BBC News in paroxysm of joy at the news that the CPS have announced that eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, will face a total of 19 charges relating to phone hacking, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.
The two ex-News of the World editors are to be charged in connection with the accessing of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone messages.
I caught the PM coverage of thison Radio 4 at 5pm and one could be forgiven for thinking that these allegations have already been proven and that all these folks are going to prison. The undisguised pleasure in the BBC voices at this news was remarkable and I noted their praise for Alan Rushbridger, presented as hero of the process, and of course they guy in charge of their print end . Coinciding with the end of Leveson today I have rarely heard the BBC anti-Murdoch machine sounding so triumphalist.
…. I’m guessing the mysterious prohibition on publishing the names of people accussed of serious crimes has been lifted since the last group of militant Mormoms got arrested, huh?
Exactly what I came on to say. The Gregory Protocols, like so much else, can be incredibly flexible when it suits…
Can’t wait for ruperts revenge on the BBC/guardian . Nobody outside of the left wing gives a cats cock about the leveson inquiry or the bankers or the olympic security. We are just trying to get by in life and look after ourselves, bit worry about this cack
Will there be a ‘Rupert’s Revenge’?
I hope so, but it’s a flimsy hope. I think he might have washed his hands of everything.
BBC ‘journalists’ are rarely so interested in investigative journalism to make the effort to tap phones. Wikipedia is their source of choice.
To be honest, I’m more concerned about the BBC’s rank hypocrisy over its own tax affairs than the phone hacking witch hunt.
Beeboids-Guardianistas: their political enemies and heroes of the hour:-
Their political enemies:
a.) News Corp;
b.) EDL.
Their political heroes:
a.) BBC-NUJ propagandists;
b.) Guardian-NUJ propagandists.
The IBBC is the most dishonest broadcasting service since Doctor Gobbels Ministry of Propaganda.
The BBC has abandoned the Olympics, was the timing an accident I wonder?. In the left world people are guilty until proved innocent they have already decided that Andy Coulson (and hence DC) and Rebekkah Brooks are guilty, their only regret is that it is going to take a long time to get to trial and are hoping that it takes place in the most damaging lead up to the elections.
It was noticeable that on the tv 6o’clock news, every time the name Andy Coulson cropped up we were reminded that he had worked for Mr Cameron.
I always wondered why BBC News never described Robert Maxwell as ‘the former Labour MP’.
There were vastly different takes on this from the BBC’s News at Six and ITV’s 6.30 News:
This is the BBC’s take:
Presenter: “Gary, both Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are close to David Cameron. How politically embarrassing is this for him?”
Gary O’Donaghue: “It IS embarrassing, George, and it’s embarrassing for this reason. It raises those questions of judgement. Bear in mind that Andy Coulson was hired by David Cameron after he’d resigned as editor of ‘The News of the World’ and he was taken into David Cameron’s inner circle. When David Cameron came here to Downing Street after the general election he was brought here too. He accepted the assurances from Mr. Coulson and carried on and six months later he had to lose him. With Rebekah Brooks, of course, they’re neighbours, they’re friends, they socialise together, they text-message one another, they had supper together.
“The problem is there are now going to be months and months and months of trials and in the public’s mind that connection will be there. And here in Downing Street there’s nothing they can do about that.”
And this is how ITV News dealt with it:
Presenter: “Tom, with these charges, particularly against Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, how much damage has REALLY been done by this long, drawn-out saga?”
Tom Bradby: ” Well, Alistair, I suspect the damage done by this type of saga is actually more about the way it dominates the headlines and keeps other things that the government might be doing or might want to talk about, like the economy, like welfare, out of the headlines and it just ends up being noise.
