Desmond:’I am the worst f***ing enemy you will have’

PRESS GAZETTE
21 July 2009
By PA Mediapoint

Express Newspapers owner Richard Desmond told a business associate that he was the “worst fucking enemy you’ll ever have” just days before before a critical article appeared about his company in the Sunday Express, the High Court heard today.

The jury in Desmond’s libel action against Conrad Black’s biographer Tom Bower has heard evidence that Desmond did not have a grudge against Jafar Omid, managing director of hedge fund Pentagon Capital Management, in which Desmond’s son, Robert, had invested £50,000 in March 2003.

But, three days before an article headlined “David Cameron’s Friend and £1bn He Won’t Give Back” appeared on 13 July 2008, Desmond was involved in an acrimonious phone call with Omid.

Desmond is suing Bower over claims made in Bower’s book “Conrad And Lady Black: Dancing On The Edge” that he had abused his position to pursue a personal campaign against Black and was then forced into a humiliating climbdown.

His QC, Ian Winter, has told Mr Justice Eady and a London jury that the allegations were “highly defamatory and wholly false”.

Bower denies libel and says that what he wrote was substantially true and was not, in any event, defamatory.


Bower’s QC, Ronald Thwaites, has asked Desmond about the Pentagon story, which was later the subject of a settled libel action in which Desmond was a named defendant.

Desmond agreed that when his son could not get back his investment – which had grown to £75,000 – in 2008, because of problems with liquidating assets, he was upset and discussed the matter at a meeting of his fellow Northern & Shell directors.

But he has denied making any contribution to the story or that it was an example of him getting back at someone against whom he had a “grudge”.

“I did not have a grudge. My son would have liked to get his life savings back.”

Today, the jury heard a recording of a telephone conversation between Desmond and Omid, on 10 July 2008, in which Omid tried to explain why he could not repay the sum.

Desmond is heard to say: “It’s 75 grand you know, and I think fuck me, you know, we’ve done so much you know business together you know. Tens of millions of pounds. And we got you know a little, what’s the word, situation over 75 grand. The problem is it’s on my mind you see. It doesn’t matter if it was 75 grand or 75 million, it’s on my mind all the time.”

When Omid tries to explain the “reality” of the situation, Desmond says: “I understand every, I think I understand everything, but it’s on my fucking mind. And it, 75 grand, write a cheque out, we’ll sign it over to you and that’s it. That’s a wrap up our business.”

Omid: “Unfortunately this is not how it works and this is not.”

Desmond: “Please, please Jafar don’t go on because you’re going to aggravate me. So, look, just send me a cheque back, all right, or we, or we’re not going to be friends. In fact, we’re going to be enemies. OK? And you got till, what’s today, Thursday.”

Omid: “Listen, listen.”

Desmond: “No. That’s it mate. Please, because I don’t want to lose my temper with you but I’m not.”

Omid: “It’s not a case of.”

Desmond: “You know what a good friend I am Jafar, don’t you?”

Omid: “I know, this is the whole point, you’ve been so supportive in this, you’ve been.”

Desmond: “Let me tell you mate, let me tell you something, let me tell you something Jafar as good a fucking, as good as a friend I am, I am the worst fucking enemy you’ll ever have. Please get me a cheque round, thank you very much.”

As Omid says: “But you know you…”

Desmond hangs up.

Thwaites said that when Omid sent Desmond a follow-up email later that day, Desmond replied: “Jafar, there is no point in us meeting – you are out of order.”

The hearing was adjourned

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Report: Phone tapping a ‘wake-up call’ to journalism

13 July 2009

PRESS GAZZETTE

Media intrusion into the private lives of individuals can only be justified if it is in the public interest, a newly published report by the Reuters Institute has said.

Stephen Whittle, visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism at Oxford University, said the allegations surrounding alleged “hacking” of mobile phones by the News of the World were a “wake up call” to journalism.

Reporters could justify intrusive techniques if they were investigating stories about Government bodies or other public institutions, he said.

But there was a need for a more robust definition of what was in the public interest, which would exclude the private lives of public figures.

The right to a private life was in itself a significant public good and any intrusion had to be justified by a “higher public good”, he said.


