The British phone hacking scandal has been delivering screaming headlines every day in the best Murdoch style, but undoubtedly not on Rupert's preferred subject, just this week there have been arrests, resignations and mutterings in financial circles that Rupert himself should step down, a notion he has been quick to dismiss. But the scandal has been most harrowing for the thousands of people who have discovered that their most intimate conversations may have been hacked by News Corp journalists. Dateline's Evan Williams has been tracking their story from London.
REPORTER: Evan Williams
GRAHAM FOULKES, MAGISTRATE: The whole issue there is so complex, and there are so many layers to it, because we have the police, serving police officers accepting money from a newspaper, we have got to people at the very top of the police, being very closely associated with politicians, and playing the political game, and we have politicians clearly in bed with the media, so we’ve got this circle and these are the people who control my entire life.
It is Monday morning and Britain wakes to yet another news bulletin about the phone hacking scandal.
VOICE OVER: Britain's top policeman, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stevenson, resigns.
SIR PAUL STEVENSON, POLICE COMMISSIONER: I have this afternoon informed the palace, the Home Secretary, and the mayor, as my intention to resign as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.
He is quitting he says, because police under his command accepted the money from Rupert Murdoch's 'News of the World' and Rebekah Brookes, one of Murdoch's closest and most trusted executives, and editor of the 'News of the World' when the hacking was in full swing, also resigned. She was then arrested. As the week goes on, they will not be the last.
People in the UK are used to a Sunday diet of tabloid trash. For decades, they have read about the hacked phone calls and emails of royalty and the rich and famous. But the revelation that hackers have obtained the anguished phone messages left for Milly Dowler, a teenager who had been kidnapped and murdered, threw News International and the British establishment into a full-blown crisis.
This group entering Parliament are just a few of possibly thousands of victims of phone hacking who at last are getting a chance to have their voices heard, not by the hackers, but by those in power. They include the family of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, whose text messages had been erased by a private investigator working for the 'News of the World', so they could listen to new messages and get more stories. Of all the hacking scandals, it was this event that most damaged Rupert Murdoch.
MARK LEWIS, LAWYER: I had always said that this was about ordinary people who were victims of hacking.
Mark Lewis is the lawyer for Milly Dowler's family.
MARK LEWIS: It has always been dressed up by the press to explain what had happened in terms of it just being about a few celebrities, a few politicians, a few sports people. Of course it was far more serious than that - there were lots and lots of victims of Press intrusion.
Police say there are about 4,000 people across the country who may have had their phones hacked by the ‘News of the World’. Many of those people have no idea of what has happened to them. We have come to the Lake District to meet a man who has been told by police that the paper did have his personal details.
GRAHAM FOULKES: On 5th July, at about 6:30 in the evening, there was a phone call, a chap introduced himself and gave his name and title – Detective Inspector.
Graham Foulkes is a magistrate from Manchester.
GRAHAM FOULKES: He said during the investigation, within the possession of the 'News of the World', is a file with your name and your home address, and your land line number and your family's mobile numbers.
Graham had discovered that he could be another victim of phone hacking. His son was killed in theLondon bombings of 2005.
GRAHAM FOULKES: David, my son had travelled to London for the first time on his own - He got on the Tube for the first time on his own and I remember back to that day, it was a Thursday. I am not at all embarrassed to say that was a very emotional time for us and that we left some pretty desperate and personal messages pleading for David to answer us. So the thought that somebody was listening to us, or may have been listening at that time - I am still not able to comprehend it - how anybody could think that is a good day's work was to have breakfast, kiss your wife goodbye, go off to work and listen in to that sort of conversation and think that that is a good days work. It is beyond comprehension. It is beyond wicked.
Graham is not alone. Behind the handsome terraces of London's legal district, hundreds of new claims are being processed.
STEPHEN HEFFER, LAWYER: There are about 4,000 people in the papers and only about 170 odd have been approached to confirm that they had been hacked so there are several thousand more, to come to light.
Stephen Heffer has been one of the leading lawyers working on hacking cases.
STEPHEN HEFFER: Well one of the problems is that a lot of them do not actually know whether or not they have been hacked at the moment. In some cases, they were told by journalists, and journalists have access to some information which the police do not have at the moment, so it may or may not be true, but of course it is deeply upsetting for them to be told that journalists have seen evidence that they have been hacked into. So that their personal messages at a time of grieving had been then displayed to all and sundry for a purpose of selling newspapers. It is deeply distressing – it is reprehensible really.
Graham Foulkes also has a shocking revelation about the way that he thinks the ‘News of the World’ may have obtained his personal phone records.
GRAHAM FOULKES: My landline phone number is ex directory and is private and is not known to many people. I do not think the police gave my contact details to News International, I think the police sold my contact details to News International.
STEPHEN HEFFER: There has clearly been a cosy relationship between major press interests and police and politicians and in fact up until a few weeks ago, Press hacking or phone hacking was accepted as a fact of life, it is only that people have suddenly realised that this is not acceptable, they only realised that because of the Milly Dowler case, and the families of soldiers as well. This is what is taking the scales away from the eyes of the people involved in this, so that is going to be the subject of a huge inquiry over the next year or so.
Every day, it seems new information emerges about the people who may have been hacked. Living in a suburb of Glasgow, is Rose Gentle.
ROSE GENTLE: I actually had a phone call that morning, I can’t remember who it was, it was a journalist that says to me that my phone had been hacked and that is why Stephen Heffer the lawyer actually took it up – we don’t know if it’s been a bogus call or what, but Stephen Heffer’s looking into it for me anyway.
Rose’s son Gordon was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. He was 19.
