Saturday 16 July 2011

2096 The tragic death of Millie Dowler humbles a media mogul

To understand the momentous events this week which I believe have significantly undermined confidence in the Metropolitan Police, achieved a fundamental change in the relationship between Prime Ministers, Opposition Leaders and all senior politicians with the media, and between the Police and the Media, and which may will see the end of continuing direct involvement of Mr Murdoch and his son in their world wide media interests, and which made them two of the most powerful individuals in the world, it is necessary to go back to the murder of Daniel Morgan in 1987 and to the culture of hiring by International and national corporations of people able to work if necessary outside the law to help achieve their commercial objectives.

I hope I will live long enough to be able to undertake all the research required, and to cover the criminal trials, Inquiry hearings and published reports expected to flow from these events over the next five years or so. I have made a start this week with the 70 articles which Nick Davies has published in the Guardian over the past two years, watched the Culture and Leisure Ministerial Statement and questioning on Monday, together with the published Hansard Text, watched the Home Affairs Committee interview with key senior police officers on Tuesday followed by the publication of the draft text plus the draft text of the earlier two sessions 26th April 2011, and 14th June 2011 together with backgrounds papers, on Wednesday Prime Minster’s Question Time, followed by the Prime Minister’s Statement and Questions, followed by the shortened evening debate, plus the official Text of the debate in the House of Lords on Friday and the publication by the Prime Minister of visitors to his weekend home of Chequers and of official and social meetings with media owners, executives and editors.

Important as these political developments have been, the focus has rightly been on the position of Mr Murdoch, his son James and Chief Executive, Ms Brooks. When Mr Murdock arrived in London he stated that his priority was the position of his Chief Executive. Before the week ended she had resigned together with his closest adviser, colleague and friend of 52 years, Les Hinton now former Chief Executive of Dow Jones, together with a legal executive at the corporation.

At the commencement of the week Mr Murdoch, having closed the News of World, announced that he was withdrawing the previous undertaking to create a separate and independent enterprise for Sky News, thus ensuring that the Culture Minister was immediately able to refer the Take Over Bid to the Competition Commission which in normal circumstances would take six months to report, while at the same time Of Com would also continue to keep in mind the question of proper and fit person having made contact with Operation Weeting of the Metropolitan Police. By Wednesday evening just before the House of Commons was to debate a Motion that Mr Murdoch should withdraw from the Take Over bid, he announced that this was now the position.

It was still not clear what had become his objectives when he claimed in an interviewed with the Wall Street Journal that the problems had been comparatively small and were being dealt with. The House of Commons Culture and Leisure Committee requested that Mr Murdoch his son and Ms Brooks attended a hastily arranged meeting on Tuesday of next week. Ms Brook said she would attend although pointing out the problem of responding to questions which were the subject of ongoing Police Investigation. Mr Murdoch said he would give evidence to the official Inquiry announced by the Prime Minister on Wednesday while his son said Tuesday was not convenient and suggested dates in early August. The House of Commons Committee then delivered a formal summons through the office of the Sergeant at Arms with a refusal being the subject of a report of the whole House of Commons. It was not clear what the House of Commons could and would do. In the event this does not matter because Father and Son agreed to attend with the caveat that they would be restricted because of the criminal investigation.

By Friday the approach appeared to have again changed once more. During the week the family of murdered school girl Millie Dowler had attended meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Prime Minister. It was then disclosed that Mr Murdoch had offered to visit the family at their home but they had insisted on a meeting at a central London location, after which the family’s lawyer explained that Mr Murdoch had been profuse and genuine in his apology which he had repeated with his head in hands several times. This morning every National Newspaper in the UK, including those owned by Mr Murdoch carried an apology signed by him for the distress that had been caused.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Police had announced that more individuals had been arrested, interviewed and bailed to appear in the autumn including the former head of communications to the Prime Minister Mr Coulson, who had previously been the editor of the News of the World.

At the same time other more senior Members of the Metropolitan Police had come under fire. I will report further on the meeting of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, the subsequent defence of the present Assistant Commissioner Counter Terrorism by the May of London, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary before it was discovered that the Commissioner himself had employed a former News of the World Executive to advise on media Communications and that this information had not previously been disclosed. The Commissioner has also been summoned to appear before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday morning.

Throughout the week, although the House of Commons and the Government attempted to claim credit for developments, there was also recognition that in fact only a handful of individuals had pressed for inquiry and action because statements had been made by Senior Police Officers and News International that the illegal activity had been restricted to one authorising Journalist and one private investigation individual.

The roll of honour was admitted by Baroness Royall of Blaisdon from the Opposition front bench praising Nick Davies of the Guardian, Labour Members of Parliament Chris Bryant and Tom Watson, The Lord Fowler and Lord Prescott and Opposition Leader Ed Miliband who in my judgement understood the depth and widespread nature of public reaction as well as its far reaching significance, effectively declaring war on all those culpable. While the depraved and potentially damaging hacking of the mobile phone message of the then dead Millie Dowler precipitated the crisis, it was Mr Miliband who gave the protest voice making it into a revolution.

It is time this weekend to draw breadth and for next week Lord Leveson to be allowed to commence work without the constant glare of the UK national media but there is also an important role for the media to continue to investigate, observe and focus attention.