In his report, Privacy, Probity And Public Interest, Whittle, a former controller of editorial policy at the BBC, set out the kinds of stories that would justify intrusion.

Journalists should be able to show that they were examining corruption, fraud, crime, the exposure of incompetence or other issues of public importance, he said.

Co-author Glenda Cooper said disclosures about public figures’ sex lives could not be presumed to pass the public interest test.

“The person who believes in flying saucers or is conducting a sado-masochistic relationship may be a council officer or a department store manager. But this cannot be presumed to affect their behaviour in their job,” she said.

“There is no prima facie public interest in extra-terrestrial believers or in sado-masochists.”

 

Last year Formula 1 boss Max Mosley won a High Court case against the News Of The World for invasion of privacy after it reported that he engaged in sado-masochistic sex with five prostitutes.

Whittle said the current debate on privacy in the light of the News of the World phone-hacking allegations would “worry” many in the media.

“Some journalists have been completely out of control, losing sight of the ends, let alone the means,” he said, adding that the issue was “another indicator of the challenges around privacy, and where the line should be drawn”.

He recognised there was a “public interest for gossip”, but it is an ethical decision for news organisations to determine what it was or was not legitimate to report.

Journalists need to “think harder” about their actions, he said, adding: “It is important there is a free press, but freedom carries responsibility.

“It doesn’t mean that you have to kow-tow to public authority, but you have to be able to justify what you are doing.

“I certainly hope the report will encourage people to think about, and debate, the issues, and improve some of their behaviour.”

The report says that everyone “needs a private space” which is “crucial to our integrity as human beings”.

It adds: “If the media is going to infringe privacy, it needs to take care that it is standing on the firm ground of public interest and that the means it employs to investigate are not fatally compromised either by the wrong choice of target or the manner in which the investigation is conducted.”

It concludes that it is difficult to balance freedom of speech with the right to privacy, but states: “Better by far, though, if those decisions are called correctly in newsrooms or editorial offices in the first instance.


“The courts are making it clear that they require media responsibility. They have given their steer. They should now be the place of last resort.”

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This calls for an inquiry – but not by the PCC

THE GUARDIAN – 13TH JULY

A few months ago the Media Standards Trust published a report raising concerns that the press was not accountable enough. Its findings were not accepted by the then chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher Meyer. But the Guardian’s revelations about the News of the World’s use of private investigators to hack into voicemails, if proved, would appear not just to confirm these concerns but to reinforce them.

The current system of press self-regulation – as constituted – is not able to investigate or resolve issues such as those uncovered by the Guardian, the MST report said. The PCC is set up, as defined by its articles of association, to mediate and conciliate complaints. It is not an investigative body. It does not have the powers, resources, or personnel to hold the type of detailed and lengthy inquiry that would be required to examine such claims.


This is not a criticism of the job done by the PCC. Those at the commission work extremely hard, with relatively little funding, to respond to complaints made by the public. But it is not realistic to expect a body with a budget of less than £2m a year (the Advertising Standards Authority, for instance, has a budget of around £8m), and a remit to deal with the public’s complaints, to launch large-scale investigations.

The PCC’s 2007 inquiry into subterfuge and newsgathering is a good example of this. Following the conviction of Clive Goodman, and evidence of extensive phone hacking and “fishing’ expeditions by many different newspapers (not just the NotW), the PCC announced an inquiry. Yet this inquiry was undermined even before it had began when Andy Coulson resigned as the tabloid’s editor. As a result, Coulson fell outside the PCC’s jurisdiction.”The commission had announced that it would make specific inquiries of the editor of the newspaper, but as [Coulson] has now resigned, this is no longer appropriate,” said Meyer.

Unsurprisingly, the PCC did not discover anything new from Coulson’s successor, Colin Myler, who had been editing a paper in New York. More worrying was the fact that the commission found out little more from Les Hinton, other than that Goodman had been acting alone, without the knowledge of others at newspaper. Nobody else at the NotW “knew that Messrs Goodman and Mulcaire were tapping phone messages for stories”, concluded the PCC’s report.

But if the practice of phone tapping was widely known about and accepted, as the Guardian’s revelations suggest, contradicting these findings, there clearly ought to be a proper investigation into the collection of personal information by newspapers – particularly the use of phone tapping. The question is, who should do it?

