. . . continued

literally at the cost of the sanity of Josef Fritzl’s victims.

Press coverage of the Fritzl story that violated the privacy of the victims and the ethical and prof-
essional codes of media conduct alike, whether committed by the traditional tabloid press or by titles normally associated with the “quality” or “serious” press, validates a definition of tabloid journalism as that which “priorit-
izes entertainment, human inter-
est and commercial profitability and which is usually presented as oppositional to ‘serious’ and soc-
ially responsible journalism”.17

‘Industrial-scale’ lawbreaking

Elisabeth Fritzl and her children have not been the only victims of the tabloid press. On 4 July 2011, the London-based UK national broadsheet, the Guardian, reveal-
ed that the Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, had hacked into the voicemail of murdered thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Milly Dowler, and had deleted mess-
ages to make more space avail-
able when worried family and friends filled the mailbox. Milly’s body had not yet been found, and when her voicemail mess-
ages were being deleted, those

family and friends presumed she was still alive. Police feared pot-
entially valuable evidence may have been destroyed.18

Three weeks of unrelenting rev-
elations followed the Milly Dowler phone-hacking story that expos-
ed to the general public what had been clear to media critics and commentators for years: that illegal personal information-gath-
ering was rife at the News of the World, and had not been limited to the “one rogue reporter”, Clive Goodman, who was sentenced to four months’ prison in January 2007 for hacking the voicemail of the British royal family’s staff.19 Evidence that began pouring into the public domain included the hacking into the voicemail of the parents of murdered ten-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002;20 the hacking of phones belonging to families of the victims of, and others invol-
ved with, the 7 July 2005 London bombings21 and the hacking of voicemail of families of British ser-
vice personnel killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.22

The Daily Telegraph, a London-
based national broadsheet, quoted “a senior police source” asserting that “[b]asically every

major crime story, every major news event, there was some
sort of hacking involved… It was systematic”.23 On 7 July 2011,
the BBC reported that police
had identified more than 4,000 potential victims of NotW phone hacking.24

And it was on 7 July that James Murdoch, News Corporation dep-
uty chief operating officer and News International chairman, announced the News of the World’s closure;25 the 168-year-
old title published its last edition on Sunday 10 July. By early September, the year had seen at least twelve NotW editorial staff arrested. The tally included very senior figures: chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and former news editor Ian Edmondson (arrested 5 April); former editor Andy Coulson (8 July); former executive editor Neil Wallis (14 July); former NotW and Sun editor and News International chief executive until her resign-
ation on 15 July 2011, Rebekah Brooks (17 July); former man-
aging editor Stuart Kuttner (2 August); and former news editor Greg Miskiw (10 August). Arrests were made under parallel Metropolitan Police Service (MPS, or “Scotland Yard”) investigations

into phone hacking, Operation Weeting, and into corrupt pay-
ments to police, Operation Elveden. Kuttner, Coulson and Brooks were arrested under both operations.26 A “scoping exer-
cise” into computer hacking, Op-
eration Tuleta, became a full-scale investigation at the end of July.27

While media critics and commen-
tators have not been entirely

surprised at the scale of NotW phone hacking, they have also not been surprised at the invest-
igations into corrupt payments to police, and computer hacking. The scale of criminal activity involved in illegal information gathering by the British press – very signifi-
cantly, not just by the News of the World – was revealed in March 2003 when the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) raid-
ed the home office of a private detective, Steve Whittamore, whose principal clients were

The scale of the British press' criminal activities was revealed in March 2003.

