The Phone-Hacking Scandal: How Murdoch's UK Empire Fell (Part 3)

0:00Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics. Plus, to enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chatroom and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics. Alistair here, not with Rory, but with Michael Wolff. Because this week in our series on one of the 21st century's most significant figures, Rupert Murdoch, we're looking at one of his worst legacies within the UK, the scandal of phone hacking. When it was revealed that they were even hacking the phones of dead children, it shot Britain to its core, exposed the very, very dark side of our media.

0:38If you're interested in a little more, we've left a clip for you here. To hear the full episode and get all the benefits of a TripPlus membership, sign up at therestedspolitics.com. Did you think that phone hacking would bring him down? I thought it had the capacity to, not necessarily because of the crime itself, but because of their catastrophic handling of it. I mean, I can't remember what some were up to, but they're into the hundreds of millions in terms of the cost already. Now, in a sort of multi-billion company, that may not be so much. But I thought reputationally, if you can match the reputational damage to the financial damage, I could see that it might have done.

1:13And I thought his appearance at the select committee when Wendy Deng probably first entered public consciousness here in a big way because when the guy somehow smuggled through parliamentary security, a custard pie, whatever it was. And of course, in a weird sort of way, I think that sort of helped Murdoch in a bit because that's what people remember about it. And then they remember Wendy standing up and prepared to take this guy on. Whereas James, who's sitting there looking like a bit of a kind of wet fish, doesn't quite know what to do. No, and actually, because the marriage is breaking up at that point, although no one knows it.

1:53So Murdoch is pissed that she comes out looking like the hero. I think the moment of maximum, maximum vulnerability was this revelation, which really shocked people. because when it was people like me and John Prescott and Hugh Grant, political people, celebrities, they probably didn't really care. Or they thought you deserved it. Or that we deserved it, Michael, because we'd sold out to Rupert Murdoch, which I'm grateful that you've retracted that statement earlier. When it emerged that Millie Dowler, who'd been murdered, and others who'd been kidnapped victims and children who'd been abducted, that they were actually hacking the phones of murdered children to find out whatever.

2:42You got to one point where Millie Dowler's parents, at this stage didn't know she was dead, were phoning and leaving messages. To the extent that with all the other messages going on there, the voice box ended up being full. And the reason this was so horrific is because her parents are out of their minds with worry. They're phoning constantly, leaving messages. and they get this message that the mailbox is full and then they keep phoning and after a while they can leave a message so they think oh my god she's deleting her messages that's great that means she's alive so that this actually leads them to think she's alive and that i think is what really cuts through to the public and thinks you people are really really bad and that's what led to david Cameron, who people felt had been very soft on Murdoch for the obvious reasons, political, chipping Norton, et cetera.

3:35That's what led to Cameron saying, we have to have this inquiry into press ethics. And that was the Leveson inquiry. No, I mean, that's the point at which this story becomes, I mean, it becomes horrific. You know, the point is celebrities and politicians, Well, maybe you do have something to hide and maybe they should find it out. But suddenly we're in this territory of hacking people who have nothing. I mean, there is no news value here. This is just human suffering that tabloids make some of their living on. And it emerges they've been doing it to British soldiers who've been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to find out what their families are saying and doing.

4:22Bombing victims in the 77 London bombings. The mother of another murder victim, an eight-year-old girl called Sarah Payne. So this is just off the scale. James Murdoch resigns. James is not only resigns, he's basically forced out because, and certainly within the company, they believe that he may be arrested and they have to get him out of the country as fast as possible. Andy Coulson is then arrested in July 2011. 11 he's charged he's convicted he goes to prison he's the only one of this whole escapade of the senior management that goes to prison Rebecca Brooks as we've said earlier she was charged but not convicted and including her husband who was also charged because there's laptops going missing usual stuff then we have this committee appearance they were obviously trained out of They were media trained to the nth degree, but I don't think they really did themselves much good at that.

5:22Rebecca Brooks was then arrested July 2011, but she gets off. But she goes through a long trial. It's tough, yeah. I sat through that trial. Actually, I got held in contempt for that trial. Why? Because British laws are kind of… What did you do? I just wrote something. Apparently, you're not allowed to. Well, you're allowed to write about it. Tell me, what education do we have to give you now, Michael? What do you do? I wrote about the trial. And you said, she's guilty. Yeah, I probably said that. You can't do that, Michael. Well, in my country, you can. I know you can, but that's why the rule of law is breaking down.

6:04Here, you are innocent until proven guilty. So then we have the Leveson Inquiry. and this I think is where your justified criticisms of us the political class and our I think this is where it comes to a head I am by now in what Tony Blair used to call my jihadi mode I'm absolutely convinced this is the moment at which this wretched media culture in our country has to be changed and Cameron has the opportunity to do it David Cameron said that if Lord Leveson produces recommendations which are not bonkers, was his phrase, we will implement them. The regime that was brought in for press regulation was little more than a sort of, it was another win for the press.

6:50And what's more, Leveson too, which wasn't happening at the time because of all the criminal investigations going on, which was into relations between News International and the police, that was dropped subsequently by the Conservative government. So you talk about missed opportunities and blame it on me for not challenging Murdoch at the wedding. That was a massive missed opportunity. And I still think we're paying a price. It's a broader discussion about whether you think the tabloid press has continued with its particular power, given the fact that the tabloid press is a shadow of what it once was, even 15 years ago.

7:32That's true. That is true. And as somebody who comes from a tabloid journalist background, I find that very sad on one level. But I think in a way, the good that was in tabloids had gone anyway. But I still think our media culture has been very, very badly damaged. I think it's damaged our broadcasters. Because I think the problem with our broadcasters today is they're still massively influenced by a written press. So even though the sort of numbers of people who read the written press has gone down, their influence within the political debate is still pretty strong, even with social media, AI, and all the other stuff that's coming along.

8:07So there we are. My God, we got through a lot in that episode, Michael. You know, I mean, it just goes that there is always a lot at every point in Murdoch's career. I mean, more than in all other careers in some sense. I mean, because he's partly partly because he's operating at so many in so many different different venues at a given period of time, but also because he's doubling down constantly. Good. Well, that's this episode. And in the next episode, we're going to be back in the United States and we're going to be talking about the rise and rise of the Fox News. Behemoth alongside the rise and rise and fall and rise of Donald Trump.

8:51We'll see you then. See you then, Michael.