The PCC is reopening its inquiry, but given that its first investigation failed to uncover wrongdoing, there is no reason to believe that a second will be any more successful. Moreover, as already noted, the PCC’s articles of association constrain its freedom to act and it has limited money and personnel.

Any disproportionate action by parliament or the police, meanwhile, would raise understandable – and justifiable – concerns about the freedom of the press and a journalist’s right to protect the anonymity of his or her sources.

The press should, therefore, appoint a genuinely independent figure with wide-ranging powers to conduct a lengthy and detailed investigation. There is precedent for this within the media. In the wake of the Crowngate affair, for example, the BBC appointed Will Wyatt to look into the matter. Wyatt then published a report that was highly critical of the corporation.

By appointing an independent figure along those lines, the press would be able to achieve two things: prove to critics of self-regulation that the system can hold the press to account; and help to renew public confidence. The results of a YouGov poll last February showed that 70% of the public believe that there are “far too many instances of people’s privacy being invaded by newspaper journalists”. The Guardian’s scoop will only confirm this impression. An independent investigation could both demonstrate whether that impression is misguided, and provide a basis from which action can be taken.

· Martin Moore is director of the Media Standards Trust


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Masters of the dark arts – News of the World reporters used ‘toolkit’ of tricks

Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson

Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson at a party at Matthew Freud’s home in 2004. Photograph: Dave M Benett/Getty Images

Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times, was emphatic about what the Guardian’s revelations of illegal phone hacking revealed about the News of the World. “It was,” said Neil within hours of the story breaking, “a newsroom out of control”.

But former and current staff of the Sunday tabloid paint a very different picture. Though the full extent of former editor Andy Coulson’s knowledge of the use of underhand reporting techniques remains unclear, he has previously emphasised that he always took a detailed interest in the stories published in his paper during his editorship from 2003 to the beginning of 2007.

“We talk about our stories in great detail prior to publication,” Coulson told Press Gazette in 2005, following a series of scoops about the affairs of David Blunkett, David Beckham and Sven-Goran Eriksson. “I’m very lucky to have a great executive team here with so much experience. And the group of us – with the backbench, the news desk, the features desk – we spend a lot of time talking about stories, thinking them through and trying to second-guess any problems.”

Matt Wells: ‘We all knew it was going on’ Link to this audioLes Hinton, then the chief executive of News International, told the Commons culture committee: “I believe absolutely that Andy did not have knowledge of what was going on.”

Inquiries by the Guardian suggest that paying private investigators to blag personal data, hack into mobile phone voicemail accounts and undertake research that blurred the boundaries of legality were parts of a toolkit widely available to News of the World journalists under Coulson.

From senior news editors down, reporters and executives had knowledge of or directly employed methods which have become known as “the dark arts” to enable them to access private information about celebrities, sports stars and cabinet ministers to help fill the pages of the tabloid, current and former News of the World reporters have said. They have described how the use of private investigators was “well known” and authorised by senior management.

“When you wanted other things such as ex-directory landlines, mobile numbers, people’s addresses or people’s phone bills then you had to have it authorised – I won’t say by whom – because it cost money to get this information,” a former reporter said. “These people weren’t working for free.”

Another told BBC’s Newsnight programme that when Coulson was deputy editor of the News of the World: “Andy would be at the heart of the operation. He would be 10 feet away from where these [blagging and intercept] operations were coordinated. He didn’t operate in an ivory tower. Every morning at 11am he went in to conference and the provenance of these pieces was taken apart.”

Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who used to earn at least £2,000 a week from the News of the World until he was jailed for phone hacking in 2007 along with the paper’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, has told friends the paper’s exposé of Beckham’s reported affair with Rebecca Loos stemmed from him hacking into voicemail accounts.


“We had someone who could do medical records,” one former reporter said. “This blagger would call local GPs pretending to work at an accident and emergency department saying that a patient was in a critical condition and could they read out their medical records. Most GPs would do that.”

As the former editor of the Sun’s gossip column Bizarre, former employees said it was unlikely that Coulson would not be well-versed in most investigative methods.

