Peter Burden » Rebekah Brooks

Oh Guys! You should’ve got the TestaRossa against the ropes.

Peter — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:03:48 +0000

Apart from providing Rupert Rumplechops with a PR coup – a piece of reverse spin that his former (?) employee, Andy Coulson might have cooked up (as he did for George Osborne back in 2005) – which showed the world how much his athletic young wife loves a growling old billionaire, the Culture Media Sport Committee’s grilling didn’t produce more than a little warm toast.

Restricted as they were by sub judice topics in the case of Rebekah Testarossa, they might have done better to leave this session until the future, when she would not have been in a position to bat away their questions with another clutch of well-honed lies, the way all her colleagues did in 2009.

They could have asked…..

When, in May 2006, she saw that the News of the World carried a story in which they reproduced a verbatim message left by Prince William on Prince Harry’s voicemail, did she not question to the legality of the means by which the story was found? Or did she just think that Coulson, Thurlbeck and Goodman hade made it up? When she became CEO of News International did she not question News of the World managing editor, Stuart Kuttner about it?

Why was News editor Greg Miskiw sent packing in July 2005, shortly after the Gordon Taylor story went wrong?

Why was Stuart Kuttner sacked in 2009, the day before the Guardian revealed the Taylor pay off.

Why was Tom Crone sacked two weeks ago? (Yes, they asked her but they didn’t challenge the absurdity of her mendacious reply.)

Let us hope that the Metropolitan Police are less lenient in their questioning. At least we know Rebekah’s not a member of the same Lodge as the Senior MET Freemasons – that august charitable organisation still doesn’t allow women members – or does it, and they just haven’t told us?

Watch this trowel.

Farewell, Testarossa. You had the fun and now you’ve paid the price.

Peter — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:44:55 +0000

Now that Rebekah Brooks has walked the Wapping plank, will anyone employ her again? Venal, dishonest bully, who can’t really write a good sentence – what was she doing in the CEO’s job at NI? It’s unlikely she and her husband, Charley Bonker Brooks, former race-horse trainer (manque) former purveyor of women’s underwear and wannabe writer (lots of wanna, not much be) will be able to run the Wapping Jet on his book sales. Charley’s a jolly chap, but he couldn’t write his way out of a gossamer bag.

The Met & the Screws must start delivering real answers

Peter — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:25:51 +0000

The revelations about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone will intensify demands for clear answers from the Metropolitan Police and News International.

In 2002, the News of the World illegally accessed the voicemail of missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler after she had disappeared. The news, which broke on Monday , has shocked a public already deluged with revelations about the paper’s phone-hacking of celebrities, sportsmen and politicians in a quest for intimate details of their target’s private lives. This new disclosure involving a non-celebrity victim of abduction and murder shines a disturbing new light on the scandal.

The Dowler family’s lawyer, Mark Lewis has issued a statement describing the paper’s actions as ‘heinous and despicable’, causing the family ‘distress heaped upon tragedy’.

Having logged and recorded the messages he had retrieved, Glenn Mulcaire, the paper’s contracted private investigator, then deleted older messages in Milly Dowler’s inbox once it was full, in order to free up space for further messages from Milly’s distraught friends and family, which he also intercepted and passed back to News of the World reporters and editors.

The paper took particular interest in the Dowler case, they have claimed, as part of their high profile campaign against paedophile activity – a campaign launched and closely overseen by the paper’s then editor, Rebacca Wade (now Brooks), and her deputy, Andy Coulson, who has already resigned from the paper and the Prime Minister’s Press Office over his connection with previous phone hacking scandals.

By deleting messages illegally retrieved from Milly Dowler’s phone, the paper misled her family into believing she had emptied her inbox and was still alive – when she was not. This gave the family hope, which was exploited by the paper in publishing optimistic interviews with them.

In deleting the earlier messages, the paper had also removed information that would have had a direct impact on the police investigation of Milly’s disappearance.

This new development could turn out to be a major turning point in a scandal which has been rumbling like a volcano with growing volume for two years, since it was revealed in July 2009 that the paper had settled an alleged £700,000 with Professional Footballers’ Association president, Gordon Taylor, in recognition of their invasion of his privacy by phone-hacking, for a story that was never published.

