One rogue... err... corporation: Murdoch's money exempts him from justice but Prince Harry's pockets might be deep enough to change that...
One rogue... err... corporation: Murdoch's money exempts him from justice but Prince Harry's pockets might be deep enough to change that...
Let's hope the Duke of Sussex was paying attention to Sienna Miller's statement.
There have been 3,797 days since Rupert Murdoch’s “most humble day”. Appearing before a UK parliamentary committee alongside James — his most disappointing child, then executive chairman of News International and now best known as the inspiration for Succession’s Kendall Roy — Murdoch interrupted his son’s opening remarks to say:
Before you get to that, I would just like to say one sentence: This is the most humble day of my life.
It didn’t sound convincing then and it’s become even less convincing with every minute that’s passed since — over 5,467,680 of them1 — as Murdoch retained his AAAA pass to Downing Street, married Jerry Hall2, sold 20th Century Fox to Disney for $71 billion, expanded his radio holdings in the UK and announced the upcoming launch of Talk TV with Piers Morgan as its star.
And, all the while, News Group Newspapers (NGN) — the publisher of The News of the World (shoved into a shallow grave in 2011) and The Sun (sadly still with us) — has been paying out settlement after settlement in cases involving phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering. The bill tipped over $1 billion earlier this year and is still rising.
Yesterday, at the High Court, actor Sienna Miller and the former England international footballer/some time cooked chicken and cans delivery man Paul Gascoigne, became the latest high profile names to have their cases settled by NGN for substantial undisclosed damages with no admission of liabilitiy.
In April 2011, NGN admitted liability for phone hacking and other unlawful actions by and on behalf of News of the World employees. Sienna Miller was one of eight claimants who received apologies and compensation at that time. Murdoch hoped it would “draw a line” under the scandal but revelations in July 2011 about not just the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemail but the targeting of dead soldiers’ relatives and victims of the 7/7 London bombings, made that plan untenable. On 10 July 2011, the News of the World published its final edition.
Seven months later, Murdoch dug it up, plastered on some makeup and a new wig, sent it for some ineffectual etiquette lessons, and declared the ‘new’ creature The Sun on Sunday. But with the News of the World dead — in name at least — NGN still had thousands of phone hacking cases to address, with many of them also accusing The Sun. And there was no chance of NGN admitting the daily paper was as rotten as its Sunday sibling.
While the News of the World was Murdoch’s first UK acquisition, The Sun, in its tabloid form was his creation and, despite its ailing circulation, it’s still a potent tool of political influence and power. That’s why NGN has fought so viciously to avoid any admission of liability to connected to The Sun, shovelling all the blame in the direction of the News of the World.
That strategy took a major hit in June 2021, when Sir Simon Hughes won his “Sun-only” claim. In that case and those brought by Miller and Gascoigne, NGN has paid out huge sums to avoid the details being scrutinised in open court. It was able to force that outcome because, as Sienna Miller said outside the High Court yesterday, a full trial would require “countless millions”.
There is one person whose case against NGN has not yet been settled and whose pockets may be sufficiently deep enough to battle Murdoch: Prince Harry. With his vast inherited wealth and newly-acquired Netflix millions, the Duke of Sussex may just have the right combination of means and motive to push the corporation into a fight in open court.
But Miller did achieve a win beyond wringing more money from the Murdoch war chest. NGN’s legal team had argued that she should not be able to repeat some of her accusations — including that Rebekah Brooks, then-editor of The Sun and now CEO of News UK, had called the actor’s assistant to say she knew Miller was pregnant — in her statement. The judge ruled that the statement should be adjusted to make it clear which elements remained allegations rather than facts established in court but didn’t allow NGN to have the claims struck out.
Speaking outside the court yesterday, Miller explained:
It was not my choice to be standing here; I wanted to go to trial. I wanted to expose the criminality that runs through the heart of this corporation. A criminality demonstrated clearly and irrevocably by the evidence which I have seen. I wanted to share News Group’s secrets just as they shared mine.
Her statement in court made a series of claims about The Sun’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, Nick Parker, who has worked at the title since 1988 and was welcomed back to the newspaper after he was charged of aiding and abetting misconduct in public office (for which he was found not guilty) and receiving a stolen mobile phone belonging to a Labour MP (for which he received a suspended sentence).
Miller believes — on the basis of an invoice issued by investigator and former News of the World hack Christine Hart to Parker for “Sienns [sic] Miller Pregnant Research” and Parker’s expense tagged “Sienna Miller Pregnancy Riddle” and “Dinner with tracer (who confirmed Sienna was pregnant)” — that her private medical records were illegally accessed. She also says her friends and family were subject to “prolonged, substantial and targeted voicemail interception and unlawful information-gathering activities carried out by journalists at The Sun”.
Parker was named in previous — subsequently settled — cases against NGN, with expenses claims showing he purchased burner phones and top-up vouchers for unregistered SIM cards3, as well as recouping the cost of “specialist tracer/medical contacts”. He made some of the purchases at the Carphone Warehouse using the crushingly obvious pseudonym “Charlie Parker”.
It’s deeply frustrating to have to use cagey language around these cases. The Sun and News of the World worked out of the same offices and staff often moved back and forth between the publications. The notion that unlawful activities were confined to the Sunday paper is as ludicrous as News Corp’s first line of defence that phone hacking was the product of “one rogue reporter”. ]
Three companies control 90% of UK newspaper circulation — Daily Mail Group Trust, Reach and News UK — and today, people reading the papers published by the latter won’t see a word about the Miller case. In the world as presented to them by News UK, it never happened.
Her last appearance in a Times title was in February 2021 with a Sunday Times interview which made a glancing reference to her 2011 win against The News of the World but ignored the ongoing action against The Sun. That paper last mentioned her in a Fabulous magazine “A Day In The Life...” feature on “celebrity tanning expert” Amanda Harrington, who named her as a client.
In a week when4 the Downing Street party story, Allegra Stratton’s resignation, and the return of wallpapergate distracted attention from the passing of the insidious and authoritarian Nationality and Borders Bill, like rattling keys in front of a baby, it could seem like writing about yet another phone hacking case is pointless. But the culture of impunity demonstrated by the corruption around Boris Johnson — variously described with softening words like “rows”, “storms”, and “sleaze” — is there in the shameless defence used by NGN.
There have been 3,806 days since The News of the World closed and neither Rupert Murdoch nor The Sun have yet to be humbled. But Sienna Miller’s words and the prospect of Prince Harry’s actions suggest Murdoch’s real most humble day may still happen. Hope is important; we have to cling onto it when we can.
Yes, yes, I know this is a rough estimate.
The ‘happy’ couple purchased a $200m cattle ranch in rural Montana this week.
There can be legitimate reasons for a journalist to use burner phones but at the volume Parker did? It’s another occasion where The Sun elongates credulity futher than a particularly put-upon Stretch Armstrong doll.
I can only apologise for using this classic newspaper phrase here.