Another former reporter said the culture in the newsroom was that “no questions are asked” in regard to methods of obtaining information. They added that Coulson must have been aware of the systemic use of private investigators by his staff. “It’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have been aware of that – he was a reporter too.”

The Guardian revealed on Wednesday that those hacking and blagging operations affected thousands of individuals including John Prescott, then deputy prime minister, and Tessa Jowell, currently minister for the Cabinet Office.

As the News of the World’s staff on the sixth floor of News International’s compound at Wapping, east London, today pressed on with preparations for Sunday’s paper in an “under fire” atmosphere, attention turned to the role of other members of Coulson’s team.

Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor who has worked with several News of the World editors including Piers Morgan, was said by some former journalists to have been responsible for arranging payments to private investigators, including Mulcaire. Kuttner resigned last Friday, before the story broke. News International refused to comment on Kuttner’s role in authorising payments for such information. It has always maintained that payments were for legitimate investigative research.

Another former journalist said Kuttner would have had to sign off all search invoices. Invoices would be submitted under the terms “investigation” or “political investigation” and would be paid for from a different budget over which Kuttner had authority.

It was unclear, the reporter said, whether Coulson would have known about the amounts of money being spent on investigators such as Mulcaire.

There was a degree of discretion about the use of the tactics, according to an investigation into the News of the World’s reporting tactics by the writer Peter Burden. He said only journalists working directly on stories, rather than section heads and editors, would have contact with Mulcaire and a tacit agreement existed that “those at the top of a paper’s management didn’t need to know how their reporters obtained information and the reporters never discussed it with their bosses”.

Burden asked one reporter whether they probed Mulcaire’s methods of getting the information. “I had my suspicions,” said the reporter. “But I never asked questions. No one did. You’d make the call to the PI and two hours later you’d have the information.”

According to Burden’s account, Greg Miskiw, the paper’s former assistant editor, is understood to have played a key role in establishing Mulcaire as a supplier of information to News Group.

Miskiw, described by reporters who worked with him as “ebullient and outgoing” and “News of the World through and through”, became friends with Mulcaire after encouraging him to set up a private investigation company to provide research services to his reporters. In September 2004 Mulcaire established Nine Consultancy. Miskiw left the paper in 2005. He could not be reached for comment today .

Once Mulcaire had established the company, his services were placed on offer to the rest of the newsroom, which was under considerable pressure from the editor to deliver scoops.

An example of Coulson’s ruthless approach to failure came in July 2006. When senior sports journalist Matt Driscoll failed to stand up a tip that Arsenal football club were planning to play in purple shirts, the story later appeared in the Sun. Coulson was furious and emailed deputy editor Neil Wallis saying that he wanted Driscoll “out as quickly and cheaply as possible”.

A junior journalist would have to wait a few years before a senior colleague passed him the investigator’s number, Burden said. “Reporters didn’t admit to their use of PIs when they talked among themselves in the newsroom, and when they did contact one, they did so as discreetly as possible” he wrote in his book, Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings.

A current journalist said phone hacking was no longer widespread: “There were a few bad apples who have screwed the paper really badly,” they said. Another said there was a siege atmosphere at the paper following this week’s revelations. “It is like you feel under fire and it is not a very nice place to be,” the journalist said. “We give people a hard time, so it’s probably fun for people to see us getting a hard time. If you don’t want to work for a controversial newspaper then don’t work here.”


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MPs to reopen investigation into tabloid phone tap claims

9 July 2009

PRESS GAZZETTE

The Commons culture, media and sport select committee is poised to reopen an inquiry into tabloid phone tapping following fresh claims by the Guardian newspaper.

Conservative MP John Whittingdale, who chairs the committee, will convene an urgent meeting today to discuss the allegations and will then summon newspaper editors to answer “serious” questions.

He spoke out after the Guardian claimed News Group Newspapers, which publishes the News of the World and The Sun, had paid out more than £1m to settle cases that threatened to reveal evidence of its journalists’ alleged involvement in telephone hacking.

MPs from all three parties including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and cabinet minister Tessa Jowell were among the targets of the alleged phone taps, The Guardian said.

The Guardian piece, by investigative journalist and Flat Earth News author Nick Davies, quoted sources saying police officers found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who had hacked into “thousands” of mobile phones.

