Peter Burden » Red Top Rundown

Andy Coulson accused by New York Times

Peter — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:01:09 +0000

Yesterday the New York Times Online put up a long piece, to be published as the cover of the NYT magazine this Sunday, which includes several attributed references to Andy Coulson’s involvement with illegal phone-hacking at the News of the World. Andy Coulson is still – despite many warnings – David Cameron’s head spinner and chief conduit to the Murdochs’ British media empire.

The NYT is unequivocal in its conclusion that Coulson knew about, and was therefore complicit in an offence which saw two people working for him go to jail.

It was in any case very clear from Coulson’s evidence to the Common’s Culture Media & Sport Committee last year that he wasn’t telling the truth when he denied any knowledge of one specicfic high-profile royal story about which he could not possibly have been unaware, and which had been illegally obtained.

The Government should not under any circumstances be harbouring people of this moral calibre; it maybe that Coulson will soon be charged as a party to a proven crime and rehoused at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Much better to get shot of him first – as I have consistently advocated since he was appointed by the Conservatives in 2007.

Who else knew, besides Coulson? Managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, who was sacked for his ineptness in covering up, and former News Internationl CEO, Les Hinton, who blathered like a school kid denying he’d eaten the sweets when questioned by the CMS Committee?

Pakistani Bowlers in Another Fake Sheikh Fake Scam

Peter — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:30:42 +0000

It’s astonishing that not a single serious commentator has taken the trouble to question the veracity of Mazher Mahmood’s bowling/betting scam story in the News of the World. Very few even mention that it was a “Fake Sheikh” story – presumably for fear of devaluing it.
Which, of course, it would.
For Mazher Mahmood’s track record in achieving any kind of successful subsequent prosecution in any of his more spectacular “revelation” splashes is derisory.
What is strange too is that no one seems to have questioned the obvious doctoring of the videos put up on the NoW website to substantiate Mahmood’s fantasy story. He has already this year (the John Higgins snooker story in June; the Fergie “bribe” story) applied fresh sound tracks to the published video footage in the crudest and crassest way, where the spoken words simply don’t match the lip movements of the subjects. In this latest one, the speaker’s mouth is very often deliberately obscured in darkness to allow Mahmood’s inept technician to apply the sound track later, as required. In this case the “predictions” were put in the subject’s mouth after two big no-balls, quite unplanned, had taken place and excited the attention of the commentators. It stands to anyone’s reason that if a bowler wanted to fake a no-ball, he wouldn’t make it the biggest one of the match.
Large chunks of the text in the Screws story has just been made up. Mazher Mahmood has been dong this for so long he no longer as any concept of the truth or its relevance in a newspaper story.

I predict that no hard evidence will ever be found against these players, while Mazher Mahmood will still be allowed to roam the country, creating scams and destroying other people’s lives – as is the spoken aim of the news room in the Wapping HQ of Murdoch’s Old Yellow Rag.

Vanessa Perroncel challenges the News of the World to restore her reputation.

Peter — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:11:12 +0000

“This is what we do, we go out and destroy other people’s lives,” was how former News of the World news editor, Greg Miskiw once characterised the ethos of his paper. As a strap-line for the cover of my book, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, it was irresistible in its pithy summary of the editorial priorities of Britain’s biggest selling Sunday paper. And this fact in itself is one of the most depressing comments on the sleazy, voyeuristic tastes of a significant section of the British public and their appetite for salacious personal and sexual details of figures in the public eye – sportspersons, politicians, royals and entertainers. Whether these details are real or made up makes no difference.

This appetite exists partly because it is regularly, cheaply and easily satisfied by papers like the News of the World and the Daily Mail, who campaign vigorously with self-righteous and spurious claims for the inalienable right of the British public to know such things.

But the naked truth of Miskiw’s statement is clearly demonstrated in last Sunday’s Observer, where Polly Vernon, despite her own breathy tabloid delivery, offers the reality of French fashion model, Vanessa Perroncel’s treatment earlier this year by a pack of baying shag-hounds scenting a vulnerable prey.

It is outside the comprehension of the average tabloid journalist that a man – especially a footballer – could be alone with an attractive woman for any length of time without her underwear coming off. Thus, for them there was no question that when Vanessa was visited by John Terry (former England footer skipper, and best friend of Wayne Bridge, her former long-term boyfriend and father of her son) there was no question that sex had been had. The Screws hack, Guy Basnett decided to embellish this fallacious if fairly pedestrian story with claims of subsequent pregnancy, abortion and a £20,000 pay-off.