It is significant that this is the first hard News of the World phone-hacking story to have emerged which relates to the editorship of Rebecca Brooks. Up until now, police inquiries, for reasons never adequately explained, have focused on the years 2005 and 2006, when the paper was under Andy Coulson’s editorship. In August 2006 Clive Goodman, the paper’s royal reporter and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested, pleaded guilty and subsequently imprisoned for hacking into the voicemails of Prince Charles’ staff at Clarence House. Under questioning, Andy Coulson has told a Scottish Court in the perjury trial of Tommy Sheridan, and a Commons Culture, Media, Sport Select Committee inquiry that he was completely unaware of any illegal phone hacking activity on the paper he ran. He claimed initially that Clive Goodman was a single ‘rogue’ reporter. Since then four News of the World journalists have been arrested on charges of phone hacking, and several more have been suspended or helped to move on from the paper.

Rebacca Brooks is now Chief Executive Officer of News International, which is very close to finalising negotiations with the Coalition Government over their acquisition of 100% of BSkyB, where currently they own only 39%.

It is likely that this latest story of the paper’s illegal activity will raise further substantive questions over News International’s suitability to be responsible for a near monopoly in some key areas of broadcasting in this country. This will also cause many to question more closely whether it is appropriate for the Prime Minister to maintain a close friendship with Rebecca Brooks with whom he attended a private dinner over Christmas and who was present at his exclusive birthday party at Chequers last year.

Mulcaire has claimed in the past that he was the last link in a chain of command in the paper, simply responding to the instructions he had received down the line from his de facto employers. Speculation about the length and composition of the chain is now bound to increase, with attention focussing on just how far up the chain knowledge and condonation of Muclaire’s activities stretched.

If it were to reach up, through Rebecca Brooks and Andy Coulson, to their former Executive Chairman, Les Hinton, it is likely that Rupert Murdoch, already heartily sick of the whole mess surrounding his Sunday tabloid, would be forced to take action at his most prized possession, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, where Hinton is now CEO.

Over the past year it has emerged that a strong symbiotic relationship exists between News International and the Metropolitan Police. The question now troubling many seekers after truth is whether or not the Met have any real interest or motivation in bagging trophies of this magnitude.

This piece was first published at thefirstpost.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/6f3z83s

Screws to sack Onan Thurlbeck?

Peter — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:31:30 +0000

Rebekah ‘Testarossa’ Brooks will have to think hard before she allows Screws editor, little Colin Myler to sack Neville ‘Onan the Barbarian’ Thurlbeck for his clear involvement in criminal activity. He has been part of the evil cabal at the centre of Britain’s most evil newspaper for a long time – a lot longer than recently fired Ian Edmondson. And he knows an awful lot about the illicit information gathering techniques of the paper’s hacks, which of them have done it and when. He has committed other crimes too.…. He told Mr Justice Eady in the High Court that he had no idea where the story about Prince William leaving a jokey message on Prince Harry’s voicemail had come from. It could only have been acquired by illegal hacking; he knew this – his by-line headed the story.

Telling lies to judges in court is an imprisonable offence.

If Rebekah decides he has to go, he’s going to cost Master James an awful lot in ‘be discreet’ money. We’ve never heard how much his former dodgy colleague, managing editor for 25 years, Stuart Kuttner was awarded when he was sacked (to get this arch-organizer of illicit practices out of the way before the dung hit the windmill).

Have the MET raided his gaffe yet, I wonder? Not too late, DAC Sue Akers.

What next?

If Ian Edmondson was involved, so was Andy Coulson

If Andy Coulson was involved, so was Rebekah Brooks.

If Rebekah Brooks was involved, so was Master James.

And if they were, it’s very likely that Les Hinton, CEO of The Wall Street Journal (the brightest bird in Rupert Murdoch’s bush), was involved, too, becasue he was Executive Chairman of News International at the time.

And then there’s the Fake Sheikh, the nation’s most mendacious hack……

Watch my next blog….