Whittingdale told the Press Association: “My view is that this has raised very serious questions about the evidence given to us.


“There are a number of questions I would like to put to News International on the basis of what The Guardian has reported.”

‘Matter of urgency’

The committee would examine the matter “as a matter of urgency” at a scheduled meeting later today, he said.

“It may well be that we decide we wish to have somebody from News International to appear before us.”

He said he had seen no “direct evidence” that assurances previously given to the committee by the publisher on the matter had been untrue.

But he added: “If that is the case it does beg the question why News International have apparently paid huge sums of money in settlement of actions in the courts.

“That is a question I would wish to put to News International.”

Prescott said he wanted answers from the police over the claims they knew his phone was tapped by private investigators working for journalists.

“I find it staggering that there could be a list known to the police of people who had their phone tapped,” he said.

“I’m named as one of them, for such a criminal act not to be reported to me, and for action not to be taken against the people who have done it, reflects very badly on the police, and I want to know their answer.”

The Guardian said Andy Coulson, Conservative leader David Cameron’s director of communications, was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when journalists were using the private investigators.

Coulson resigned from the News of the World after royal editor Clive Goodman was sentenced to four months in prison in January 2007 for plotting to hack into telephone messages belonging to royal aides.

Settlements

The Guardian said the £1m paid out by News Group to secure secrecy concerned three out-of-court settlements in cases that would have shown the alleged methods being used.

One of the settlements, totalling £700,000 in legal costs and damages, involved legal action brought by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, the newspaper said.

In the Goodman trial, Taylor was revealed as one of the public figures whose phone messages were illegally intercepted by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Coulson said last night: “This story relates to an alleged payment made after I left the News of the World two and half years ago.

“I have no knowledge whatsoever of any settlement with Gordon Taylor.

 

“The Mulcaire case was investigated thoroughly by the police and by the Press Complaints Commission. I took full responsibility at the time for what happened on my watch but without my knowledge and resigned.”

Labour sought to use the allegations to question Coulson’s role with the Conservatives.

Former cabinet minister Geoff Hoon said: “It is hard to see how in these circumstances Andy Coulson can continue as David Cameron’s communications chief while such a cloud hangs over his reputation.

“David Cameron must make clear what action he intends to take on this matter.”

‘Out of control’

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “At the very least Andy Coulson was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and at worst he was personally implicated.

“Either way, a future prime minister cannot have someone who is involved in these sort of underhand tactics. The exact parallel is with Damian McBride.

“If it is more than a thousand (phone taps) it seems most unlikely to me to have been just one journalist. There needs to be a full investigation.”

A spokeswoman for News International, the parent company of News Group Newspapers, said: “News International feels it is inappropriate to comment at this time.”

Responding to the claims, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “The MPS carried out an investigation into the alleged unlawful interception of telephone calls.

“Officers liaised closely with the Crown Prosecution Service. Two people were charged and subsequently convicted and jailed. We are not prepared to comment further.”

PR agent Max Clifford is another whose phone was allegedly hacked into, according to the Guardian. He said the claims raised “lots of serious questions”.

Clifford – who works with some of Britain’s best known celebrities – told the BBC: “If these allegations prove to be true, then it’s something that an awful lot of people are going to very unhappy about.”

He also asked: “Why has this just come out? According to the Guardian, it’s come from police sources.

“If the police had this information, why didn’t they act on it? There are lots of questions that need to be answered, serious questions.”

Serious questions

Former home secretary Charles Clarke said that the allegations in The Guardian raised serious questions for News International, the Conservatives, and the police.

“I think it is outrageous. I think we do need action immediately,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“News International has to publish the full list of those that they have bugged, I think that David Cameron has to sack Andy Coulson because his denial is very narrow in the extreme. I think David Cameron himself has to be much clearer about the situation.

“I think that the Home Secretary should be asking the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for a full report about the police behaviour in this whole incident.”

Cameron, speaking outside his home in west London this morning, said: “It’s wrong for newspapers to breach people’s privacy with no justification.

“That is why Andy Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World two-and-a-half years ago.

“Of course I knew about that resignation before offering him the job. But I believe in giving people a second chance.

“As director of communications for the Conservatives he does an excellent job in a proper, upright way at all times.”

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