By Graham Johnson
Editor, Byline Investigates
FIFTY serving or former Rupert Murdoch journalists – many very senior – allegedly used a private investigator to unlawfully gather information, the High Court in London has heard.
Many of those said to have used the services of Steve Whittamore, who was convicted of data theft in 2005, have gone on to become some of the most powerful people in the British media landscape.
© New European / Facebook
The list includes Rebekah Brooks, the current chief executive (CEO) of Murdoch’s British publishing arm News UK, and serving Sun on Sunday editor Victoria Newton (pictured in header image, centre and far right respectively).
Newton-Dunn is among Rupert Murdoch’s most important UK journalists as incumbent Political Editor of The Sun. The documents suggest he used Whittamore while in his previous employment as a reporter for tabloid rival, The Mirror
© Tom Newton Dunn/ Twitter
Also named are former editor of The Sun Dominic Mohan, and the paper’s former showbiz reporter James Scott, who today run some of the most influential public relations businesses in the country.
The names were revealed in a witness statement deployed in a court hearing on behalf of people suing Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) for phone hacking and unlawful news-gathering.
Others listed have gone on to senior jobs in broadcast media and corporate public affairs. A trial of the facts in the current round of claims is scheduled at the High Court for October.
The journalists include some from other Fleet Street papers, such as the Daily Express and The Mail on Sunday, who either had worked, or went on to work, at The Sun or News of the World.
The former Sun showbiz reporter went on to work for tabloid rivals The Mirror, and Sunday Mirror, before becoming editor of The People. Scott was arrested – but never charged – on suspicion of phone hacking in 2013. Today he runs Ginger Communications, which promotes blue chips firms like M&S, Sky, and Heinz
© PR Week/ GingerComms
NGN denies phone hacking, and does not admit using private investigators to illegally ‘blag’ phone billing data and medical records at The Sun, and on some parts of the News of the World.
According to court documents, the names were contained in hand-written notebooks used by Whittamore to record the jobs journalists allegedly commissioned from him.
In April 2005, Whittamore appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court and pleaded guilty to procuring confidential police data from the police national computer to sell to various newspapers. The News of the World was named in court as one of the buyers of this information.
His books were seized by investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in raids on Whittamore’s business JJ Services in Hampshire in 2003 in an operation called ‘Motorman’.
He recorded his taskings in colour-coded pads, with each newspaper group having a different colour. Red, for example, was used for Mirror Group Newspapes (MGN) titles.
Johnson is one of very few on the list to admit to using Whittamore for illegal enquiries. The former tabloid investigator, who turned phone hacking whistle-blower in 2013, told in his 2012 book Hack how illegal ‘blagging’ was rife on Fleet Street
© BBC
Whittamore’s ‘Blue Book’ contained jobs allegedly carried out between 2001 and 2003 for The News of the World and The Sun. Its existence and content have been known about for many years – and were discussed by the Leveson Inquiry in 2011/12.
Former Sun and News of the World journalist Dave Goddard is now a football agent and PR. His company Deus claims to represent players in England, Scotland, France, Holland, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Russia
© Dave Goddard/ Tangerine PR
However, in the recent court case it was revealed – for the first time – that the ICO was in possession of four more books recording taskings, between 1995 and 2001 which precede those covered by the Blue Book, by journalists at several newspaper groups.
The ICO disclosure included further notebooks – Yellow and Green – previously known to include taskings mainly from Associated Newspapers, owner of the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail (and former owner of the London Evening Standard), and the Express Group.
Former News of the World associate editor Taylor is today Head of Media Management at PHA, the city PR firm founded by Phil Hall, the journalist who edited the NotW in the late nineties, when use of PIs for illegal inquiries is said have mushroomed
© PHA
The ICO disclosure also revealed a previously unrecorded Whittamore notebook – Orange – dating from approximately 1997 to 1999, and mainly covering requests from reporters for Mirror Group, Express Group, and Associated Newspapers.
The legal document states: “The same pattern of unlawful activity, well known from the original Blue Book and admitted to in Mr Whittamore’s witness statement, is shown in this book.”
It added: “Based on a preliminary analysis, and by way of example, the following journalists feature in the Orange, Red, Yellow and Green books, or are named on invoices submitted by JJ Services, and went on to work for The Sun and News of the World, often in senior roles.”
The names emerged as claimants’ lawyers argued NGN was failing in its duty to disclose information on all the private investigators it employed and the tasks they were commissioned to carry out.
The former associate editor of The Sun is today CEO of TouchCast, a New York-based company involved in smart video technology for blue chip clients including Accenture, Unilever, Pfizer, WPP and the BBC
© Paul Field/ Free Word
As a result, the claimants were granted a court order requiring NGN to disclose information relating to the use of PIs and blaggers before July 1998, as well as afterwards.
NGN unsuccessfully argued it would cost too much to disclose the new documents – having already handed 25,000 relating to the use of PIs and alleged blaggers.
Lawyer Roger Best, for NGN, had said the existence of the document store was already in the public domain and that the claimants could and should have asked for more disclosure from it earlier.
The case continues…
* This article was updated 09/07/18
Agreed Clarification by Byline Media Holdings Limited
“On 8 July 2018 we published an article titled: “NAMED: 50 ‘Murdoch’ journalists linked to ‘unlawful’ news-gathering, court hears” in which we quoted from an interlocutory witness statement given on behalf of the claimants in the long-running Mobile Telephone Voicemail Interception Litigation proceedings against News Group Newspapers before the High Court. In that article, we named a number of the journalists that were mentioned in the witness statement, including Dennis Rice, who is historically former journalist but now works as a fully qualified Gestalt counsellor.
Mr Rice since written to us to say that the witness statement was inaccurate of him and that the publication of the allegations from the witness statement has adversely affected him. We apologise to Mr Rice for any anxiety or distress that this has caused, without any admission of liability, and have agreed to remove his name and the allegations concerned from the article. The article in question was a report of the proceedings and the words causing Mr Rice distress were direct quotes from the witness statement which Mr Rice disputes and says are factually inaccurate and defamatory of him. These allegations were made in an interlocutory witness statement but they have never been tested by court at trial; Mr Rice has since obtained the underlying documents upon which the allegations were based from the Information Commissioner’s Office and tells us that they show that what has been alleged in relation to him is incorrect. Whilst the proceedings are current, they relate to events from 20 years ago and so we have taken the decision to remove those words from the story to avoid any further distress to Mr Rice.”
This article was updated 08/09/21 and on 09/09/21