ROSE GENTLE: Gordon’s been dead seven years now and I’ve kept wanting an inquiry why he went to Iraq…
Since Gordon’s death, Rose has led a vigorous campaign for a public inquiry into why the UK was inIraq at all and into claims that the soldiers had not been given the right equipment in time.
ROSE GENTLE: It has taken them years, now we are finally getting it, because I think we need answers to why our sons have gone to Iraq and why they have been killed.
Partly as a result of her campaign, a public inquiry is now under way. She says it has in a way helped her and her family to move on. Then just days ago, came the call from a journalist, telling her she may have been hacked.
ROSE GENTLE: Actually it went through my mind after I put the phone down – I went - how dare they! How dare they invade my privacy! Have I not been through enough with the loss of Gordon? And you’ve got people like that, hacking people’s phones to find out more information. We deserve dignity, it feels to me. When I come off the phone I felt as if somebody had walked over my son’s grave. I just thought, how dare they, what gives them the right?
Like so many other hacking victims, Rose is worried about people who contacted her, were they listened to as well.
ROSE GENTLE: There was quite a lot of sensitive contacts between emails and phone calls, yeah! And I hate to think that they have done this, and they have the emails maybe sitting in a file somewhere.
GRAHAM FOULKES, READING: ‘We are sorry. 'News of the World' was in the business of holding other’s to account, it failed when it came to itself - we are sorry for the serious wrong…… you will hear more from us. Sincerely, Rupert Murdoch’.
Today, Rupert Murdoch has put full page ads in all the newspapers apologising for what had happened. It does not impress Graham Foulkes.
GRAHAM FOULKES: It’s clear, they have now put together a strategy, this apology, nine days after the story broke, having resisted making any form of apology or even becoming involved, I think it is now cynical manipulation and I think what it does illustrate is that if I met Rupert Murdoch, I would meet a man who genuinely does not know what he has done wrong. Who genuinely cannot understand what the fuss is about, he has no inside at all and that inability to recognise what he has done and his lack of morals and the impact he has had on people means that he should never be allowed to run a newspaper ever, anywhere in the world.
RUPERT MURDOCH, AT HEARING: This is the most humble day of my life.
By Tuesday afternoon, the country's eyes turn to the British Parliament. As the world's media waited outside, Rupert and James Murdoch were facing a grilling from some very concerned politicians.
POLITICIAN, AT HEARING: Mr Murdoch, do you except that ultimately you are responsible for this fiasco?
RUPERT MURDOCH: No.
POLITICIAN: You are not responsible – who is responsible?
RUPERT MURDOCH: The people that I trusted to run the paper and then maybe the people they trusted.
James Murdoch told the inquiry that he had no knowledge of how widespread the phone hacking was.
JAMES MURDOCH, AT HEARING: But if I knew then what we know now, we would have taken more action around that and moved faster to get to the bottom of these allegations.
But since then, two ex Murdoch executives have contradicted that statement, saying James Murdoch did know and now standing by his statement, it would appear the Murdochs may have dug themselves deeper into a hole, with accusations of misleading the British Parliament and even a possibility of an investigation for perverting the course of justice.
POLITICIAN: Were you informed about the findings by your son, Mr Murdoch or by Rebekah Brookes?
With the media focused on what the Murdochs were saying inside the house, one man stands alone and virtually ignored by the press outside. Seane Cassidy’s son was also killed in the Londonbombings of 2005 and he had also been informed by the police that his private details had been obtained by the 'News of the World'.
SHEAN CASSIDY: Perhaps maybe they should come round our house and apologise face to face. Really, I mean, they had a gentle run round there today. Maybe next time they are in front of someone it should be in front of a judge. I hope some of those people end up in jail…. be taken to court and convicted and get a good long sentence.
Lawyer Stephen Heffer is now expecting a rush of new clients.
STEPHEN HEFFER: It is a period of complete turmoil for them because there has been so much in the press about this, and they are very worried, but they are not sure one way or the other whether they are victims or not.
GRAHAM FOULKES: The police have had this information for five or six years. They have not acted on it which is shameful. I cannot believe that after this period of time, they do not have a definitive list. Why they have chosen to go that route, I do not know. Certainly there is potential for others and that just makes the whole scale of the thing even more shocking.
The police and politicians accused of being too close to the Murdoch Empire, have now been shamed into finally conducting a thorough investigation. More and more people are likely to find out they were at least on the list. Then there is the painful possibility that the police will find evidence that they were hacked.
GRAHAM FOULKES: At each anniversary and as time has gone by, we have rebuilt our lives and started to make progress, in fact some significant progress. But this whole story has dragged us back to a place that nobody should have to go in the first place. To be dragged back to it a second time, it is really difficult and we are again having to rebuild again and trying to cope, but not knowing whether we were hacked or not, is even more damaging than knowing we were.
ROSE GENTLE: It’s getting bigger and bigger every day, so we don’t know what stories they’ve got and who is going to be next. But they also knew all this back in 2006, I’m totally disgusted with them as well! It’s got to the stage…. What police can we trust? What journalist can we trust?
GRAHAM FOULKES: There are times throughout the day, long periods of time, where we just look at each other and go, ‘My God, the time when we were struggling the hardest, the lowest, the darkest time of our life, we may have been violated by a newspaper reporter, it is so great, we are still not able to understand that. It is such a violation that it is beyond wicked. It is very, very hard indeed. I cannot understand how one people could do that to another person's family. I struggle with that greatly.
MARK DAVIS: Evan Williams reporting there. And there is an interactive guide to the whole phone hacking scandal on our website, explaining exactly how the story has unfolded and more about the characters involved.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Research/Additional Camera
EVE LUCAS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Researcher
SUHEIL DAMOUNY
Editors
MICAH MCGOWN
DAVID POTTS
Original Music composed by VICKI HANSEN