Hacking inquiry – Hacked off

by Brian Cathcart The New Yorker’s recent long profile of the Daily Mail contained a passing reference to something that may be worthy of a little more attention than it has received. Noting that the editor of the Mail on Sunday, Peter Wright, had stepped down, writer Lauren Collins observed: “His replacement, Geordie Greig, is [...]

Nobody wants to fight a national newspaper for two years to prove libel. But that is exactly what happened after Juliet Shaw, then a freelance PR consultant, was approached to appear in a Daily Mail article on women moving from city life to the country. Looking for a fresh start, Juliet had moved back to Walney [...]

A lawyer and a reporter working at The Times misled the High Court over the unmasking of an anonymous blogger, the Leveson Inquiry has heard. Alastair Brett, in-house lawyer for Times Newspapers Limited until 2010, told the inquiry how information that reporter Patrick Foster had illegally hacked into the email account of DC Richard Horton, [...]

The investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence could have been jeopardised by Daily Mail reporting, a senior police officer has claimed at Leveson Inquiry. DCI Clive Driscoll, the senior investigation officer on Operation Fishpool, a 2006 review of the investigation, said leaks reported by the Mail had a negative impact on the progress of [...]

The phone hacking scandal would not have come to light without unofficial meetings between police officers and the press, the journalist responsible for breaking the story has said. Nick Davies, who writes for the Guardian, told the Leveson Inquiry the police should not be prevented from speaking to journalists without authorisation from press officers, and [...]

by Brian Cathcart What does it take to get a corporate scandal on to the front pages of the mass-circulation papers? Business, after all, is abstract and dull, and you don’t sell tabloids with abstract and dull. What you need, by and large, is a bogey-man, a human lightning rod for outrage and mockery. Think [...]