Press Gazette's interactive timeline looking at the News of the World and phone-hacking
Created by dominicponsford on Jan 28, 2011
Last updated: 02/23/12 at 03:38 AM
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Colin Stagg, a former murder suspect in the killing of model Rachel Nickell, has become the latest person to sue News International over allegations relating to the phone-hacking scandal.
Nickell was stabbed 49 times before her body was found on Wimbledon Common in July 1992 by a passerby.
Stagg was arrested and spent a year in custody before the case against him collapsed. Years later he won a public apology and £706,000 in compensation from police.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48811&c=1
News of the World publisher News International is reportedly facing legal action from Robert Thompson, one of the killers of James Bulger, over allegations of phone-hacking.
The Sunday Mirror reported that Thompson is suing NI for “tens of thousands” after police confirmed his phone was hacked.
Thompson, 29, and his friend Jon Venables murdered two-year-old James Bulger after abducting him from a shopping centre in 1993. Thompson and Venables were both 10 at the time of the killing.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48786
Former MSP Tommy Sheridan claimed victory today in the latest round of a long-running legal battle over his award for damages from the News of the World.
Sheridan was back at court in Edinburgh six years after winning £200,000 from the now-defunct newspaper, which alleged he was an adulterer who visited swingers clubs.
The former Scottish Socialist Party MSP, who has not yet been paid the money, was later found guilty of lying in that libel case and was recently released from prison after spending one year of a three-year sentence in jail.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48748
Actor Hugh Grant has refused Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s invitation to retract his allegation that the Mail titles have been involved in phone-hacking.
Dacre made his offer last week when he, in turn, refused to retract the statement made last November that Grant had used his testimony before Leveson to level “mendacious smears” against the Mail titles over hacking.
Interviewed by Evan Davis for the Today Programme, Grant was asked if he still believed the Mail on Sunday hacked his phone in order to report the claim that his relationship with Jemima Khan was "on the rocks" in 2007 because of his late night calls with a “plummy-voiced” woman.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48741
Ongoing investigations surrounding the closure of the News of the World cost News Corporation £55m in the final three months of last year, the media giant has revealed.
The owner of the now defunct Sunday tabloid, which was shut down last summer in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, disclosed the cost in its latest set of financial results.
Executives said about 85 per cent of the charge represented legal and consulting fees with the remainder going towards out-of-court settlements.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48721
The News of the World commissioned surveillance against two lawyers to gain "leverage" against them in legal actions, former news editor for the paper Ian Edmondson has told the Leveson Inquiry.
Former NoW lawyer Tom Crone instructed the paper’s news editor to carry out surveillance on lawyers acting for phone-hacking victims, Edmondson claimed.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48726
More high-profile figures have settled their phone-hacking damages claims, the High Court heard today.
Ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne, comedian Steve Coogan, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes and football agent Sky Andrew are among those who have reached settlements with News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers.
But Hugh Tomlinson QC, who represents some of the ten claimants whose case was due to go to trial next week, said a claim by singer Charlotte Church and her parents had not been resolved.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48714
A set of clear guidelines on the factors to be used when deciding whether to prosecute journalists is to be drawn up, the Director of Public Prosecutions told the inquiry into press standards today.
Keir Starmer said there is currently no specific CPS policy or guidance relating to the prosecution of journalists, but outlined the various provisions prosecutors have to take into account.
He told the Leveson Inquiry that it would be "prudent" to have a policy that sets out "in one place" the factors to be taken into account when trying to decide whether or not to charge a journalist.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48719
More high-profile figures have settled their phone-hacking damages claims, the High Court heard today.
Ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne, comedian Steve Coogan, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes and football agent Sky Andrew are among those who have reached settlements with News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers.
But Hugh Tomlinson QC, who represents some of the ten claimants whose case was due to go to trial next week, said a claim by singer Charlotte Church and her parents had not been resolved.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48714&c=1
Times editor James Harding has admitted that the paper did use illegal email-hacking to identify the police blogger Nightjack in 2009.
New emails have proven that former Times reporter Patrick Foster used illegal email hacking to identify police blogger Richard Horton - and that he then subsequently used publicly available information to identify Nightjack.
It also emerged today that Foster said in an email that he wanted to delay publication of the story to "leave a little space between the dirty deed and publishing".
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48708
The editor of The Sun conceded today he could not be 100 per cent sure that some showbusiness stories published in the tabloid had not been obtained by phone hacking.
Dominic Mohan, who was recalled to the Leveson Inquiry to give further evidence, was questioned over a series of celebrity stories dating from a number of years ago.
