Breaking News by Paul Barry

Author:Paul Barry
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BIO000000, book
ISBN: 9781742699790
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2013-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

15

FAMILY FEUDS

‘Rebekah has fucked the company.’

Elisabeth Murdoch

It could have been just another hacking story. But the report by Nick Davies and Amelia Hill that went up on The Guardian’s website at 4.29 p.m. on Monday, 4 July 2011 created more havoc than anyone could ever have imagined.

Within a week, it had forced Britain’s biggest-selling Sunday tabloid to close and prompted a government inquiry that would recommend tough new regulations for the press. Within a fortnight, it had torpedoed News’s bid for BSkyB, caused London’s two top policemen to resign and forced Rupert Murdoch’s two most trusted executives to walk the plank; it had also wrecked James’s immediate chance of succeeding his father at the head of News Corporation and sullied the Murdochs’ reputation further. And that was just the start of it.

After years of no one caring what the News of the World had done, everyone suddenly rushed to condemn the paper. It was as if the floodgates had burst or the Berlin Wall had come tumbling down. There was an avalanche of publicity, a torrent of revelations and a mad scramble of people wanting to express their disgust.

The Guardian’s revelations concerned a thirteen-year-old Surrey schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who had gone missing on her way home from school in March 2002, wearing her blazer and grey skirt and carrying a backpack full of books. She had been missing for nearly six months until she was found murdered.

It had been a huge story for the tabloids at the time, and especially for the News of the World, then being edited by Rebekah Brooks, which had done everything it could to beat its rivals to the punch.

And, as The Guardian now sensationally reported, this ‘everything’ had included obtaining Milly’s mobile phone number and hacking into her private voicemails. Worse still, the News of the World’s reporters had apparently deleted some of her messages to make space for more, and had given her distraught parents hope that their missing daughter was still alive.

As Milly’s mother, Sally, explained, she had rung the teenager’s mobile several times a day in the desperate hope that she might answer it, but had soon started getting a message that the voicemail box was full. Then she had phoned again and was amazed to hear the teenager’s voice coming back at her. ‘I had got through to her personal voice message. I jumped out of my seat and screamed,’ she recalled. ‘I was just so elated to think that there was a possibility that Milly had accessed her voicemail and was therefore still alive…It is impossible to put into words what it felt like.’

‘She’s picked up her voicemails, Bob. She’s alive!’ she screamed to her husband. And soon she was excitedly telling friends the same thing: ‘She’s picked up her voicemails; she’s alive, she’s alive.’ But of course she wasn’t.

The revelation that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World carried an extraordinary emotional charge, almost as if its reporters had been in league with the poor girl’s killer.

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