Murdoch's World (25 page)

The government scrambled to find a fair-minded person to take Cable's place. Who could fulfill the delicate role?

Within the hour, Osborne texted back to Hunt: “I hope you like our solution.”

Cable was taken off the case; Prime Minister Cameron announced Hunt would judge the BSkyB deal himself.

Two days later, on December 23,
the younger Murdoch dined with the Camerons and several other couples, an event arranged and hosted by Rebekah Brooks. Truly, the November and December meals were social affairs, Murdoch later testified.

CABLE CAME in for widespread condemnation. But he had been assigned an impossible task. His apparent prejudice against the Murdochs was matched by Hunt's advocacy. All government ministers are also elected members of Parliament, and are partisan political figures. Hunt was popular with rank-and-file Tory MPs, a telegenic former entrepreneur who had set up a charity to benefit Africans. He was exactly
the fresh face Conservatives wanted to put forward under
Cameron. Yet he was also a child of privilege, the son of a knighted admiral, and a contemporary of the prime minister and London mayor Boris Johnson at Oxford. In the words of the British Press Association, he was considered a pair of safe hands.

This time around, however, those hands were not altogether steady. He came off as eager to a fault. (The playwright Alan Bennett wrote, “Jeremy Hunt has
the look of an estate agent waiting to show someone a property.”)

Hunt's team worked with Michel to make sure there were no surprises for either Murdoch or Hunt. One matter had to be resolved. Earlier the previous year, the
Guardian
had revealed that London's leading celebrity PR executive Max Clifford had been paid £1 million to drop his own phone hacking claim against
News of the World
. Lawyers signed up celebrities and other prominent figures who believed they had been targeted by the tabloid and demanded that police hand over information. By fall 2010, lawyers for the actress Sienna Miller had uncovered evidence that they said implicated the newspaper in widespread hacking. James Murdoch later said that was the first moment he learned of credible evidence of the practice's reach at his paper.
Just before Christmas, the paper suspended its assistant editor for news, Ian Edmondson.

The public had yet again paid scant notice. But the presence of Andrew Coulson at 10 Downing Street underscored Prime Minister Cameron's links to Murdoch and the
News of the World
. That same day, James Murdoch, Michel, his adviser Matt Anderson, and another aide met with Hunt and his inner circle.
According to Michel's minutes, Hunt flagged that he was likely to accept legal advice to refer the purchase of BSkyB to the Competition Commission. But he stressed that he could be swayed by evidence that any change in the number of independent news sources in the UK caused by the takeover would not materially affect the public interest. Hunt pushed Murdoch not to submit anew the arguments made to OfCom—but to make his case for why its conclusions were mistaken.

News Corp, in response, stressed that Hunt had the power to accept remedies before any such referral. The two sides were in sync, playing in tune and in tempo.

Pressure mounted on Coulson and Cameron.
Michel texted Gabby Bertin, another press aide for the prime minister. “Good support for andy by the boss on R4 [Radio 4]. Good stuff. Keep the pressure guys! XX”

On January 23, Michel emailed James Murdoch, clearly informed about Hunt's intentions on BSkyB, though they were not yet public. The company had privately promised an “undertaking in lieu” (UIL in government jargon) to spin off Sky News, so judgment over news coverage for Sky would be handled by a different corporation than news coverage for News Corp's newspapers. That remedy could address concerns about media concentration and was an easy concession to make, given the modest size of Sky News (it had just 5 percent of the TV news audience) and modest financial importance. Hunt was moving to accept but would delay announcing any decision,
allowing News Corp to arrange its ducks in a row.

Hunt “still wants to stick to the following plan,” Michel wrote. “His view is that once he announces publicly he has a strong UIL, it's almost game over for the opposition. He very specifically said he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM [James Rupert (Jacob) Murdoch] to understand he needs to build some political cover on the process.” Michel continued, “He [Hunt] said we would get there at the end and he shared our objectives.”

Michel sent this MRI of Hunt's thinking forty-eight hours before the minister was supposed to reveal his position in the House of Commons. The next day, Michel followed with another email, this one even more breathless, to Murdoch.

“Confidential: Managed to get some infos on the plans for tomorrow (although absolutely illegal!). Press statement at 7.30am . . . Lots of legal issues around the statement so he has tried to get a version
which helps us . . . JH will announce . . . that he wishes to look at any undertakings that have the potential to prevent the potential threats of media plurality.”

As the
Guardian
later noted, Michel had provided his company's chairman with “the wording of Hunt's crucial, and market-sensitive, official statement, due to be delivered the next day.” Hunt would later claim a top aide, Adam Smith, had shared the material without approval.

