Britain's phone hacking scandal intensified on Wednesday as the scope of
tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder
victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The
royal family's entourage.
Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it takes.
The
focal point is the News of the World - now facing a spreading
advertising boycott - and the top executives of its parent companies:
Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, and her boss,
media potentate Rupert Murdoch.
In his first comment since the
latest details emerged, Murdoch said in a statement on Wednesday that
Brooks would continue to lead his British newspaper operation despite
calls for her resignation.
The scandal, which has already touched
the office of Prime Minister David Cameron, widened as the Metropolitan
Police confirmed they were investigating evidence from News
International that the tabloid made illegal payments to police officers
in its quest for information.
The list of potential victims also
grew. Revelations emerged Wednesday that the phones of relatives of
people killed in the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks on London's transit
system, as well as those tied to two more slain schoolgirls, may also
have been targeted.
The true extent of the hacking is not yet clear - and may not be known for months as inquiries unfold.
Graham
Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David died in the 2005 terrorist
attacks, was told by police that he was on a list of potential hacking
victims.
"I just felt stunned and horrified," Foulkes told The
Associated Press. "I find it hard to believe someone could be so wicked
and so evil, and that someone could work for an organization that even
today is trying to defend what they see as normal practices."
Foulkes,
who plans to mourn his son on Thursday's sixth anniversary of the
attack, said an independent investigation is needed because the police
were compromised by accepting payoffs from the tabloid.
"The
police are now implicated," he said. "The prime minister must have an
independent inquiry and all concerned should be prosecuted."
Foulkes
also demanded the resignation of Brooks, the former News of the World
editor who is now chief executive of News International, the U.K.
newspaper division of Murdoch's News Corp. media empire. News Corp. owns
a swath of newspapers, including
News of the World, the Sun, and the Wall Street Journal.
"She's
gotta go," Foulkes said. "She cannot say, oops, sorry, we've been
caught out. Of course she's responsible for the ethos and practices of
her department. Her position is untenable."
Brooks, one of the
most powerful women in British journalism, maintains she did not know
about the phone hacking. She said she will continue to direct the
company.
Foulkes also challenged Murdoch - a global media titan
with newspaper, television, movie and book publishing interests in the
United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere - to meet with him to
discuss the intrusion into his privacy.
"I doubt he's brave enough to face me," he said.
In
Parliament, lawmakers held an emergency debate to call for the
prosecution of those responsible for hacking into the phone of Milly
Dowler, the 13-year-old murder victim whose case touched off the
scandal, and others.
The Dowler case touched a raw national nerve
because the paper is accused of hampering the police investigation by
deleting some of Milly's phone messages, which gave her parents and
police false hope that she was still alive after she disappeared in
2002.
Cameron called for inquiries into the News of the World's
behavior as well as into the failure of the original police inquiry to
uncover the extent of the hacking. Potential victims have cited the
tabloid's payoffs to police as the reason the allegations did not
surface earlier.
"We are no longer talking here about politicians
and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially
terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into," Cameron said.
"It
is absolutely disgusting, what has taken place, and I think everyone in
this House and indeed this country will be revolted by what they have
heard."
British media reported that the parents of two other
schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who were murdered in a
sensational 2002 case, had been informed by police that they were
investigating whether the News of the World hacked their telephones.
Many Britons were horrified.
"It's
heartless and inconsiderate that they'd do it to victims and family of
murder victims," said Danny Wright, 25, of Liverpool.
He said it
was wrong to hack into celebrities' phones but far worse to target
victims' families "because of what they've been through."
Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the Dowler case was crucial.
"That's
why the case has gotten so big," he said. "If celebrities or
politicians have their phones intercepted, that's one thing, but the
idea that they were doing this while a little girl was missing and a
police inquiry was going on makes it a really gross intrusion."
Satchwell
said it has become politically sensitive not only because Cameron's
communications chief Andy Coulson was forced to resign because of his
earlier stewardship of the tabloid, but because lawmakers opposed to
Murdoch's growing media power in Britain want to slow his takeover of
other properties.
He said the hacking of Milly's phone was
revealed just as government regulators are preparing to decide whether
Murdoch can take full control of British Sky Broadcasting.
"You
have to ask yourself why that happened right now," he said, cautioning
that the public has yet to see clear evidence of illegal phone hacking
except for two News of the World employees - reporter Clive Goodman and
investigator Glenn Mulcaire - who have already served time in jail.
When
police arrested Mulcaire, they seized 11,000 pages of notes, including
the phone numbers of many suspected hacking victims. But in most cases
the police have not yet made clear who was actually hacked.
Actor
Hugh Grant said Wednesday that he had been asked to testify at a police
inquiry into the hacking allegations. The actor has often claimed he
believes his phone was hacked by News of the World.
The scandal
has its roots in the tabloid's efforts to scoop its competitors with
news about the royal family. Representatives of the royals complained to
police in late 2005 that some of their voice mails had been hacked
into.
The police inquiry focused on Goodman and Mulcaire, who
were jailed in 2007 for the hacking. Executives said at the time that
they were the only employees involved, but that has been undermined by a
series of arrests at the newspaper earlier this year and by the
company's willingness to settle with other victims.
The tabloid's
parent company, News International, has insisted it is working closely
with police and has a zero-tolerance policy for any wrongdoing or
sketchy tactics.
Virgin Holidays canceled several ads due to run
in the Sunday newspaper this week. Car makers Ford UK and Vauxhall and
Halifax bank also said they have suspended advertising.
Mumsnet -
a popular online community for mothers - removed ads from Murdoch
broadcaster Sky after its members complained about the tabloid hacking.
Tuna
Amobi, an equities analyst with Standard & Poor's, said in a
research note Wednesday that the advertising boycott by some companies
was not significant for a company as large as News Corp. But he remained
"wary of potential regulatory fallout (if not
ultimate derailment)" of its pending deal to take over BSkyB.
Phone-hacking
featured prominently on the home pages Wednesday of the Wall Street
Journal, another Murdoch publication, and the paper mentioned its ties
to the scandal-ridden tabloid in the fifth-to-last paragraph of a
lengthy piece. The Journal's article made no mention of Murdoch himself.
Murdoch's
other properties - tabloids among them - did not distance themselves
from the story - phone-hacking revelations were front and center on the
Sun's website and Sky news replaced its featured stories home page box
with a "breaking news" banner and multiple hacking-related stories. The
Sun noted, however, that rival tabloids "have also been accused of dodgy
and illegal activities while pursuing stories."
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