nonfiction

The tabloid ecosystem and crimes against society (iii) - Nonfiction - SDk02

Issue Credits

Footnotes:	"The tabloid ecosystem and crimes against society" continues in a popup window. 17 Biressi & Nunn, “Origins, definitions and debates: talking about the tabloids”, p. 7. On the dominance of commercial imperatives over informational ones with the popular press, see, for example, Martin Conboy, “The popular press: surviving postmodernity”, in The Tabloid Culture Reader, eds Anita Biressi & Heather Nunn, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008, pp. 49–51. The Independent and Scotland on Sunday were the broadsheet titles named by Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies as having followed the Daily Mail in early March 2009 in identifying the village where the Fritzl children were living (see House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, “Press standards, privacy and libel”, second report of session 2009–10 (vol. 2: Oral and written evidence), Q491, p. 141). in another example of broadsheet transgression, the Times sent their Berlin correspondent, Roger Boyes, to the Fritzl children’s home for a story after the trial of their father: Roger Boyes, “Elisabeth Fritzl seeks refuge with children in a fortress”, Times (London), 21 March 2009. 18 Nick Davies & Amelia Hill, “Missing Milly Dowler’s voicemail was hacked by News of the World”, Guardian, 4 July 2011. Davies is the freelance investigative journalist who, after effectively re-opening the case with an article published in the Guardian on 8 July 2009, pursued the NotW phone-hacking story for two years to bring the scandal to international prominence and official state scrutiny (see Nick Davies, “Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims”, Guardian, 8 July 2009). The New York Times last year also played an important role in helping revive interest in what was a scandal-in-the-making: Don Van Natta, Jo Becker & Graham Bowley, “Tabloid attack on royals, and beyond”, New York Times, 1 Sept. 2010. 19 See, for example, Chris Tryhorn, “Clive Goodman sentenced to four months”, Guardian, 26 Jan. 2007; James Robinson, “NoW phone-hacking scandal: News Corp’s ‘rogue reporter’ defence unravels”, Guardian, 17 Jan. 2011; Roy Greenslade, “News of the World feigns shock at new twist in the phone-hacking saga”, Guardian, 18 Jan. 2011; Nick Davies, “News of the World faces new allegation of phone hacking within last year”, Guardian, 27 Jan. 2011. Goodman and the NotW-contracted private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, also hacked the phones of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry (Van Natta, Becker & Bowley, “Tabloid attack on royals, and beyond”), but were only charged with hacking royal staff. The Guardian has produced three useful (if not comprehensive) in-brief, at-a-glance resources on the NotW phone-hacking scandal: Guardian, “News of the World phone hacking – interactive timeline”, 10 Aug. 2011; Guardian, “Hacking: what happened when” (graphic), 21 July 2011; and Guardian, “Who knew who in the phone hacking affair?” (graphic), 19 July 2011. The “what happened when” graphic in particular provides a visual picture of how the scandal had been gaining a critical mass that finally erupted into a rapidly developing national crisis from 4 July 2011. See also New York Times, “Key Figures in the Phone Hacking Case” (interactive graphic); BBC, “Q&A: News of the World phone-hacking scandal”, 17 Aug. 2011. 20 Sandra Laville, James Robinson & Mark Sweney, “Phone hacking: Soham families contacted by police”, Guardian, 5 July 2011; BBC, “Phone-hacking police meet murdered Soham girls’ parents”, 6 July 2011. 21 BBC, “News of the World ‘hacked 7/7 family phones’”, 6 July 2011. 22 Mark Hughes, Duncan Gardham, John Bingham & Andy Bloxham, “Phone hacking: families of war dead ‘targeted’ by News of the World”, Telegraph, 7 July 2011; Reuters, “Relatives of war dead among phone-hacking victims”, France 24, 7 July 2011. 23 Duncan Gardham, Mark Hughes, John Bingham & Victoria Ward, “News of the World: bereaved relatives of 7/7 victims ‘had phones hacked’”, Telegraph, 5 July 2011; A Guardian article leading with the same story ties in the many different aspects of the scandal at that date, providing a snapshot at the breadth, depth and complicated tangents of the rapidly developing scandal: James Robinson, Amelia Hill, Sam Jones, Nick Davies & Dan Sabbagh, “Families of 7/7 victims ‘were targets of phone hacking’”, Guardian, 6 July 2011. 24 BBC, “Phone hacking: the main players (victims and possible victims)”, 4 Aug. 2011. See also Mark Hughes, “Phone hacking: we’ve seen only 170 victims out of 3,870, says Scotland Yard”, Telegraph, 12 July 2011. 25 James Murdoch, “News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World”, News International news release, 7 July 2011. News Group Newspapers Ltd, which published the News of the World and still publishes the Sun, is a subsidiary of London-based News International Ltd – owned in turn by the New York-based News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch is News Corp chairman and chief executive officer. 26 BBC, “Phone hacking: the main players (key figures)”, 19 Aug. 2011. Operation Weeting began on 26 January 2011; Operation Elveden was announced on 6 July 2011. Arrests are ongoing, are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future, and have already spread to other titles (see James Robinson & Lisa O’Carroll, “Phone hacking: Raoul Simons of the Times arrested”, Guardian, 7 Sept. 2011). 27 Matt Blake, “New police investigation will probe computer hacking”, Independent, 30 July 2011.
Contributors:	Alan Daniels Chris Cook Daryl Champion Eugène Satyrisci Geof Banyard Jenny Boot Kedamono Marilyn Jaye Lewis Viona Ielegems
Resources:	Bureau of Investigative Journalism Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF) Steve Keen’s Debtwatch

Footnotes:

"The tabloid ecosystem and crimes against society" continues in a popup window.

17 Biressi & Nunn, “Origins, definitions and debates: talking about the tabloids”, p. 7. On the dominance of commercial imperatives over informational ones with the popular press, see, for example, Martin Conboy, “The popular press: surviving postmodernity”, in The Tabloid Culture Reader, eds Anita Biressi & Heather Nunn, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008, pp. 49–51. The Independent and Scotland on Sunday were the broadsheet titles named by Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies as having followed the Daily Mail in early March 2009 in identifying the village where the Fritzl children were living (see House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, “Press standards, privacy and libel”, second report of session 2009–10 (vol. 2: Oral and written evidence), Q491, p. 141). in another example of broadsheet transgression, the Times sent their Berlin correspondent, Roger Boyes, to the Fritzl children’s home for a story after the trial of their father: Roger Boyes, “Elisabeth Fritzl seeks refuge with children in a fortress”, Times (London), 21 March 2009.

