- Newton has already been accused of alleged phone hacking at her main paper, The Sun.
- The controversial Editor has been repeatedly named as an alleged phone hacker in The High Court.
- A claim which her company News Group Newspapers denies.
- However, analysis of articles that she wrote at the Daily Mail, before moving to The Sun, reveal suspicious signs.
- They contain repeated references to phone calls and highly private data.
- Lawyers often describe such traits as the ‘classic hallmarks of unlawful information gathering.’
THE SUN’S Editor-in-Chief has written suspicious stories at more than one Fleet Street newspaper, Byline Investigates can reveal.
Victoria Newton has already been accused of alleged phone hacking at her current paper, The Sun, in the High Court.
But Byline Investigates has found that the controversial journalist wrote suspicious stories at her previous paper – the Daily Mail.
Some of her stories contain repeated references to phone calls, which media lawyers often characterise as a ‘classic hallmark of phone hacking or related unlawful information gathering.’
The Mail has always denied phone hacking and its own Editor-in-chief Paul Dacre told the Leveson Inquiry that the practise never went on at his paper. But Victoria Newton’s journalism under his editorship may prove otherwise.
Newton has been named numerous times in court proceedings for allegedly illegally tasking private investigators when she was a Sun showbiz columnist.
Like Paul Dacre, the Murdoch company, which owns The Sun, has denied any alleged illegality by Ms Newton and has not admitted any wrongdoing at The Sun.
But before she worked on the Bizarre page of The Sun, Newton worked at the Daily Mail, during an earlier part of her career.
Even though the stint was short – around nine months – numerous articles have been found to contain references to phone calls, alongside suspicious high levels of private information.
These are often considered by lawyers dealing with hacking cases to be derived from listening to voicemails or tasking private investigators to ‘pull’ the itemised phone bills of targets.
The apparent victims of Newton’s suspicious stories include actress and model Liz Hurley and her former partner Steve Bing, who took his own life in June this year.
The names of actress Catherine Zeta Jones and her ex John Leslie appeared in one story as did that of James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan and his son Sean.
Stay tuned for more names and more revelations in our next instalment of our MAILBOMB series.