And with no interest in what these entirely unfactual claims would do to the parties involved, the story was splashed across the front and several pages of the paper and succeeded in inflicting profound damage on Ms Perroncel, on John Terry, his wife and their marriage, and potentially on Jaydon, Vanessa’s son by Wayne Bridge.

While the rubbish press all speculated vigorously on how much Max Clifford would acquire for her for a major Shag’n’Brag piece, she kept dignified and quiet. She didn’t want Max to sell her side of the story but he couldn’t do much to stop the Screws running their version either, as he was at that point suing them himself (and won £1m for having his phone hacked by them.)

Vanessa since then has consistently denied that there was any truth in the story, while she was preoccupied with coming out of a six year relationship with Bridge and sorting out parental arrangements for their child.

But there was no let up in the papers’ blood-letting. Vanessa was consistently portrayed as a scheming, self-interested harlot and, on the web, the bone-headed, ignoramus that is Jo British Public laid into her viciously with their own nasty comments and misconceptions.

This witch-hunt by a section of the British public of an entirely innocent woman, also a foreign visitor to Britain, was hugely distressing to her and seeing the apparently unmonitored online comments frequently left her weeping in bewilderment.

But that’s what the News of the World is best at – destroying other people’s lives, to the extent of several suicides over the last thirty years.

Now Vanessa Perroncel is seeking redress, on behalf of herself, her son and, indirectly, the thousands of others who have been callously damaged by the paper’s lies or gratuitous invasion of privacy.

This evil old harridan of a rag has for years consistently broken laws with the full connivance of its management and must by now be a serious embarrassment to its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. But, as I have strongly urged in my book and in this blog over the last few years, it is clear that a statutory Law of Privacy must be created, to clarify for newspapers exactly how far they can go, and the criteria by which revelations of an individual’s private life can be deemed in the public interest.

Now, at last, blindingly obvious as this is, politicians (and even some members of the press, if not the Mail or the Screws) are beginning to see the logic and necessity of such legislation.

May they not this time be deterred from curbing the excesses of the red-top hacks by intensive lobbying and covert threats, as the last government was when they tried to introduce custodial sentences for journalists breaching the Data Protection Act. It had to leave the clause strangled and dangling uselessly to avert the wrath of Ken High and Wapping.

In the meantime, it is to be hoped that the British courts will give the News of the World the serious kicking it deserves for its nasty, callous attempt to destroy yet another life, and that Ms Perroncel’s dignity and innocence are vindicated.

No More – or Rather Less Mr Nice Guy.

Peter — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:16:28 +0000

Gary Lineker takes Rupert’s Shilling to join the Queen of Shag-Rags

For a man perceived as being unusually wholesome in the tawdry milieu of professional football and possessing limitless goodwill towards his fellow men, it’s more than disappointing to learn that, to compound his already questionable championing (for a big sack of loot) the thoroughly unwholesome foodstuff that is Walkers Crisps, he has now agreed to “write” for the News of the World, the nation’s most insidious Sunday rag and a publication that attacks privacy, promotes voyeurism with tacky sex and drug stories, that lies, breaks the law and is devoid of any visible standards of journalistic integrity.
And if you don’t like what Gary “writes”, blame the ghost. It emerged in a libel suit against him in 2005 that his column in the Telegraph hadn’t been written by him; he’d simply chatted to a hack on the phone and his by-line had gone at the top. Is that how Charlie Brooks (Mr Rebekah Wade) does it?

