump to which is: “Get rid of Thurlbeck.” Tom took it to him. The following week I said to him: “Did you show him the email?” and he said: “Yes, I did.” Now Tom can’t remember if he showed him it or spoke to him about it, but he said: “Yes I did.” ’

Thurlbeck kept his job, but so did the journalist he claimed had been responsible.

When Nick Davies’s story about the Taylor settlements broke on 8 July 2009, Thurlbeck recalled: ‘There was a big outcry’ in Wapping and executives again came up with the same solution: redundancy for Neville. Thurlbeck said: ‘Tom [Crone], who I’ve always got on well with, very kindly said to me, very privately: “You’re going to be called into the editor’s office and you’re going to be made an offer. . .” And I was completely shell-shocked and I said to him: “What do you mean?”. And he said: “The transcript for Neville.” And I said: “Tom, I’ve already explained to you what all that was about.” And he said: “I know.” So I went in and explained to the boss: “But I didn’t do this. I’ve explained to Tom the sequence of events. Have you spoken to [the other journalist] about this?” The reply he gave me was: “Yes, he can’t even remember anything about the story.” ’

He added: ‘There was a telephone call, a conference call, between Tom, Colin and [the other journalist] … and Tom screamed [at the other journalist]: “You fucking liar”. And the company was aware at this point that I had been telling the truth and that [the other journalist] had been lying.’

Despite warning the management and supplying internal emails from the journalist he blamed, Thurlbeck believed that it had been convenient for the management – which stuck by its rogue reporter defence – to allow ‘the iron filings of suspicion’ to stick to him rather than the other, more senior journalist, whose naming would suggest a wider problem at the paper. Neither Crone nor Myler mentioned the conversation described by Thurlbeck in their evidence to the Commons Culture committee on 21 July 2009.

Watson asked: ‘So they effectively misled the committee. They knew?’

Thurlbeck replied: ‘They did. I don’t know why. The only reason I can suggest is that it wouldn’t be to their corporate benefit to say: “Oh, no, it wasn’t “Neville – it was [the other journalist].” There’s no corporate brownie points to be won for that. All you’re doing is spreading the flame-thrower further and further over your company at the time it was still desperately clinging to the rogue reporter defence. So they sat on this for two years, knowing that he was a hacker.’

He suggested it was not the only time the management had hidden the truth. He said he had not wanted to threaten the women in the Max Mosley case to cooperate with the paper, and only did so because the news editor, Ian Edmondson, was standing over him. ‘The blackmail emails were the most awful – the most cynical emails to the Max Mosley prostitutes – when I say: “Look, we know who you are, come on board and tell us your story and we won’t name you”. Those emails were dictated to me by Ian Edmondson …“Write this, write this to them”. He dictated these emails to me and I had to stand there and face this barrage of assault about these [emails] from Mosley’s QC in the High Court. I can understand why. It’s just that I wasn’t able to stand up and say: “It wasn’t me”, even in court. The advice was don’t start throwing flame-throwers around.’ Later, Ian Edmondson told the Leveson Inquiry that he could not remember whether he had dictated the email.
²

Traditionally, Thurlbeck said, hacking had not been a tactic of the
News of the World.
‘I was aware of somebody who did hacking in the nineties … he was juggling two mobile phones and I said: “What are you doing there?” and he told me what he was doing – and he went on to do great things on Fleet Street – but anyway, I said to him: “What do you do that for?” And he said: “Well, you can get good stuff.” ’

But by the early 2000s phone hacking had become much more common at the paper, after the influx of journalists from the
People
. ‘At the
People
, one of our competitors, they couldn’t rival us for money, they couldn’t compete with the buy-ups but the way they could get stories was by stealing them, by hacking.’ While Thurlbeck had been on secret assignments for the
News of the World
, he recalled his surprise at finding reporters from the
People
turning up at the same job: they had been hacking his phone.

Referring to Rebekah Brooks, Thurlbeck told Watson: ‘She didn’t like you at all. She took an absolute pathological dislike to you … She saw you as the person that was really threatening. She tried to smear you as being mad. She was briefing. She was saying to Blair: “We’ve got to call this man off, he’s mad.” ’ He also told Watson of the smear operation against the Culture Committee in 2009 (see chapter 7).

Before he finished, Thurlbeck had something to say about James Murdoch, who was due to reappear before the Culture Committee within days – that he could not possibly admit he had seen the ‘For Neville’ email:

It would be absolute suicide for him to admit that he knew it, to say: ‘I knew that hacking went further than a rogue reporter and allowed the company to provide the rogue reporter defence for so long and not do anything about it,’ and now the paper’s had to close and the company’s been tarred and feathered, then it’s suicide for him. He can’t.

The Management and Standards Committee finally released its former lawyer Julian Pike of Farrer & Co
*
from client confidentiality in early October. On 19 October, giving evidence to the Culture Committee, Pike freely admitted that the ‘For Neville’ email and the Greg Miskiw contract with Mulcaire suggested several
News of the World
journalists had been involved in phone hacking and that the one rogue reporter defence advanced to Parliament was false. Asked by Paul Farrelly: ‘So it was quite clear to you at the time that the “one rogue reporter” defence the company was still maintaining, including in front of this committee, was not true?’, he replied: ‘That is correct.’

Farrelly probed: ‘You have told us that you were aware from the moment that News International came in front of Parliament that it was not telling the truth and did nothing. Does that make you uncomfortable?’ Pike replied: ‘Not especially, no.’

Farrelly: ‘Do you have any scruples?’ Pike: ‘Yes.’

Although client confidentiality prevented Farrer & Co from informing police of the wrongdoing, it could have declined to act for News International, but it did not: Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper company was its biggest client.

Most important of all, Farrer’s disclosed the legal opinion James Murdoch had referred to in July when he explained to the MPs why he had authorized such a large payment to Gordon Taylor. Michael Silverleaf’s advice in June 2008 (see page 71) clearly indicated that there had been a culture of wrongdoing in the newsroom of the
News of the World
which extended beyond a rogue reporter.

On 21 October, Rupert Murdoch faced two problems at the highlight of News Corp’s calendar, its annual meeting: personal criticism of his handling of phone hacking and a vote to oust James and Lachlan from the board, which threatened his dynasty’s grip on the company. News Corp switched the meeting from New York, its usual venue, where most investors and business journalists were based, to its 20th Century Fox film studios on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Investors were bused to the meeting and frisked before entering. Outside, protestors held up placards saying ‘Fire the Murdoch Mafia’ and ‘Rupert Isn’t Above the Law’.

At the meeting, Murdoch appeared to be sharper than he had been at the Culture Committee in July, though he several times forgot the rules of the meeting he was chairing. He stressed the ‘legend’ of News Corp’s transformation from a single newspaper in Australia to a multibillion-dollar digital giant headquartered in New York. Some of its newspaper journalists in the UK had hacked voicemails but he said: ‘We could not be taking this more seriously or listening more intently to criticisms,’ before limiting contributions from investors to one minute.

The Californian pension fund Calpers, the Australian Shareholders’ Association and other shareholders assailed Murdoch about the company’s governance and its handling of the scandal. At the beginning of a contribution from Edward Mason, representing the Church of England Commissioners, Murdoch mocked: ‘Your investments haven’t been that great, but go ahead.’ Shrugging off the comment, Mason said the commissioners were deeply concerned at the company’s management: ‘There need to be radical changes to corporate governance. The voting rights of the Murdoch family should be more proportionate to their economic interests in the company and there must be more genuinely independent voices on the board.’