As Jeremy Vagina looks into the Abyss

Peter — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:51:24 +0000

Of all the poisoned chalices to be passed by a much-loved colleague — Should the government allow the venal and highly self-interested News Corp to dominate the British news agenda by giving them control over a significant share of the news outlet? — the BSkyB decision could not have been more sensitive, especially when the boss is so obviously in lerve with the Testarossa – Rebekah the Larrikin – accepting her invitations; inviting her round, too, from time to time for quite intimate gatherings. She probably loves the intellectual stimulation, which she doesn’t get from hubby, Charlie ‘Bonker’ Brooks.

It all smells pretty nasty, Young Vagina, so chuck away the nose peg, and send Ol’ Rumplechops and his billions packing. If you don’t, you’ll look as big a fool as your boss does just now over his ‘loyalty’ to Andy C.

And you don’t want that, do you?

IF YOU DON’T WANT MURDOCH – STOP USING HIM.

Peter — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:30:22 +0000

In the furore raging over the Murdochs’ plans to purchase the 61% of the shares in BSkyB that they don’t already own, it isn’t only competing national newspapers who are fearful of the combined might of News International and BSkyB in this country; millions of punters, ordinary Joes, voters like you and me, would see the resulting media conglomerate as deeply damaging to our democracy.
    It’s unhealthy enough that NI should control 37% of national newspaper circulation in this country through the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World. With leading (if mightily slipshod) publishers Harper Collins in its stable, News Corp (the global entity) can call in many favours from writers it has paid handsomely to publish. It can demand of them that its global interests be immune from adverse comment. It already wields considerable influence and earns profits from the 39% of Sky which it currently owns. With the rest of the Sky shares in its bag, the powerful cross-references that will allow between its print, broadcast, American TV and movie property, Fox and internet media (MySpace), its influence will become almost unchallengeable.
    And now with unreconstructed ShagRag editor and truth juggler Andy Coulson lurking by the door of the cabinet office, News Corp have their own placeman in Downing Street with a direct conduit to Rupert Murdoch through his close friend and former boss, the TestaRossa, Rebekah Brooks. The millions (60%) of us who voted for Cameron or Clegg did not have any intention of voting for Murdoch, pere et fils, and we must join the battle to contain, even reduce the extent of the Murdochs’ media reach.
   We can’t sit back and leave it to the unlikely alliance of the Barclay Bros, Paul Dacre, Trinity-Mirror and the Obserguardian (where are the Indie in all this?) to fight the Murdochs without any help from us.
There’s a lot that the punter in the street and the ordinary Joe like you and me can do.
We can cancel our Sky sub, or refuse to sign up, and learn to live without Champions League Footer or House or Mad Men. If enough do it long enough and determinedly enough, Sky would no longer be able consistently to outbid the BBC and ITV for these properties.
We can stop buying Murdoch ShagRags and buy the Mirror, even, God help us, the Daily Star instead (which, at least, is cheaper). We can swap the Times and Sunday Times to one of the three other high quality broadsheets published in this country (four, if you include the specialist but broad enough FT).

And important or best-selling authors, or their estates, like Jonathan Franzen, Bernard Cornwell, Michael Crichton, Janet Evanovich, Paul Coelho, Colleen McCollough, Joanne Harris and Frank Delaney should not contract with Harper Collins to publish their work.

A well-supported boycott can and often does work, if enough right-thinking people care.

For the sake of Freedom of Expression and the right of commentators of differing views to air them, we must support the papers who are lobbying the Government to do whatever it takes to block the Murdochs’ total control of BSkyB.

Rebekah “Babbling” Brooks won’t charge for online Sun and Screws

Peter — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:11:30 +0000

Rebekah “Babbling” Brooks announces that two News International titles under her control will start charging for online access come next May.
I understand that serious, quality newsgathering has to be paid for, and I deplore the fact that when the time comes (as it will) in which all commercially published newspapers have to charge for their online content in order to supplement the dwindling hard copy sales that currently pay for quality journalism, the BBC will still be offering it for free, subsidised by the licence payers.
This will be profoundly unfair, and massively damaging to non-state owned independent newspapers. The BBC will owe it to the British public who fund it to abandon this anomaly.
It became clear during the London ‘Freeshite’ bonanza that hard copy papers given away for nothing are worth, in news terms, a lot less than the paper on which they are printed [and not even a healthy arse-wiping option].
Similarly, Mrs Brooks evidently doesn’t feel she can charge for online content of her two prominent best-selling ShagRags – the Sun and the Screws – no quality journalism to pay for there. (Unfortunately she does have a number of lawyers’ bills and penalties to pay for a pile of upcoming damages for illegal phone-hacking, and they still have to fork out for unproductive journo-nasties like Mazher Mahmood, because he knows all the dirt on sensitive former execs, like Les Hinton and Andy Coulson – not to mention Stuart Kuttner).