“We always talk about it being embarrassing? Is it embarrassing for David Cameron? Sure. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a voting, electoral-type issue. After all, you remember Tony Blair was embarrassed by the Ecclestone Affair, he was embarrassed by Peter Mandelson resigning twice – and Mr, Mandelson, if you will remember, ended up back in government as one of Gordon Brown’s closest supporters – so I’m just never sure that voters really…you know, they look at it, they watch it, how much does it really effect them? Some people may be very offended but I suspect when it comes down to it, it comes down to those core issues
“…and I’ve spent over the past few weeks I’ve had quite long conversations again with people at the top of government and when you talk about the next election and what they are going to try and focus on – on the economy, on welfare – you know, I’m just not sure this is going to have a huge impact. I think, people view it as something generally the political class are interested in. Is it embarrassing? Yes. Is it a voting issue? I suspect in the end probably not.”
These were such different viewpoints that bias might be suspected on both sides.
The BBC was relentless in pushing the Cameron angle. In the course of the whole half-hour bulletin the BBC used the full name ‘David Cameron’ 9 times. ITV used his full name twice. The name ‘David Cameron’ was included in all three of the BBC’s quarter-hour headlines, and as the first words the presenter used to introduce the main report. ITV mentioned ‘the prime minister’ in one headline. Labour were only presented as the victims on the BBC’s account, with three Labour politicians spotlighted.
It’s astounding how close the News of the World people (Murdoch and Brookes) were to the Labour leadership at the time of the phone hacking, yet that is now scrupulously ignored by the MSM and virtually completely by Leveson too.
Leveson should be arrested for perverting the course of justice, particularly after he let the Guardian phone hackers off with a pat on their collective back.
Thinks he’s respectable because he sometimes wears a wig….just like Lord Hutton, the Blair lickspittle who covered for the Kelly murder
(Kelly would still be alive now if beeb hack Gilligan hadn’t betrayed him.)
Superb post Craig – as usual !
As an uneducated oik I can confirm that the proles do not give a flying fig about this business, we are more interested in how much fuel, beer and council tax rises
In their attempt to whip up hysteria over the phone hacking Radio 4 gave a long list of people who had been allegedly hacked. The Milly Dowler hacking was, I agree disgraceful but, when it came to the rest of the “victims” it was just a long list of publicity seeking celebrities who whined because their carefully orchestrated “aren’t we wonderful” PR Machines had been circumvented.
Oh, and Two Sha-, sorry Jags, though why anybody would want to hack his phone is beyond me, it’ s boring enough listening to him at the best of times.
By the end of the hysteria-mongering the only conclusion I arrived at is that in the large scale of things the vast majority of the “hacking” was much ado about very little. It’s not so much that there are bigger losses at sea but more that there are more interesting things happening in an empty room.
If I were a betting man I would put good money on quite a few of the show trials of Brooks and the others collapsing the minute the Judge hears what evidence the prosecution has. It appears the mobile phone companies haven’t kept detailed logs of who accessed which voice mail box. Now if you had say Orange saying that a phone with a certain IMEI address which was linked to one of the defendants accessed Milly Dowlers voicemail at a certain time from a cell tower near Wapping we would have something. Instead all we appear to have is various phone numbers in the notebook of a private investigator (who now can’t remember nuffin guv) who occasionally did work for NI therefore Brooks must be guilty.
I do think that the Scottish Police have a far better case against Coulson though.
The uproar was generated because it was alleged that someone from NI or paid by NI hacked the mail box of Millie Dowler’s phone and deleted the messages to allow space for more thereby leading the family and the Police to believe she was still alive.
During this inquiry it has been revealed that the mobile service provider routinely deleted mail that had been in a mail box longer than 3 days because that was their policy to avoid hogging of space on their hard drives.
That was clearly reported. The problem is that this revelation removes the drama from the whole saga and lets the perceived ogre off the hook. Cannot have that at all, so they still use Millie Dowler as the poster for this whole affair without mentioning the truth again.
It’s not about truth; its about manipulation of the public. We raise the issue ALL the time. They selectively tell us what they want us to hear. They do not tell us everything and then allow US to make a judgement. They’re socialists who decide what is best for us because we’re all to stupid to think for ourselves. But when they get called they always have the backup of, we did tell you, see it there on the back of the postage stamp, not our fault you didn’t find it.