Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Times throws mud at the BBC to play down phone-hacking revelations

For months, The Times (which used to claim it was "the paper of record") has failed to report on the many revelations about the phone-hacking scandal at its sister publication, the News of the World.

It has ignored a string of stories that have totally undermined the NoW's previous defence that hacking was restricted to a single "rogue reporter".

There has been no mention of the many victims of hacking who have started legal actions against its parent company, News International.

Nor has it reported on the court pressure on the private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, to reveal the names of NoW executives who ordered him to hack into people's phones.
Yet today, The Times suddenly publishes a page 7 lead story connected to the scandal - but with an extraordinary twist.


It concerns last night's Panorama special, which highlighted the activities of a private detective, Jonathan Rees, who was alleged to have used a range of illegal methods to obtain information for the News of the World.

The programme specifically claimed that Rees was commissioned to intercept email messages by Alex Marunchak, the NoW's former executive editor.

At one point in the programme, Panorama's reporter, Vivian White, confronted Rees to ask him about his work for the NoW, such as accessing people's bank accounts and paying police officers for information.

A belligerent Rees refused to answer the question. Instead, he countered: "What about the information that you've got, that your company got?" He claimed that Panorama had paid police before walking off.

White, in his commentary, said: "Unlike Jonathan Rees, Panorama had not paid any police officers for information."

But what was this in today's Times? No mention of Marunchak nor of the other substantive material in the Panorama documentary about Rees having been hired by the NoW even after he had served a prison sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The Times chooses instead to nose its story on Rees's allegations about the BBC, reporting that Rees "worked for Panorama on at least two programmes in the early 1990s."
He claims he was once commissioned to carry out undercover work about child abductions. But he, and The Times, have no proof of that claim.

The story even concedes that "friends of Mr Rees" said "he had no documents or invoices to prove his claim." And the BBC cannot find any documentary evidence of Rees having worked for it.

Note how The Times's story is angled to fit two News International agendas. It throws mud at the BBC, yet again. It minimises the misbehaviour by the News of the World, yet again.
The real story revealed by Panorama is that a sixth News of the World executive was involved in the commissioning of illegal activities. That's the tale a paper of record should be reporting, is it not?

And guess what? The other Wapping paper that has failed to notice the phone-hacking story is also carrying the same anti-Panorama story. The Sun's page 26 lead is headlined BBC's own goal over news 'spy' and even manages to bury any mention of the News of the World until the final paragraph.

It's wonderful how Rupert Murdoch's papers always manage to sing from the same hymn book without any need for him to remind them of the tune.

To get a fairer, dispassionate assessment of the programme, see the Financial Times's report, E-mail claims deepen hacking scandal


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/mar/15/thetimes-phone-hacking?CMP=twt_fd
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