Still, one must – albeit grudgingly – hail Ol’ Rumplechops for having the bollocks to lead where others will have to follow.

Will the Murdochs have to open their Wallets – again – for Max Clifford

Peter — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:25:02 +0000

News International boss, Rebekah Brooks has stamped her little foot, shaken her ginger curls and says she jolly well won’t go to the Houses of Parliament to tell the Culture, Media & Sport Committee that everyone in Wapping knew who was engaged in illegal “news” gathering. Pity, because she could also have told them why managing editor and senior spell-binder at the Screws, Stuart Kuttner was sacked last summer, just when the Guardian broke the story of the Screws’ out of court settlement with Gordon Taylor for hacking into his voicemails.
She might have been able to explain why, without any of the management at the paper (they say) being aware of phone hacking by Glenn Mulcaire, they thought they were liable for what Mulcaire had done without their knowlegde or involvement. After all the paper’s head legal honcho, Tom Crone suggested to the Committee last July that Mulcaire was working for other papers. On that basis, he could have hacked Gordon’s phone on behalf of the Sunday Mirror or one of the Dirty Des rags. If they didn’t even know it was going on – and they categorically denied that they did – why should they have coughed up before Gordon Taylor even got them to court?
But the police had an email which made it clear that a transcript of Mulcaire’s interceptions on Taylor’s phone had been made by Screws reporter, Ross Hindley (AKA: Ross Hall) for senior shag hack, Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck. (You might ask why the police didn’t pursue this prima facie evidence of law-breaking at the Screws by people other than fall guys Goodman and Mulcaire.)
Maybe Kuttner’s firing was a response by James Murdoch, his ultimate boss in the UK, to the increasing filthiness of the paper’s reputation under Kuttner’s regime and the vast sums of money gushing down the Screws loos, thanks to pay-offs to Max Mosley, Gordon Taylor, Barry George and even £800K to one of their own, maligned ex-employees, Matt Driscoll (to name a few of many, not to mention Goodman and Mulcaire). And shortly they may well have to dig deep for veteran media warrior, Max Clifford, whose case against the paper for invasion of privacy gets underway early next month (if the paper doesn’t settle before). It seems unlikely, though, that Max Clifford would be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement, like the one Taylor did. So maybe the paper will be forced to take its chances in court, where Clifford’s lawyers (and the intelligent press) will have a field day. I can’t wait.
Who’s next?

WILL THE TESTAROSSA TESTIFY?

Peter — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:38:40 +0000

The Commons Culture, Media, Sport Select Committee would like to talk to Rebekah Brooks, the titian-tressed scrapper who has been suprema of News International since last September. If she complies with their request to see them – and she will try very hard to wriggle out of it – it is to be hoped that she’ll shed more light on criminal activities at the News of the World than did Senior executives Tom Crone (Head of Legals), Stuart Kuttner (ex-Managing Editor), and former editor Andy Coulson, when they were called to give evidence over their phone-hacking to the Committee last summer. She may also remember more than Les Hinton, who was in her current chair when the raiding of the Royal voicemails came to light in August 2006. In September he spoke to the Committee by video link from New York, where he is now boss of the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal. He had no recollection about key decisions, such as were the hackers paid off after being sacked for their criminal activity.