18 Nick Davies & Amelia Hill, “Missing Milly Dowler’s voicemail was hacked by News of the World”, Guardian, 4 July 2011. Davies is the freelance investigative journalist who, after effectively re-opening the case with an article published in the Guardian on 8 July 2009, pursued the NotW phone-hacking story for two years to bring the scandal to international prominence and official state scrutiny (see Nick Davies, “Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims”, Guardian, 8 July 2009). The New York Times last year also played an important role in helping revive interest in what was a scandal-in-the-making: Don Van Natta, Jo Becker & Graham Bowley, “Tabloid attack on royals, and beyond”, New York Times, 1 Sept. 2010.

19 See, for example, Chris Tryhorn, “Clive Goodman sentenced to four months”, Guardian, 26 Jan. 2007; James Robinson, “NoW phone-hacking scandal: News Corp’s ‘rogue reporter’ defence unravels”, Guardian, 17 Jan. 2011; Roy Greenslade, “News of the World feigns shock at new twist in the phone-hacking saga”, Guardian, 18 Jan. 2011; Nick Davies, “News of the World faces new allegation of phone hacking within last year”, Guardian, 27 Jan. 2011. Goodman and the NotW-contracted private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, also hacked the phones of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry (Van Natta, Becker & Bowley, “Tabloid attack on royals, and beyond”), but were only charged with hacking royal staff. The Guardian has produced three useful (if not comprehensive) in-brief, at-a-glance resources on the NotW phone-hacking scandal: Guardian, “News of the World phone hacking – interactive timeline”, 10 Aug. 2011; Guardian, “Hacking: what happened when” (graphic), 21 July 2011; and Guardian, “Who knew who in the phone hacking affair?” (graphic), 19 July 2011. The “what happened when” graphic in particular provides a visual picture of how the scandal had been gaining a critical mass that finally erupted into a rapidly developing national crisis from 4 July 2011. See also New York Times, “Key Figures in the Phone Hacking Case” (interactive graphic); BBC, “Q&A: News of the World phone-hacking scandal”, 17 Aug. 2011.

20 Sandra Laville, James Robinson & Mark Sweney, “Phone hacking: Soham families contacted by police”, Guardian, 5 July 2011; BBC, “Phone-hacking police meet murdered Soham girls’ parents”, 6 July 2011.

21 BBC, “News of the World ‘hacked 7/7 family phones’”, 6 July 2011.

22 Mark Hughes, Duncan Gardham, John Bingham & Andy Bloxham, “Phone hacking: families of war dead ‘targeted’ by News of the World”, Telegraph, 7 July 2011; Reuters, “Relatives of war dead among phone-hacking victims”, France 24, 7 July 2011.

23 Duncan Gardham, Mark Hughes, John Bingham & Victoria Ward, “News of the World: bereaved relatives of 7/7 victims ‘had phones hacked’”, Telegraph, 5 July 2011; A Guardian article leading with the same story ties in the many different aspects of the scandal at that date, providing a snapshot at the breadth, depth and complicated tangents of the rapidly developing scandal: James Robinson, Amelia Hill, Sam Jones, Nick Davies & Dan Sabbagh, “Families of 7/7 victims ‘were targets of phone hacking’”, Guardian, 6 July 2011.

24 BBC, “Phone hacking: the main players (victims and possible victims)”, 4 Aug. 2011. See also Mark Hughes, “Phone hacking: we’ve seen only 170 victims out of 3,870, says Scotland Yard”, Telegraph, 12 July 2011.

25 James Murdoch, “News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World”, News International news release, 7 July 2011. News Group Newspapers Ltd, which published the News of the World and still publishes the Sun, is a subsidiary of London-based News International Ltd – owned in turn by the New York-based News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch is News Corp chairman and chief executive officer.

26 BBC, “Phone hacking: the main players (key figures)”, 19 Aug. 2011. Operation Weeting began on 26 January 2011; Operation Elveden was announced on 6 July 2011. Arrests are ongoing, are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future, and have already spread to other titles (see James Robinson & Lisa O’Carroll, “Phone hacking: Raoul Simons of the Times arrested”, Guardian, 7 Sept. 2011).

27 Matt Blake, “New police investigation will probe computer hacking”, Independent, 30 July 2011.

Contributors:

Alan Daniels Chris Cook Daryl Champion Eugène Satyrisci Geof Banyard Jenny Boot Kedamono Marilyn Jaye Lewis Viona Ielegems

Resources:

Bureau of Investigative Journalism Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF) Steve Keen’s Debtwatch