RORY STEWART’S GAFFE WAS TALKING TO A HACK FROM THE SUN

Peter — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:27:31 +0000

In an absurd Comedy of PC Errors, new Cumbrian Tory MP Rory Stewart has had to apologise publicly for making accurate and utterly harmless comments about some of his constituents. In an interview published in the Scottish Sun and written by their “celebrity” interviewer, Matt Bendoris, it was clear that, despite their owner’s professed allegiance to David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the paper’s agenda was to make Stewart look elitist and out of touch, jeering at what they perceived to be his “toff” characteristics, in order, one imagines to curry favour with their intolerant and bigoted Scottish readers.
    Stewart is described, in the windy outdoors of the Lake District, as having “unruly black hair Worzel Gummidge would have been proud of.” [“Worzel Gummidge” is a standard Sun cliché for ‘slightly untidy’, and for years was invariably applied by the paper to the late Labour leader, Michael Foot.]
    His “tailor-made suit” (did Bendoris ask him or did he sneak a look at the label) had “a light dusting of dandruff,” not visible in either of the onsite photos published with the article.
    Stewart also “fiddles with his cuff-links a lot, like Prince Charles..” [another republican Sun bête noir] “..and speaks a little like him too.” [This is a standard Sun jibe at what they perceive to be an elitist toff accent. How, you may ask, would they describe the accent of News International CEO, Rebekah Brooks’ husband, Charlie, an old-Etonian, lapsed race-horse trainer.]
    Bendoris himself goes on to describe the residents of Langwathby, the village they are visiting, as “slightly potty” – a statement for which the hack has not felt it necessary to apologise.
    Stewart’s good manners in looking interested in the scare-crow competition he was inspecting is dismissed as a “toff trait”.
    Bendoris wonders why someone who made it into GQ Magazine’s Top 50 Men of 2010 [whatever that accolade is worth] should want to come to the back of beyond [just off the M6 between Preston and Carlisle].
    Then he quotes Stewart: “Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of TWINE (sic) and that sort of thing.”
    And it’s for this that Stewart has been forced to apologise and describe his own remarks as “extremely foolish”.
    The local paper, the Carlisle News & Star, said he had been branded as arrogant and crass.
    The Guardian suggested that Stewart had called his constituents “yokels” which he hadn’t.
    It’s hard to see who can have been insulted by what Stewart had said (admittedly with a certain degree of naivety, given that he was talking to a man from a Murdoch rag). No one I know who wears binder twine would give a damn. In order to convey the flavour of the Welsh Marches where I live, I have often described some of the inhabitants in the more remote corners as using binder twine for a belt, because they do – it’s not a criticism; it’s not a condemnation; it’s not insulting; it’s just what they do (and why the hell shouldn’t they – anymore than young men in inner cities choosing not to wear belts so that their jeans can hang halfway down their arses?)

Rory Stewart is undoubtedly a bit of an eccentric smarty-pants – and thank God for that in a time when this is too rare. I suspect he is also more knowledgeable, more dedicated, braver, more resourceful and immeasurably more entertaining than the mediocre, cliché-scribbling pip-squeak who interviewed him. But, of course, it gave the hack a chance to have a dig at the British upper-middle classes that Rupert Murdoch has despised since he was shunned by a few of them when he was at Oxford back in the ‘50s. A vain old man scorned can be dangerously single-minded.

ANOTHER PAY-OUT AND MORE SHAME FOR RUPERT.

Peter — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:12:38 +0000

The News of the World have been ordered to pay out yet again for their sleazy journalism.
    As I predicted on this blog back in January, the High Court in London has today awarded Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie a settlement (undisclosed but likely to be huge) for the paper’s illegal intrusion of their privacy. The Screws had bought some dodgy information, and (as is their practice) drawn the conclusion that suited their permanently warped sense of news. The wrong conclusion, naturally.
   Ol’ Rupert Rumplechops must be getting mightily pissed off with his former love, The Harridan of Wapping, especially as the finishing touches are put to a fresh major revelation about the mess his people made there three years ago when they clumsily tried to cover up their involvement in a string of phone-hacking crimes.
    And the boss in London then, Les Hinton, is now boss of Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. That will be more than a bit embarrassing.

Can Andy Keep his Breakfast Down?

Peter — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:30:38 +0000

Andy Coulson’s been out of the news since his new salary was as No 10’s head spinner was revealed a month ago.
Not for long.
Coulson’s spectacular stonewalling, sidestepping and truth economy that we witnessed last year in front of the Commons Culture Committee are about to turn round and bite him (and his trusting boss) in the arse.
A lot of hard-working journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been working on this important revelation of the truth since Nick Davies of the Guardian, a year ago today, revealed that The News of the World had paid off Gordon Taylor for hacking his phone.
However adept the Screws people have become at covering their tracks and misleading their interrogators, when up against investigative reporters of quality, they are bound sooner or later to stub their toes.
So far, the only head among the foul-smelling cabal that has run the country’s most shameful Sunday paper to have been sacrificed is that of former managing editor Stuart Kuttner – ignominiously sacked after twenty years of journalistic malpractice.