To the intense frustration of the committee and of those who care about the quality of British journalism, all the witnesses turned out to be suffering from an acute attack of contagious amnesia and truth frugalness. [See my blog] For these are people who have made their careers at Rupert’s Red Tops, delivering ‘journalism’ of such obfuscation and dishonesty, for so long, that it’s far too late to kick the habit.
   In a pitiful attempt to mislead the committee, they all ‘forgot’, or just ‘didn’t know’ any details relating to the events that culminated in the jailing of their Royal Editor, Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, a Private Investigator contracted to the paper.
   In October, the Committee, determined not to be fobbed off with the persistent ducking and diving of the Screws bosses, formally posed a number of questions for them.
Among several anomalies that had arisen, they wished to know “the grounds on which advice was given to settle the claims [allegedly] made by Goodman and Mulcaire and the level of payments made”.
   Rebekah Brooks has now submitted her response. (This was viewable on the Committee’s page at www.parliament.uk up to 13th Jan.) Written in characteristic News of the World house style and buried in a miasma of obscured truth and elusive fact, it fails to answer either of these questions.
   With unexpected eagerness, she puts her hand up in conceding Goodman’s alleged claim for unfair dismissal. As they had “failed to meet minimum requirements” in relation to a dismissal, any affected employee would be entitled to bring a claim, “with a potential compensatory award of up to £60,600 (in addition to any contractual notice pay entitlement).”
But she also tells the Committee that the paper settled before a case was heard by any tribunal. The hypothetical sums and conditions she cites have no bearing on what they actually paid Goodman for signing “a standard-form News International compromise agreement,” – a euphemism for gagging agreement – and this despite the breach of his employment contract through his proven criminal activity.
   The decoys and the irrelevant waffle in her answers were composed in order to put Rebekah Brooks’ pursuers off the scent; but, like much of the content of the News of the World, the result is ham-fisted, half-baked and easily seen through. There is an almost engaging naivety to her signing off. “… We trust that the answers given in this letter can now bring matters to a close.”
   Keep trusting, TestaRossa! Most observers will understand the subtext to her answer…..

You might think we gave them lots of money to shut them up and stop them telling the rest of the media who within the Screws hierarchy knew they’d deliberately broken the law by hacking into voicemails to get cheapo front page splashes, but you can’t prove it – so there!

The simple fact is that Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed for what they did. It follows therefore, that any other members of the Screws staff who were party to it are also liable to criminal prosecution and a jail sentence, including Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner.
The committee have shown commendable resolve in their pursuit of the truth over these activities.

They have a clear right and a public duty to insist on clear, frank and truthful answers from Rebekah Brooks.

[701]

WHY ARE THE SCREWS BIGGING UP BROWN?

Peter — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:47:53 +0000

News Group, under the harum-scarum management of Rebekah ‘Testarossa’ Brooks is engaged once again in one of its double-bluff ball-tampering scams.
On the one hand, the Sun, (under the startlingly insignificant Dominic Mohan) and through the brokerage of disgraced ex-Screws editor, Andy Coulson, declared itself strongly in the Cameron camp a few months ago, while its raggedy Sunday sister, the Screws, runs a warm profile on beleaguered PM Brown the ‘The Frown’.
          The cuddly, almost flattering piece in the Screws is written by David Wooding, described puzzlingly as their ‘Head of Politics’, although he nearly always writes for the Sun, (while the Screws’ ‘Political Editor’ is Fraser Nelson, hard right editor of the Spectator). The badly edited piece, which appears to underline Mr Brown’s qualities of determination and resolution, could broadly be construed as pro-Brown – certainly not anti-Brown, in the normal raucous, yah-boo style of the Murdoch Red-Tops.
          No great stretch of cynical appraisal might lead the more sophisticated readers (rare among those of the Screws, so that’s OK) to the conclusion that the paper is gently bigging up Mr Brown because they want him to stay, because, as everyone except, apparently, Mr Brown seems to know, Labour’s chances of being re-elected would be several percentage points higher with Dave Milliband in the Captain’s Chair. And News International have an arrangement with the Conservatives to support them – in return for who knows what.
          Besides, George Osborne’s old chum, Andy Coulson, spinner-in-chief at Central Office, is no stranger to spin by double-bluff. Look what he did, as editor of the Screws back in 2005, for Osborne’s own unattractive, squeaky clean image, when he ran a story which showed that the young man with the air of a sinless choirboy was friends with a ‘hooker’ and a ‘drug addict’. [See my blog “Andy & Ozzy"]