Phone-hacking charges filed

I have to admit, I kind of lost interest in the British phone-hacking scandal from last year. While I delighted in seeing Murdoch's minions get hauled over the coals in the press, the actual legal fallout was excruciatingly slow in coming.

The first drops have finally hit.

Here's the Guardian's take.

Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, who both edited the News of the World, were among eight people charged with 19 counts of conspiracy over the phone hacking scandal, with prosecutors alleging that the tabloid also targeted Labour cabinet ministers and celebrities – including at least one person associated with the Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Coulson served as Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications for a time. Brooks was "Rupert Murdoch's closest confidante in London".

The charges all derive from the illegal interception of communications, or, to use the popular but irritating phrase, "phone hacking". Be it remembered, however, that there is a separate investigation into whether News International employees made illegal payments to Scotland Yard officers for information. That investigation, "Operation Elveden", appears to be still active; according to the BBC two journalists were questioned on 11 July 2012, bringing the total number of journalists "formally arrested" to date to thirty-four.

This is getting juicy.

More coverage of the charges filed against Coulson and Brooks is available in the Independent, the BBC, and for a more tabloid take on things, the Daily Mirror. The BBC has a good, very brief timeline of the key developments in the case in a separate table that is part of each of its articles on the scandal.

(To see more of my entries on this subject, click on the keyword "journalism" at the end of this post and look for the July 2011 entries with "phone-hacking" in the title. A minor but intriguing side development occurred in September 2011, too.)