It was odd, yesterday evening, to be watching the former News of the World journalist Sean Hoare discussing the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal in the BBC Panorama programme, “Murdoch: Breaking the Spell?,” on the day that he was found dead at his home in Watford. He was 47 years old.

The footage was from a programme first broadcast in March, “Tabloid Hacks Exposed,” and Sean Hoare, the News of the World‘s former showbusiness correspondent, was a hugely important presence in the programme, as it was he who had first spoken out about the “endemic” culture of phone-hacking at the News of the World for a New York Times investigation last September, when he had also stated that Andy Coulson, who, at the time, was David Cameron’s Director of Communications, had been deeply involved in phone-hacking, even though he was on record as claiming that he knew nothing about it.

The New York Times stated that Hoare, “a former reporter and onetime close friend of Coulson’s,” said that he had discussed hacking with Coulson:

The two men first worked together at the Sun, where, Hoare said, he played tape recordings of hacked messages for Coulson. At News of the World, Hoare said he continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson “actively encouraged me to do it,” Hoare said. Read the rest of this entry »

As the heads continue to roll in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal — with Rebekah Brooks (the CEO of News International) and Les Hinton (the CEO of Dow Jones) both resigning from Murdoch’s fast-crumbling media empire, and Sir Paul Stephenson and his deputy John Yates from the embattled Metropolitan Police, just one of the three parties deeply implicated in this affair — the government itself — has so far refused to accept the implications of its deep involvement in the crooked behaviour of the News of the World and its parent company, News International.

This is all the more remarkable given David Cameron’s close relationship with not one but two editors of the News of the World, who were both in charge when the worst of the hacking took place — Rebekah Brooks, married to his close friend, the racehorse trainer (and former Etonian) Charlie Brooks, and Andy Coulson, who, of course, was the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications until January this year, Both Coulson and Brooks have, of course, spent time in police custody in the last week and a half.

In his desire not to be contaminated by his connections, David Cameron has been resorting to increasingly desperate behaviour, publicly abandoning Coulson, and generally denouncing the whole of Murdoch’s media empire as though he had not employed Coulson, and had not been close friends with Brooks. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the News of the World phone-hacking scandal has finally secured a major scalp — the News of the World itself, closing on Sunday after 168 years in business — it remains to be seen whether the sacrifice of the paper, and of 200 jobs, will be sufficient to prevent the growing scandal from doing further damage to the News of the World‘s proprietor, the media empire of Rupert Murdoch.

Just as significantly, it remains to be seen whether Prime Minister David Cameron can avoid being fatally contaminated by his close association with Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, arrested today in connection with the scandal. Coulson, of course, served as the Conservative Party’s Chief of Communications from July 2007 and then as David Cameron’s personal Chief of Communications from May last year until his resignation in January this year.

Although the scandal first emerged in 2005, in connection with the hacking of phones owned by members of the Royal Family, it took until this week for the public to become sufficiently outraged to ensure that serious action would be taken, beyond the limited action taken in 2007, when the News of the World‘s royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for their role in hacking the Royal Family’s phones. Read the rest of this entry »