Who will follow?
Among those who are having difficulty keeping their breaklfast down since an unexpected visitor at Wapping from New York last month are Tom Crone, Les Hinton and, most significant of all, Andy Coulson.

Giving the Sun a leg up.

Peter — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:29:17 +0000

I’d like to help the Sun subs a little as they grapple for the pithiest headline tommorrow.

I offer them…….

rhymes with Fabio:

Grabio

Flabio

Slabio

Crabio

Shabio

Blabio

Labio

Rabio

Jabio

Drabio

Stabio

Scabio

Rehabio

Prefabio

Nabio

Dabio

We anticipate a work of great creativty, as usual.

Mark Lewis, solicitor, sues Baroness Peta “Betty Buxom” Buscombe (+ the PCC and the Met)

Peter — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:12:48 +0000

After quite a search last year, Baroness Betty Buxom turned out to be the only individual desperate enough to take on the chairmanship of the tainted Press Complaints Commission, from erratic wind & waffle wallah, Sir Christopher Meyer. She has done little since to dispel the sense of toothless futility which prevailed under her predecessor.
In one of her first big public pronouncements, to the Society of Editors Annual Conference last November, she told them that in the light of new evidence recently presented to the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee, the PCC had re-examined the facts relating to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. They had concluded, she said, that none of this evidence altered their previous conclusion – that Clive Goodman (Royal editor, jailed for his admitted phone-hacking) was a one-off, a rogue reporter and that only he, of all the other hacks on the Screws, had used this illegal method to invade privacy and acquire stories.
Nick Davies of the Guardian (who unearthed fresh evidence last year) had presented irrefutable evidence that the Screws’ senior Shag’n’Brag reporter, Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck had been using Mulcaire’s phone hacking services.
On 2 September 2009 Mark Lewis, the solicitor acting for Gordon Taylor whose extraction of some £700,000 in damages from the paper had sparked the story, was questioned by the committee. He told them that whilst conducting Mr Taylor’s claim he had attended court in order to make an application for the disclosure of documents from the police. Outside court he had spoken to DS Mark Maberly.
Lewis told the committee, “DS Mark Maberly said to me: “You are not having everything but we will give you enough on Taylor to hang them.” Those were his words: “to hang them”. . . He also mentioned the number of people whose phones had been hacked. Whether that was an aside . . . but they said that there was evidence about, or they had found there were something like 6,000 people who were involved. It was not clear to me whether that was 6,000 phones which had been hacked or 6,000 people including the people who had left messages.”
This evidence and the blatantly mendacious delivery of Screws management when trying to explain away these inconvenient facts, left no one in doubt that phone-hacking had been systemic within the paper across a wide range of reporters, and that it was very unlikely that any members of the management would not have known of the practice.
In her statement to the editors, however, Baroness Buxom claimed new further contrary evidence had come to light.
“Those of you who are familiar with the case will recall the significance that was attached to the apparent evidence of a then Detective Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police called Mark Maberly. It was he who was alleged to have said that around 6,000 people had had their phone messages hacked or intercepted.
The allegation was made in oral evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and has also been published in the press. It was repeated just last Monday in some coverage questioning our report.
Since the publication of our report last Monday, the PCC has heard from Detective Inspector (as he now is) Maberly through lawyers for the Metropolitan Police.
This letter says that Mr Maberly has in fact been wrongly quoted on the 6,000 figure. The reliable evidence, we were told in an e-mail confirming the contents of the letter, is that given by Assistant Commissioner John Yates to the Select Committee, who referred to only a “handful” of people being potential victims.
In light of this, I am doing two things.
First, I am of course putting this new evidence to my colleagues in the Press Complaints Commission, because they will want to update our report to take account of this development.
Second, I have just spoken to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, to draw this to his attention. Any suggestion that a Parliamentary Inquiry has been misled is of course an extremely serious matter.”

When Guardian reporter Chris Tryhorn asked whether the letter from the police “had effectively withdrawn Maberly’s evidence”, she replied:
“Maberly has been wrongly quoted in saying that 6,000 people were involved. He didn’t say it. He is said to have said it.”

