The "phone-hacking" scandal continues

The developments in the News International "phone hacking" scandal are flying thick and fast.

• The Guardian reports that Prime Minister David Cameron "will announce on Wednesday that a judge will oversee a full-blown inquiry into the background to phone hacking and a panel that will examine media regulation." Nicholas Watt's article gives a fascinating look at the moment-by-moment politicking that led to the rare agreement across party lines in support of the inquiry.
• The Guardian reported that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was "targeted" by News International publications, including the Sunday Times and the Sun. The extent of the efforts to obtain personal information on Brown and his family is extraordinary. His bank account, legal file, family medical records, and tax paperwork apparently were accessed. There is even evidence that a serving police officer accessed the police national computer looking for information on Brown.
  
  Let's get specific about the "family medical records" so as to convey how appalling this behavior was. When the Browns' first child was born, only a small group of doctors and nurses knew she was dying of a brain hemorrhage. Nevertheless, the information got out to "news organizations" (the Guardian does not say which ones) and was published the weekend before she died.
  
  I don't know whether it was a News International paper that ran this story. I've heard, and I believe, that News International's competitors used similar tactics to get scoops. It doesn't matter to me whether a Murdoch tabloid was back of this story or not. Here's the bottom line as far as I'm concerned:
  
  No public interest was served by running that story. To violate the family's privacy in this way was indefensible and unspeakably vile.
  
  For its part, News International "denied criticism of its journalistic methods", claiming it used entirely lawful means to obtain information about Brown and his family. In particular, a Sun spokesman claimed the paper got word of Brown's son having cystic fibrosis (a story separate from the aforementioned one about the Brown's infant daughter) without ever seeing the boy's medical records.
  

  [The Sun spokesman said,] "The story The Sun ran about their son originated from a member of the public whose family has also experienced cystic fibrosis.
  
  "He came to The Sun with this information voluntarily because he wanted to highlight the cause of those afflicted by the disease. The individual has provided a written affidavit this afternoon to a lawyer confirming this."
  
  The newspaper said it had contacted "colleagues" of Mr Brown before publishing the story and that they had given a reaction which "indicated his consent" to it.
  

  Assuming News International hasn't found someone willing to commit perjury, an affidavit would seem to rule out violation of medical records. Contacting "colleagues" to obtain a secondhand "consent" from Brown to run the story, however, sounds distinctly less believable and more likely to be a(nother) lie.
• News Corp.'s proposed acquisition of broadcaster BSkyB is on hold for at least a few months, the bid having been referred to the UK's Competition Commission by the UK's Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Hunt had been widely criticized for letting the bid slide through without much questioning, presumably with the encouragement of Prime Minister David Cameron. However, Hunt did not unilaterally decide to refer the bid: rather, his hand was forced when News Corp. elected not to take a step required for its original bid to be approved (namely, to spin off Sky News).
• The Murdochs, Rupert and his son James, along with former editor Rebekah Brooks, have been invited to appear before a Parliamentary committee next week, on Tuesday.
  

  Tom Watson - a Labour member of the committee who has led a campaign against phone hacking - told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "We want to ask Rebekah Brooks about her knowledge of payments to the police, we'd like to ask James Murdoch about how he authorised payments to silences [sic] Gordon Taylor and I think we'd like to ask Rupert Murdoch, he might be the most powerful media oligarch on the planet, I think he owes Mr and Mrs Dowler an apology."
  
  Mr Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, received an out-of-court settlement over claims his phone was hacked in April 2008. James Murdoch said last week he regretted having approved out-of-court settlements when he did not have "a complete picture".
  
  He also said the paper had "made statements to Parliament without being in the full possession of the facts".
  

  The invitation is apparently not a legal summons from the Culture, Media and Sport committee, but rather a "polite request." It's unknown whether any of the three will accept, though Rupert Murdoch is in the UK to take charge of the News International crisis. As a British citizen, Brooks can be compelled to appear; it's not clear whether the same holds true for the Murdochs, who are U.S. citizens.
  
  During an appearance before the same committee in 2003, while editor of the News International paper the Sun, Brooks told members, "We have paid the police for information in the past." While I doubt any such bombshell will be dropped this time (I'm sure she'll be surrounded by News Corp. lawyers and PR flacks), hope springs eternal.
• The Metropolitan Police have accused News International of thwarting the initial police investigation into illegal voicemail access accusations against News of the World. That initial investigation started in 2005, but:
  

  Ex-Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said there was "prevarication and what we now know to be lies".
  
  Assistant Commissioner John Yates said the firm [News International] "appears to have failed to co-operate" during his review of the case.
  

  According to the Guardian, members of Parliament "derided the evidence" Yates provided. Committee chair Keith Vaz said he and his fellow committee members found Yates' testimony "unconvincing." It must be admitted that Yates had a lot to explain:
  

  ... Yates, first to appear before MPs, was under huge pressure to explain why, in July 2009, after the Guardian alleged there were thousands more victims of the illegal practice, he did not order a fresh investigation after being asked to review the case by the Met[ropolitan Police] commissioner.
  
  Yates, once strongly tipped as a future commissioner himself, admitted his examination of the case was limited to talking to the original senior investigating officer – and reviewing legal advice.
  

  And it must be admitted that Yates didn't have a great explanation.
  