Among them were an article about Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and his then-wife Patsy Kensit and another about EastEnders star Martine McCutcheon, both from 1998.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48705
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre is due to be recalled to the Leveson Inquiry to face further questions over Associated Newspapers’ Hugh Grant coverage and a statement in which it accused the actor of spreading “mendacious smears”.
Dacre was questioned on the same subject yesterday afternoon when he stood by the statement, claiming that Grant’s allegation that the Mail on Sunday used phone-hacking for a story about his relationship with Jemima Khan in 2007 risked severely damaging the reputation of Associated Newspapers.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48698
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has defended Associated Newspapers’ decision to accuse actor Hugh Grant of spreading "mendacious smears" when he appeared before the hacking inquiry.
When the actor gave evidence last year he suggested the Mail on Sunday may have hacked his phone in 2007 for a story on his relationship with Jemima Khan
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48696
Officers from the Met unit investigating computer hacking at the News International are in looking into Labour MP Tom Watson's allegations of email hacking at The Times.
Watson wrote to the Met last week asking it to investigate allegations the paper hacked into an email account belonging to anonymous police blogger NightJack to expose his identity in 2009.
The MP Tweeted this morning: “The Met police have confirmed to me they are investigating@rupertmurdoch's newspaper The Times over email hacking.”
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48671
Officers from the Met unit investigating computer hacking at the News International are in looking into Labour MP Tom Watson's allegations of email hacking at The Times.
Watson wrote to the Met last week asking it to investigate allegations the paper hacked into an email account belonging to anonymous police blogger NightJack to expose his identity in 2009.
The MP Tweeted this morning: “The Met police have confirmed to me they are investigating@rupertmurdoch's newspaper The Times over email hacking.”
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48671
The private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal today lost his appeal against orders that he cannot rely on privilege against self-incrimination in the proceedings.
Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed for six months in January 2007 for illegally accessing the voicemails of members of the royal household, challenged rulings that he did not have the right to refuse to say who asked him to intercept voice messages.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48663
Telegraph Media Group executive editor and Pressbof chairman Lord Guy Black has backed a “fining element” to be introduced in a new self-regulatory regime for the press.
In evidence to the Leveson inquiry he said the phone-hacking scandal had “laid bare for the first time the very real lack of powers that exist within the self-regulatory system to conduct investigations".
Pressbof is the body which effectively runs the PCC and which collects the levies from the industry which fund it.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48666
A Surrey Police press officer was played a recording of one of Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages by a reporter from the News of the World but no action was taken against the paper, the force confirmed today.
The unnamed journalist also told the press officer that they had obtained Milly’s mobile phone number and voicemail PIN from school children and listened to messages from a “tearful relative”.
In a letter to the Culture Committee released today, the police force gives a timeline of events relating to the hacking of Milly’s voicemail messages after her disapparence in 2002.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48611
The BBC spent £310,000 on private detectives over a six-year period, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.
The corporation once used investigator Steve Whittamore, who was later convicted of illegally accessing personal data, to check whether someone was on a particular flight.
On another occasion a BBC journalist commissioned a private detective to find out the owner of a car from its number plate, the hearing was told.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48613
News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers has been accused of deliberately destroying evidence in an attempt to cover-up the full extent of phone-hacking at the defunct tabloid.
It was alleged at the High Court yesterday – where NGN parent company News International settled with 37 phone-hacking victims – that computers used by former NoW journalists had been destroyed in 2010, months before the Met launched its hacking investigation Operation Weeting.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48603
Journalists working in the regional press have faced a public backlash as a result of the phone-hacking scandal, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.
Manchester Evening News editor Maria McGeoghan told the inquiry yesterday that she was concerned about the perception that the regional press was using the same methods as the tabloids and that “we're all doing something shady”.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48597
Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has warned Lord Justice Leveson against statutory regulation of the press – arguing that the “heinous crimes” which have emerged at his inquiry were already illegal.
Hislop was also critical of newspapers’ coverage of the press, claiming that newspaper groups “tended to operate a code of we don’t write about each other”.
Leveson repeated comments made last week when he told Hislop that nobody had “kept the nose of the press to the grindstone".
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48576
Times editor James Harding said he turned down an opportunity to break the MPs’ expenses scandal because he did not want to pay for stolen goods.
The CD containing information on the widespread abuse of MPs’ allowances was eventually bought by The Daily Telegraph for £150,000 and led to a series of stories which won scoop of the year at the 2009 British Press Awards.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48578
The editor of the Daily Mirror has told the Leveson Inquiry that phone-hacking "might well have" taken place when he was the paper's showbiz editor without his knowledge.
Richard Wallace, who has edited the tabloid since 2004, also insisted that there were "significant positives" in tabloid journalism and that he was confident that reporters who worked at the newspaper acted within the code of practice.
