| Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
A long, detailed article in the New York Times this weekend effectively questions whether the prime minister's press secretary is a liar. Three veteran reporters (with four Pulitzer prizes between them) spent many weeks in London crawling over the evidence relating to Andy Coulson's time as editor of the News of the World. It was on his watch that a reporter, Clive Goodman, went to jail after admitting conspiring with a private detective, Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the mobile phone messages of the royal family. Mr Coulson has always insisted that Mr Goodman was a solitary rotten apple and that he knew nothing of such practices. The NYT reporters interviewed a dozen former reporters and executives at the NoW who tell a different story.
All interviewees told the NYT that phone hacking was pervasive at the NoW at the time that Mr Coulson was editor. In the words of one reporter: "Everyone knew. The office cat knew." Two people interviewed by the paper say that Mr Coulson was present during discussions about phone hacking. One former editor said he had been to "dozens, if not hundreds" of meetings with Mr Coulson when the "dark arts" of tabloid reporting – including hacking – came up. A named former colleague of Mr Coulson claimed to have personally played him tapes of hacked messages. All this appears to contradict the evidence Mr Coulson gave to the Commons select committee, where he was asked: "Just to be clear, under your tenure as editor and deputy editor, as far as you were aware at the time, the News of the World did not pay people to obtain information illegally?" Mr Coulson replied: "Yes, that is right." He added: "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case."
Now the News of the World is a newspaper which, at its muck-raking best, performs a public service in exposing crooks, cheats, hypocrites and liars. The reason why this particular episode in its history is disturbing – and won't go away – has three root causes. The first is Mr Coulson's position as press secretary to the prime minister, a position of great sensitivity and trust. If the NYT's sources are right, then Mr Coulson has misled both his immediate boss and parliament itself. Nobody could continue to occupy the position he holds if it were proved he had lied to Mr Cameron and to parliament. Mr Coulson cannot be surprised that MPs will fiercely pursue this matter, not least since a fair number of politicians' names and phone numbers appeared on Mr Mulcaire's "target" list.
The second factor concerns the viability of press self-regulation. A regulator must be told the truth and must show its independence from the industry it regulates. The NYT article – based on first-hand research – convincingly demonstrates that the September 2009 Press Complaints Commission report into phone hacking was both feeble and wrong. The PCC must find a way of clarifying and correcting the record if it is to command respect.
The third factor is the increasingly dominant position of Rupert Murdoch's media companies in this country. This is not simply a point about share of media – though that is concern enough – but about the power one organisation can exert over the state. The NYT's piece includes claims that the police felt internal pressure not to investigate the hacking case too thoroughly and did not share all their material with the prosecutors. Among Mr Mulcaire's "targets" were senior policemen. There is no suggestion of direct influence by News International. But there is overwhelming evidence that the company paid large amounts of money to get the dirt on people in public life – including in the police, the military and politics – and that it has paid huge sums (£2m and counting) to suppress the truth from coming out. That makes it a very unusual company indeed.
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