  It's worth remembering that the police have barely started the related investigation into bribes paid by News International to police officers. In other words, police heads will probably roll even if Clarke and Yates are right about News International's misdeeds.
• The BBC's Robert Peston reported that a member of the Royal Protection Service was paid "for the contact details of senior members of the royal family, their friends and their relations." The evidence is in one of the News of the World emails found by News International in 2007 but only turned over to police on 20 June 2011.
  
  Peston's motives have been called into question by the Daily Mail. Michael Seamark's article claims:
  

  Media commentators have highlighted the close personal and formerly professional relationship between Mr Peston and Will Lewis, the very senior News International troubleshooter, amid suggestions that the BBC man is being used by the Murdoch machine.
  

  The article goes on to list other Peston-Murdoch connections, including an appearance by Peston at a party hosted by Elisabeth Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch's daughter) and her husband at the beginning of July at which Peston "was huddled together with Rebekah Brooks, his friend Mr Lewis, and their boss James Murdoch for a good part of the evening."
  
  Seamark's article is gossipy by American standards but makes some interesting points. A list of Peston "scoops" and their impact shows a trend toward making Andy Coulson the focus of scrutiny, with a secondary effect being to let targets of police interest know in advance.
  
  The Independent's Ian Burrell also wrote a piece along roughly the same lines, though with different details and a more serious tone. Burrell's article provides more context about the BBC's sometimes fractious relationship with News Corp. Burrell also notes that Peston's manager, Jeremy Hillman, stands behind him.
  
  Peston could indeed be in cahoots with News Corp., or he could be naive about the side effects of his scoops, or his critics could be totally off base. I can't tell.
• From the "sauce for the goose" department, the New York Times reports:
  

  Shortly after Scotland Yard began its initial criminal inquiry of phone hacking by The News of the World in 2006, five senior police investigators discovered that their own cellphone messages had been targeted by the tabloid and had most likely been listened to.
  

  It's not a nice revelation, but at this point it's hardly a surprising one.
  
  That piece, by the way, dovetails nicely with another NYT article, "Cozy Ties Mark Newspaper’s Dealings With Scotland Yard".
• Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has issued a statement on the phone-hacking scandal in his capacity as chair of the Senate Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee. The statement is short, merely encouraging "the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated." As a couple of British reports have noted, Rockefeller doesn't claim to have any information that such violations have occurred in the U.S. That makes it unlikely that any federal agency is going to step up in response.
  
  I suppose it's good news that somebody in D.C. is upset by the scandal, but I'd say Americans' privacy is at far greater risk from the N.S.A.'s extensive and unsupervised domestic intelligence-gathering and the T.S.A.'s extensive and seemingly unsupervised baggage and passenger inspection activities, all in the name of counterterrorism. I would bet News Corp.'s spying is relatively restrained by comparison, and isn't that a sad commentary on our nation?
• Some News Corp. shareholders are weighing in and they're not happy, according to The Guardian.
  

  The shareholder group, which includes banks and pension funds, accused Murdoch of "rampant nepotism" and using News Corp resources for "his own personal and political objectives".
  
  The institutional shareholders, led by the Amalgamated Bank, said it was "inconceivable" that Murdoch would not have been aware of rampant phone hacking at the News of the World.
  

  The protesting shareholders accuse the News Corp. board of lacking the independence needed to provide proper oversight of the company, due in no small part to Rupert Murdoch's habit of nominating family members to the board. This specific protest is part of a lawsuit objecting to his daughter Elisabeth's appointment to the board after News Corp. acquired her production company, Shine Group.
  
  For perspective, a Daily Mail article claims:
  

  More than £4.3billion has been wiped off the value of the company [News Corp.] since last week due to fears that fallout from the phone-hacking investigation at News International will infect other parts of Mr Murdoch’s business.
  

  Wow.
• The BBC's Paul Mason thinks "the network" (of social media and non-Murdoch-controlled press outlets) has defeated "the hierarchy" (of the tightly controlled Murdoch press empire). Mason's opinion piece is less convincing on rereading, but he makes some good points about the chimerical power of the media. Simon Jenkins in The Guardian similarly argues that the power of the press is overrated by politicians: "Research has shown the political power of newspapers to be grossly exaggerated, a bluff perpetrated by editors and accepted only by timid politicians." Jenkins, though, thinks "politicians will cringe again," as they have after past media overreaching.
• David Carr's observations are in a "Media Equation" column, "A Tabloid Shame, Exposed by Earnest Rivals". His take is a trifle optimistic, which is surprising for Carr.
  

  In truth, a kind of British Spring is under way, now that the News Corporation’s tidy system of punishment and reward has crumbled.
  

  It's a trifle early to draw the moral, especially when the 9,000 lb. elephant in the room -- the British public's appetite for what the News of the World dished up, week after week -- appears unchanged. The audience always deserves a lot of blame in scandals like this one.

Various publications have whole sections of their Web sites dedicated to the phone-hacking story.

• BBC
• The Guardian
• Not so much a section as an FAQ, courtesy of the Independent; it includes basic questions that you likely would have if you knew little but the headlines, plus a glossary of terms like "hacking" and "blagging" (a term I had never encountered before this scandal)
• The (New York) Times Topic page