Counsel to the inquiry David Barr asked Wallace if he knew about hacking at the paper. "Not to my knowledge," replied Wallace.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48565
Scotland Yard has defended its handling of the inquiries into hacking and corrupt payments by journalists amid heavy criticism, insisting the operations were not "in any way disproportionate".
Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor of The Sun, claimed the police investigation into alleged press malpractice was regarded by many as a "witch-hunt" after five of his colleagues were arrested at the weekend.
But police said in a statement that "given the seriousness of the allegations currently under investigation and the significant number of victims, the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) does not believe that the level of resources devoted to the three inquiries is in any way disproportionate to the enormous task in hand."
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48744
A Times journalist was disciplined in 2009 for involvement in “computer hacking”, the Leveson Inquiry has been told.
News International interim director of legal affairs Simon Toms said in written evidence to the inquiry: “I am not aware that any NI title has ever used or commissioned anyone who used 'computer hacking' in order to source stories.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48524
A Times journalist was disciplined in 2009 for involvement in “computer hacking”, the Leveson Inquiry has been told.
News International interim director of legal affairs Simon Toms said in written evidence to the inquiry: “I am not aware that any NI title has ever used or commissioned anyone who used 'computer hacking' in order to source stories.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48524
A former personal assistant for Rebekah Brooks was arrested today by detectives investigating phone hacking at the News of the World.
Cheryl Carter, 47, was named by several sources as the latest suspect to be questioned by Scotland Yard's Operation Weeting squad.
Carter left News International in July after 19 years working for Brooks, the company's former chief executive. She also worked for the Sun as a beauty editor.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48508
Tom Watson MP has called on the Met Police to expand its investigation into allegations of Fleet Street email hacking following a report by the Independent that Gordon Brown's email account was targeted.
According to The Independent, police believe Brown's emails may have been illegally accessed when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
According to the paper, police working on Operation Tuleta are looking at evidence from around 20 computers which suggest that hundreds may have had their emails hacked by journalists.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48489&c=1
Phone-hacking was a “bog-standard” tool for journalists working on the Daily Mirror’s showbiz desk, according to a former business reporter on the paper who was jailed for his part in a "tip, buy and sell" conspiracy.
Giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry this morning, James Hipwell claimed the practice was widespread and that one showbiz reporter showed him the technique for intercepting voicemails.
He also alleged that hacking was so rife on the desk that reporters deleted a message from a celebrity’s voicemail so that rival journalists from the Sun would be unable to pick up the story
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48474
Sharon Marshall, the former TV editor of the News of the World, told the Leveson Inquiry today that she left the newspaper in 2004 after being asked to chase a story which she knew to be untrue.
"It was a celebrity who was pregnant at the time and I was told that her partner was cheating on her, a photo had been given to us or somebody had come forward for a kiss-and-tell story," she said. "I understood the photo was two years old."
She was asked to put the story to the celebrity but instead handed in her resignation.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48468
Former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan today repeatedly denied any knowledge of illegally intercepting voicemails, computer hacking, commissioning private investigators or paying police officers for information.
Morgan instead insisted that “ethical determinations were interwoven” into his role as editor of both newspapers and were an “omnipresent aspect of daily professional life”.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48470
The brother of Sean Hoare - the News of the World whisteblower who died in July - insisted today that "everything Sean said was the whole truth".
And he said that his brother believed phone-hacking was daily routine at The Sun, as well as the News of the World.
Hoare, who left the News of the World in 2005, told the New York Times in 2010 about the widespread nature of phone-hacking at the paper. He was one of the first former staffers to go on the record about the practice, and to reveal that he had hacked phone messages himself.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48462
Guardian journalist Nick Davies said on Newsnight that there was a “very significant" error in his first 5 July story about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone by the News of the World.
But he said it was a “distortion of the truth” to suggest, as former News of the World features editor Jules Stenson did on the same programme, that The Guardian was guilty of “shoddy journalism”.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48452
Guardian journalist Nick Davies said on Newsnight that there was a “very significant" error in his first 5 July story about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone by the News of the World.
But he said it was a “distortion of the truth” to suggest, as former News of the World features editor Jules Stenson did on the same programme, that The Guardian was guilty of “shoddy journalism”.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48452
The publisher of the Daily Mail has defended the actions of a journalist who asked the solicitor for the Dowler family, Mark Lewis, whether the family would be returning their £3m privacy settlement with News International.
It came after a the barrister for phone-hacking victims, David Sherborne, told the Leveson Inquiry this morning that Lewis had received a phone call from a reporter on the Daily Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle diary column who allegedly asked him “will the Dowlers be giving their money back?”
