The arrest of four Sun journalists threatens to open a fresh phase of the scandal surrounding News International
On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.
This may be the moment when the scandal that closed the NoW finally started to pose a potential threat to at least one of Murdoch’s three other UK newspaper titles: the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.
The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.
Nothing is certain. No one has been convicted of anything. The four who were arrested on Saturday – like the 25 others before them – have not even been charged with any offence. But behind the scenes, something very significant has changed at News International.
Under enormous legal and political pressure, Murdoch has ordered that the police be given everything they need. Whereas Scotland Yard began their inquiry a year ago with nothing much more than the heap of scruffy paperwork seized from the NoW’s private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, Murdoch’s Management and Standards Committee has now handed them what may be the largest cache of evidence ever gathered by a police operation in this country, including the material that led to Saturday’s arrests. …
The role of the former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks is expected to come under fresh scrutiny after four of the paper's current and former journalists were arrested on Saturday in connection with an investigation into corrupt payments to police.
Detectives with Operation Elveden, the Metropolitan Police's investigation into illegal payments to officers, raided the Sun's offices in Wapping, east London, morning after receiving information from News Corp, the parent company of News International, which owns the paper. A serving police officer in the Met's Territorial Policing command was also arrested at his place of work and questioned at a police station.
In a statement, News Corp said: "Metropolitan Police Service officers from Operation Elveden arrested four current and former employees from the Sun newspaper. Searches have also taken place at the homes and offices of those arrested. News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated."
It is understood that staff and management at the Sun had no warning of the operation. The four Sun journalists arrested were Mike Sullivan, the paper's crime editor; the former managing editor, Graham Dudman; an executive editor, Fergus Shanahan; and Chris Pharo, a news desk executive. They all worked under Brooks, who edited the Sun from January 2003 to September 2009, when she became chief executive of News International. ...
Detectives with Operation Elveden, the Metropolitan Police's investigation into illegal payments to officers, raided the Sun's offices in Wapping, east London, morning after receiving information from News Corp, the parent company of News International, which owns the paper. A serving police officer in the Met's Territorial Policing command was also arrested at his place of work and questioned at a police station.
In a statement, News Corp said: "Metropolitan Police Service officers from Operation Elveden arrested four current and former employees from the Sun newspaper. Searches have also taken place at the homes and offices of those arrested. News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated."
It is understood that staff and management at the Sun had no warning of the operation. The four Sun journalists arrested were Mike Sullivan, the paper's crime editor; the former managing editor, Graham Dudman; an executive editor, Fergus Shanahan; and Chris Pharo, a news desk executive. They all worked under Brooks, who edited the Sun from January 2003 to September 2009, when she became chief executive of News International. ...
Despite the repetition of denials, an accumulation of horror stories of tabloid practices has emerged
"Oh no I didn't!" "Oh yes you did!" As good as any Christmas pantomime, the Leveson inquiry into tabloid morals may well have been intended, as its critics allege, to distract attention from the prime minister's own ill-advised links with Rupert Murdoch.
But nevertheless, in the first month of what is due to be a long London run in courtroom 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Leveson mostly succeeded in laying on a gripping show. There have been 63 live performers so far.
This is despite the absence for legal reasons of key testimony, including from the News of the World executive responsible for hacking the phone of the murdered Milly Dowler.
Piers Morgan, one-time Mirror editor, proved one of the more theatrical of the oh-no-I-didn't brigade. He gave curt and sulky answers, and tried to blame Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife for a voicemail tape he himself once boasted of hearing. Morgan also lashed out at the Guardian's reporters who unearthed the present scandal, calling them the sanctimonious "bishops of Fleet Street".
His fellow editor Colin Myler, who presided over four years of cover-up at the late News of the World, did at least have the grace to blurt out "I apologise" when accused of deceiving the Press Complaints Commission.
But the overall picture Myler sought to paint was of a saintly process of reform, worthy of any bishop, in which the sinners had long been swept away, and he no longer tolerated misbehaviour.
When he made this claim, "Oh yes you did!" might have been heard at the back of the hall. For he was at once contradicted by a large ex-policeman, Derek Webb.
Nicknamed, rather improbably, the Silent Shadow, Webb's job at the News of the World was to follow people about, the hearing was told. When it became too hot to employ him as a private detective, he explained on oath, he was simply told to get a National Union of Journalists card. This happened under the supposedly reforming editorship of Myler.
The inquiry's lawyers asked Webb whether anything changed at all at the NoW after the new broom succeeded the disgraced former editor Andy Coulson. Webb replied succinctly: "Nothing." ...
"Oh no I didn't!" "Oh yes you did!" As good as any Christmas pantomime, the Leveson inquiry into tabloid morals may well have been intended, as its critics allege, to distract attention from the prime minister's own ill-advised links with Rupert Murdoch.
But nevertheless, in the first month of what is due to be a long London run in courtroom 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Leveson mostly succeeded in laying on a gripping show. There have been 63 live performers so far.
This is despite the absence for legal reasons of key testimony, including from the News of the World executive responsible for hacking the phone of the murdered Milly Dowler.
Piers Morgan, one-time Mirror editor, proved one of the more theatrical of the oh-no-I-didn't brigade. He gave curt and sulky answers, and tried to blame Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife for a voicemail tape he himself once boasted of hearing. Morgan also lashed out at the Guardian's reporters who unearthed the present scandal, calling them the sanctimonious "bishops of Fleet Street".
His fellow editor Colin Myler, who presided over four years of cover-up at the late News of the World, did at least have the grace to blurt out "I apologise" when accused of deceiving the Press Complaints Commission.
But the overall picture Myler sought to paint was of a saintly process of reform, worthy of any bishop, in which the sinners had long been swept away, and he no longer tolerated misbehaviour.
When he made this claim, "Oh yes you did!" might have been heard at the back of the hall. For he was at once contradicted by a large ex-policeman, Derek Webb.
Nicknamed, rather improbably, the Silent Shadow, Webb's job at the News of the World was to follow people about, the hearing was told. When it became too hot to employ him as a private detective, he explained on oath, he was simply told to get a National Union of Journalists card. This happened under the supposedly reforming editorship of Myler.
The inquiry's lawyers asked Webb whether anything changed at all at the NoW after the new broom succeeded the disgraced former editor Andy Coulson. Webb replied succinctly: "Nothing." ...