Hunt's formal announcement came on January 25, and it was a boon to the Murdochs.

The next day, Ian Edmondson's suspension, linked to hacking, was reported by rival papers. Coulson resigned from government, likewise reiterating his innocence, but adding, “When the spokesman needs a spokesman, it's time to move on.” Murdoch critic and Labor MP Tom Watson got in a sharp dig:
“This is the second job that Andy Coulson has resigned from for something he claims to know nothing about.”

The hacking scandal had slipped inside 10 Downing Street.

HUNT AND his colleagues were constantly monitoring perceptions; one aide warned him against meeting with Andy Coulson for a drink: “Think it
might be best to wait till news corp process is over,” special adviser Sue Beeby wrote. “He's so closely linked to them that if you were seen it wouldn't look great. I'm sure he would understand.”

David Cameron decided to keep links to the former PR aide and Murdoch editor, though he did not advertise them.
Coulson dined with him at Chequers and stayed the night. But the prime minister's own advisers remained wary. On March 3, 2011, Craig Oliver, who replaced Coulson as Cameron's top PR official, sent Hunt a note: “View emerging
that Murdoch will pull a fast one on selling Sky News—needs assurances that won't happen.” Hunt told the press adviser he was confident the Murdochs would keep their word and he would convey that message in public.

Hunt had received the OfCom conclusions more than two months earlier, on New Year's Eve, the deadline initially requested by Cable.

But Hunt waited until March 3 to announce them. The independent media regulator OfCom had accepted News Corp's UIL as addressing the plurality of voices presenting news coverage, though not market concentration issues. But Hunt said a ruling of the European Commission had handled the concentration concerns back in December, and therefore no longer mattered. He spoke for twelve minutes on the floor of the House of Commons, and announced he had decided not to refer the decision to the British Competition Commission.

“
You were great at the Commons today,” Michel texted from his iPhone. A few days and texts later, Hunt responded, “Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have a coffee like the old days!”

The parties, the fund-raising, the dinners, the meetings, the personal blandishments, all the connections before the scandal would surely accrue to News Corp's benefit. But the regulatory review would take months. And the longer the process stretched out, the more it could trip up News Corp.

News of the World
won a break when
the murder case against its former investigator Jonathan Rees fell apart in March 2011. That was not due to a lack of evidence, but rather a surfeit: Rees's defense lawyers would be unable to review adequately 750,000 pages going back two dozen years to ensure a fair trial. (The
Guardian
hinted that the past corruption of police officers had compromised prosecutors' ability to get a conviction. Rees maintained his innocence throughout.)

But the next month incurred more damaging disclosures.
News International admitted phone hacking at
News of the World
from 2004
through 2006 involved more people than previously had been believed. The company offered what it called “unreserved apologies” and money for a limited number of cases. They were the famous, wealthy, people. Labour MPs, who could have scored damaging points against News Corp and their Tory friends in government, held back in Parliament. Most were shackled or shamed by their own party's links to the Murdochs and News International. It was a land mine but did not trigger right away.

That came a few days later, when the Murdochs' leading Sunday tabloid was found to have hacked into the phone of a dead girl.

13

THE YARD

THE EXPLOSIVE CHARGES UNLEASHED BY the blockbuster
Guardian
piece were not limited to hacking. They also placed Murdoch's tabloid papers at the center of a related corruption scandal that not only threatened his journalists but wreaked great damage at Scotland Yard.

Few of the illegal acts taken by the tabloids could have been accomplished without the active involvement of the police throughout the ranks. Similarly, the reporters and editors and their investigators practicing journalism in the shadows could never have gotten away with hacking “on an industrial scale” had senior
police officials not decided that allegations of wrongdoing did not merit pursuit, sometimes as they were receiving gifts from News International executives.

Such concerns had surfaced years earlier. Back in 2003, when she was still editor of the
Sun
, Rebekah Brooks testified before a parliamentary committee holding hearings about the press and privacy. Labour MP Chris
Bryant asked Brooks whether her newspaper—whether
she
—had ever paid the police for information. Brooks replied,
“We have paid the police for information in the past, yes.”

Asked whether she would do it again in the future, Brooks said, “It depends,” prompting an interruption by her friend and fellow witness Andrew Coulson.

“We operate within the code and within the law, and if there's a clear public interest,” Coulson said. “The same holds for private detectives, for subterfuge, for [hidden] video bags, whatever you want to talk about.”