This was a reference to the news this week that the Met Police felt it was unlikely that a journalist from the News of the World deleted the messages on Milly Dowler’s phone which gave her parents 'false hope' she was still alive.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48447
The former managing editor of the News of the World has attacked The Guardian and its editor Alan Rusbridger for “sexing up” its coverage of the hacking scandal and holding the tabloid press in contempt.
Richard Caseby today told the Joint Committee on Privacy Injunctions that it was “now clear that Alan Rusbridger has effectively sexed up his investigation into phone-hacking and the wider issue of wrongdoing in the media”.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48437
The Met Police has told the Leveson Inquiry that it does not believe the News of the World was responsible for the deletion of voicemail messages which gave the Dowler family false hope their daughter was alive.
QC for the Met Police Neil Garnham has addressed the Leveson Inquiry in the wake of reports in The Guardian, and elsewhere, which have cast significant doubt over the Guardian's assertion about voicemail deletions in its first Milly Dowler phone-hacking story of 4 July.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48425
The final total of people whose phones were hacked by the News of the World will be around 800, according to the head of Scotland Yard's hacking inquiry Operation Weeting.
This figure is substantially lower than the latest Met Police estimate of potential phone-hack targets - which was nearly 5,800.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48421
Former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullan today defended the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone in 2002 by journalists working for the paper.
McMullan said he empathised completely with the Dowlers because last summer his two-year-old son went missing for 20 minutes after a side gate was left open in his garden: "It was one of the most powerful emotions that you can feel."
But he added that the British police are on the whole “a bunch of Inspector Clouseaus".
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48364&c=1
Guardian journalist Nick Davies has said that he believed one or more News of the World journalists would have done the actual hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone – rather than private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Addressing the Leveson Inquiry into the hacking scandal today he said of Mulcaire: “He doesn’t actually do listening to messages himself, much of that was done by journalists themselves. Mulcaire’s job was to enable them to do that where there was some problem.”
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48359
JK Rowling told the Leveson Inquiry today that she has had to take action against newspapers about 50 times over breaches of privacy and misreporting.
The author said journalists "drove her out" of the home she bought in 1997 with the advance from the first of her seven Harry Potter books.
She told the inquiry into press standards she felt like a "sitting duck" after a photograph was published of the house number and street name, and it became "untenable" to remain there.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48338
In an exclusive piece for Press Gazette, former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck is bidding to clear his name in the court of public opinion - and among his peers.
Thurlbeck was first implicated in the phone-hacking scandal in July 2009 when The Guardian revealed that a transcript of phone messages hacked by the News of the World had been headed "For Neville".
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48263
News International has challenged claims that up to 28 former News of the World journalists may have been involved in phone-hacking at the newspaper.
Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, yesterday told the Leveson Inquiry that at least 28 ‘corner names’ linked to the NoW were legible in the 11,000 pages of notes that police seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, which relate to a total of 2,266 taskings and the names of 5,795 potential victims
When News International counsel Rhodri Davies QC addressed the inquiry this morning he said the company had not had an opportunity to view all the Mulcaire notes – but suggested the allegation that 28 journalists were involved in phone-hacking was wide of the mark.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48251
Former News of the World investigations editors Mazher Mahmood yesterday told a court that over 20 years at the News of the World he had no knowledge of phone-hacking at the paper.
And undercover reporter Mahmood strongly denied his investigation into an alleged cricket betting scam involving the Pakistan cricket involved the illegal interception of voicemail messages.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48039
Alleged phone-hacking victim Mary-Ellen Field today insisted she did not want to see the press muzzled.
Ellen-Field has been granted core-participant status by the Leveson Inquiry and says she was sacked from her job as an advisor to supermodel Elle Macpherson in 2006 after she was wrongly accused of leaking stories to the press.
In fact it appears that her phone messages were hacked by the News of the World.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=48037
Scotland Yard has dropped its legal bid to force The Guardian newspaper to reveal information about the source of its phone-hacking stories.
The Metropolitan Police said it had "decided not to pursue" production orders against the broadsheet and reporter Amelia Hill after taking legal advice.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=47914
Officers from Scotland Yard’s phone-hacking investigation Operation Weeting yesterday arrested former Evening Standard journalist Raoul Simons.
He is the second journalist arrested by the Met who does not have links to the News of the World, though Press Association reporter Laura Elston, who was arrested in June, was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=47839
The Guardian’s special investigations correspondent Amelia Hill has been questioned under caution by police investigating leaks from the Met’s phone-hacking probe Operation Weeting.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=47833
Former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone was subjected to one of the most gruelling sessions of questioning yet from MPs on the culture select committee investigating phone-hacking. Here we provide a lengthy and only slightly edited extract from a dramatic period of questioning on Tuesday afternoon this week
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=6&storycode=47836
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