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Phone tapping for journalism

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
The News of the World's publisher has said it will "refute" allegations of widespread illegal phone tapping.

News International's new chief executive Rebekah Wade said it welcomed the chance to appear before MPs on the Commons culture committee on 21 July.

The Metropolitan Police said it had started contacting people whose phones may have been hacked to warn them of what might have happened.

The Guardian claimed the Sunday paper used phone hacking to obtain stories.

Ms Wade, who is currently editor of the Sun but will take on the News International post in September, said News of the World editor Colin Myler and legal counsel Tom Crone would represent the company to answer questions about the allegations before the committee.

She said the company believed the Guardian coverage had substantially - and likely deliberately - misled the public.

In a letter to the culture, media and sport committee's chairman John Whittingdale, she said: "It [the Guardian] is rushing out high volumes of coverage and repeating allegations by such sources as unnamed Met officers implying that 'thousands' of individuals were the object of illegal phone hacking, an assertion that is roundly contradicted by the Met Assistant Commissioner's statement yesterday."

What do you think of these allegations of 'phone tapping'?

Personally, I think it is a bit of a farce, if you don't bother to change the default PIN of 0000 or 1234 on your voice mail, and use it for sensitive communications; it is pretty much akin to leaving either your front or back door open on any given day. People have gone to jail and indeed deserved to for phone tapping offensives but in my opinion this particular batch of allegations is an attack from one newspaper on another.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I would say all of the newspapers would happily tap whoever they could, they seem to have a morality when it suits them.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm enjoying the spectacle of journalists from The Grauniad attempting to take the journalistic moral highground, if ever such a thing existed. We saw this same pious, lofty tone when the paper was doing a series of reports about companies evading tax - whilst conveniently forgetting to mention the millions of pounds in corporation tax that the Guardian Media Group had itself managed to wriggle out of paying. The paper that gave to the world Michael White and Polly Toynbee - two gifts who just keep on giving - is taking the same patronising tone here and should simply be ignored.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    News of the Screws journalists were sent to prison for phone tapping. It was implied that they were rogue journalists, but you don't get to be royal correspondent for Rupert if you're a rogue journalist.

    It isn't some cock and bull story. News International journalists are proven, in a court of law, to use phone tapping to get stories.
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