This claim by the baroness was widely reported and, not surprisingly, Mark Lewis was incensed. He’d nothing to gain by appearing before the Culture Media & Sport Committee, other than the satisfaction of doing a public service, and now he had been widely branded a liar. He has now issued a claim against the Baroness, the PCC and the MPS for damages inrespect of a clear libel.
The PCC, in response to a critical reference in the Committee’s report last February, decided to backtrack from this clearly articulated position by issuing a statement in April in which they attempt to eat the Baroness’s words…..
“Baroness Buscombe has never suggested – and does not believe – that Mr Lewis misled the Select Committee and her statement, which made no reference to Mr Lewis, was not intended as a criticism of him or the evidence which he gave to the Select Committee. Baroness Buscombe regrets that her statement may have been misunderstood and that this has been of concern to Mr Lewis. Baroness Buscombe and the Commission therefore wish to make the position entirely clear.”
Oh dear. That’s very clear – she said it, but then she didn’t say it.
I think Mark Lewis may succeed in his suit.

RUPERT RATTLED BY HINTON INDISCRETIONS.

Peter — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:32:01 +0000

After the News of the World phone-hacking scandal climaxed at the Old Bailey in January 2007, two scapegoats – Screws reporter, Clive Goodman and Private Investigator, Glenn Muclaire – were sacrificed to save the reputations of their bosses – Andy Coulson, (editor), Stuart Kuttner, (managing editor) and Les Hinton (Chairman of News International).
For the next two years a 3-cornered defensive barrier, composed of News International, The Metropolitan Police Service and the Press Complaints Commission, stood firm around these other culprits.

But in 2009 one of Mulcaire’s admitted victims, Gordon Taylor, sued the paper for invasion of privacy, and they settled – very privately – for a sum at least ten times greater than would have been awarded by a High Court judge. The disclosures that Taylor’s solicitor sought, if they had proceeded to trial, would have been not only embarrassing for senior management at News International, but positively incriminating for those who have always claimed to have had no knowledge of what Goodman and Mulcaire had been up to. This settlement was very thoroughly and properly uncovered by the Guardian’s Nick Davies, and (no coincidence) the day before the story appeared (July 9^th 2009), it was announced that Stuart Kuttner had been sacked, as he later admitted to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee.
Since then, the barricades protecting the Screws men – Kuttner, Coulson and Hinton – have slowly been crumbling, and those who predict the imminent sinking of this once inviolable Titanic (and don’t want to be held to account) are beginning to let it be known that they have tales to tell of the systematic, endemic use of voicemail-hacking by Screws staff.
Kuttner, wily old workhorse that he was, is completely dispensable although he’d been in the job at the Screws for 20 years; no doubt he’s still getting enough from them to keep up the subs at an Essex golf club or wherever he seeks his recreation.

But the other two are in more sensitive places.
Les Hinton is overall boss at the Wall Street Journal, jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. That he should, quite recently have been involved in the smutty, illicit dealings of a dirty little rag back in England must really rattle Rupert, and thrill the New York Times.

Andy Coulson is the Prime Minister’s chief spinner. (He should have been dropped a long time ago, after he was seen on national TV stonewalling the members of the CMS Committee, making a laughing stock of himself with absurd, impossible denials.)

Recently the police, who had previously been obstructive to anyone seeking information about those who were targeted – and hacked – by Mulcaire, have been more forthcoming. Perhaps Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who was pretty guarded in his evidence to Parliament, now doesn’t want to be seen to be part of whatever arrangements existed between the former head of the investigation, Andy Hayman and the Screws (who now employ Hayman from time to time).

There is a long history of co-operation between the Screws and the Police, both the Met and the City of London forces. “Investigations Editor” Mazher Mahmood has called in their help on several occasions when setting up arrests in bogus criminal scenarios he has created exclusively for the front page of his newspaper, with arrests being timed for late Saturday, so as to preclude any rival Sunday papers from getting a line on them in time for the next day.

With several lawyers – some acting for multiple claimants – moving in, it’s a matter of time before one of the many lurking icebergs prevails, and truth starts pouring in to sink the old hulk.

Meanwhile, Gordon Taylor’s solicitor, Mark Lewis, who extracted over £700k in settlement from the Screws for his clients, is obliged to sue the Metropolitan Police Service, the Press Complaints Commission and their hopeless chairperson, Baroness Peta Buscombe for damages after they publicly stated that he had lied to the CMS Committee.
That he would have had nothing to gain in doing so, and the other parties had a great deal to lose if he was right, suggests that he has a solid case.
More follows.