I believe no one will be able to establish the full picture without all the chief executives of British National Newspapers declaring a list of all the private investigation firms they have used to provide information on individuals and organisations they have written or wanted to write about, including the provision of information on the total number of requests to each firm, the list of individuals and organisations researched, and if contracts indicate the limits of any inquiries or required information on how the information is to be or was obtained.

This is a point which I have now read which in effect was also made by Lord Fowler at the commencement of the debate in the House of Lords on Friday.

I go further that the information should also be handed to the police centrally or collectively to the authorities covering the location of all private agencies mentioned, and who should interview each of them to establish if illegal methods were used and if so generate prosecutions and/or the removal of operating licences where appropriate. This in my judgement is the only way in which the cancer that has affected the whole of the news media can be removed.

It is to be hoped that the Judicial Inquiry will also uncover how the cancer was allowed to progress untreated after being detected. Baroness Royall repeated the fact frequently mentioned over the past two weeks that in 2006 the Information Commissioner reported that 305 named journalists working for a range of newspapers had been involved in buying information obtained illegally by private agencies. The information was obtained mainly by Blagging, Individuals pretending to be someone else as well as by corruption. I have written how in 1963 I was told the Home office was on the phone only to find it was a reporter from a regional newspaper.

I also believe I know how the cancer occurred, and not with the appointment of Rebekah Brooks as News of the World Editor in May 2000 as the BBC suggests in its Time Line. The lynch mob mentality that is being shown by some Parliamentarians towards individuals from the press and the police does not help in the long run to change things for the better. Although I understand and share in the anger at what happened to the family of Millie Dowler and to the families of other British victims of individual and collective murderous acts, the way the Dowler family has behaved over the past two weeks is an example which individual politicians and other personalities with an understandable desire for revenge should follow. I have sympathy with the approach of the Prime Minister who has not jumped to judgement on the individual culpability of those who became his friends, even though to stand by them has and will undermine his reputation with the general public. If I was part of the Labour Party hierarchy I would continue to go for Mr Cameron, just as I expect his political colleagues to rally to his support.

The dreadful events which have only now been taken up by national politicians and in the national media although they have been known in one form or another for over a decade were incubated by UK Governments, by National and International Corporations and through Executive Management Training, together with the natural role of Private Investigators who have been able to make full use of digital communications and media for spying.

Private investigators have been portrayed in film and other media as sleazy individuals employed primarily to spy on infidelities in marriage and to find people who have disappeared. They have also been portrayed as having contacts prepared to give them information, sometimes for money which became part of the account submitted to the hirers. Before the digital revolution this included information from police officers, driving and road fund registrations, from banking, tax and health records and telephone and travel providers. In the process of such investigations they encountered information important for the law enforcement agencies that in turn have used the agencies to provide information at the margin of official permissions or where shorts cuts were required the processes of officialdom.

The contemporary era of organised and individual Terrorism enabled the governments of Tony Blair to sanction the use of the latest technology into very aspect of intelligence gathering and surveillance, including authority for statutory bodies and local authorities including the placing of devices in rubbish bins to establish if they were being correctly used. For over the past decade it has become possible for anyone and everyone, with the technology to monitor and record everything that we do and say for anywhere and anytime in the world. However it is only technological advances that are new aspect, because Government intelligence agencies and local government police authorities have always used private investigators to supplement the information gathering from their array of other informants and full time staff.

The third strand does lead more directly to Ms Brooks and her colleagues at the News of the World. In 1984 my employers paid for me to attend one the of top management colleges in the world for a four week residential course for senior executives considering or being considered for moves from specialist to general management.

The core of the course was an assessment of general management leadership potential which included an objective assessment based on previous occupational records and lifestyle psychometric testing and analysis and observes performance in groups and between groups of the carefully selected members. The course looked in depth at the ideal composition of management teams and their leadership and at the inclusion of creatives, sometimes creative geniuses, within research and development, as members of top management teams and as Chairman, considering situations in public as well as private sectors including the roles Government Minister and chief secretary, as well as Chairman of a board and its chief executive.
The predominant approach was demonstrated by the International 3M Company where a senior executive explained that although the organisation employed several thousand research and product development workers it was from their special unit of creatives that the majority of successful ideas emerged which led to the creation of highly profitable products. However there was a downside in terms of tendency to ignore the basic rules of occupational and personal life which could result in serious lawbreaking which could endanger the company if the individuals were caught. Therefore the organisation not only had keep under surveillance the activities of its star performers but be prepared not just to terminate their employment but cover up all evidence of the individual having been directly employed. The bigger the organisation the need for a clean up unit and where for example there was a need to gain special intelligence the outsourcing of the work was preferable and easier to cover up if things went wrong.

The course also looked at the need to monitor and control the top executives who combined creativity with leadership and the dangers when an individual with such characteristics attempted to combine the roles of chairman and chief executive because without appropriate checks and balances one individual could bring an entire successful organisation down.

It also has to be remembered that the primary duty and responsibility is to the public in Government and other public bodies but in the commercial world the law places the duty of everyone in a company to put the interest of the shareholders first.

I am also suggesting that what happened in the News of the World and News International has the same causes as what happened to International Banking and Finance.

This is all what I feel I need to say immediately. I will next try and catch up on the rest of my experiences over the past two weeks before systematically studying text, reporting and commenting further on what has continued be an extraordinary, amazing few days.

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