Today the PCC has published its biggest report so far since the new chairperson, the almost invisible Baroness Buscombe took over from bombastic banana skin skier Christopher Meyer.
As anyone who has watched this lily-livered organisation in action would expect, it manages no more than a pale watery light grey wash over the misdeeds of News International’s old harridan of a rag, the News of the World.
They are happy to publish the feeble denials issued by little Colin Myler, gibbering fall guy in the Screws post-Coulson era, over their hacking of the Princes’ voicemails.
Nick Davies at Mediaguardian isn’t quite right when he says today that it hadn’t been revealed before that the paper had hacked into the royal phones until Assistant Commissioner at the Met, John Yates, pressed by Adam Price, admitted it to the Culture, Media, Sport Committee on September 2nd.
In my book, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, in May 2008, I refer to a story – “Fury after he ogled lapdancer’s boobs” – in which the paper produces a verbatim transcript of a jokey message left by Prince William on Prince Harry’s voicemail. I posited that, unless the paper had just made it up, the only way it could have been obtained the story was through illegal phone-tapping, and, while they are past-masters at creative embellishment, it was inconceivable that they would have risked making up a personal royal story like this.
Subsequent revelations about the timing of police investigations into the activities of News of the World royal editor, Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator contracted by the paper to gather information (although in this case, paid directly in cash by Goodman) have established that the Royal Household were aware of this reporter’s activities by the time the story was published, and therefore the message was likely to have been a kite deliberately flown to confirm their findings. From this, it was clear to anyone investigating events that the paper had indeed hacked the princes’ voicemails.
The PCC’s report on the subject doesn’t address the fact that the by-line on the “Lapdancer’s boobs” story was shared by Clive Goodman and Neville Thurlbeck, a senior reporter who has been involved in many different methods of gathering personal stories. Although in last year’s High Court hearing over Max Mosley’s claim against the paper, Thurlbeck denied that he had any idea where the Royal story had come from, it was beyond the credibility of most observers that he would have been unaware of the illegal manner in which the key element of the story had been acquired. Along with an email obtained and revealed by Nick Davies last July which directly implicated Thurlbeck, this more than suggests that Clive Goodman was by no means the only journalist on the News of the World involved in phone-hacking.
The PCC seem to have accepted the evidence given them by Colin Myler, the current editor, that the story which contained the transcript of a voicemail message was in fact a conversation. Although self-evidently not based on a ‘conversation’, had it been, the paper would have been guilty of an even more serious breach of privacy, by hacking into a live conversation. Presumably aware of this, Myler made the extraordinary claim that their source was not phone-hacking, but a dancer called Annabella at Spearmint Rhino. How she would have had access to a transcript of a phone conversation between the two princes is not explained. This is an entirely new version of the grounds on which the story was based. Certainly Neville Thurlbeck hadn’t thought of using it when questioned in the High Court last year.
Absurdly, though, the PCC has used this highly questionable evidence of Myler’s to discredit the Guardian’s report.

The PCC also omitted in their summary of evidence given to the CMS committee by Gordon Taylor’s lawyer, Mark Lewis, to pursue further his statement [quoted from CMS Com website]:
Detective Sergeant Mark Maberly said to me, “You are not having everything but we will give you enough on Taylor to hang them.” …… He also mentioned the number of people whose phones had been hacked….. 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.
The PCC didn’t contact or question DS Maberly. That the PCC in their attempt to discredit the Guardian’s report have chosen to ignore such clear evidence demonstrates once again their unfitness – or simple unwillingness – to carry out the function of press self-regulation for which they were set up.
They also showed an alarming lack of determination in failing to question Andy Coulson who was editor while all the royal phone hacking was going on – either now, or (because he had “left the industry”) after the conviction of Goodman. Given his extraordinary denial to the CMS committee last July that he knew anything about the story which had been flagged on the front page and filled page 7 of an edition that he had edited, it seems imprudent, to say the least, to have overlooked any part he might have played.

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There can be no doubt that editors at the News of the World knew exactly what they were doing when they illegally acquired and published a young army officer’s private and fairly mundane video record of his day-to-day experiences in the forces.

In it Prince Harry (who made the video) described one of his platoon, a friend and colleague, as “our little paki friend, Ahmed”, and the paper leapt at the chance to pile in and give him an almighty kicking – yet again.

Have a look at it on the Screws “family” website, if you can be bothered, and you’ll see it’s absolutely clear from the way the term is delivered that there is no malice, no implied racism, nothing to which the Pakistani soldier himself could or wanted to raise any objection.

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