Nero recants. Oh yeah?

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The front cover of today’s UK edition of The Economist.

Now let me get this straight.

1. Yesterday, July 14, the Digger gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal (one of his media properties) in which he declared that News Corporation has handled the #hackgate crisis “extremely well in every way possible,” and had made just “minor mistakes.”

2. Today, July 15, he meets the parents of Milly Dowler, the murdered teenager whose mobile phone was hacked by his goons. According to the Daily Telegraph report of the meeting,

The media mogul held his head in his hands as he repeatedly apologised to Milly’s parents Sally and Bob and sister Gemma and said “this never should happened”, the family’s lawyer said.

Speaking outside the central London hotel where the hastily-arranged meeting took place, Mark Lewis said: “He was humbled to give a full and sincere apology to the Dowler family.

“I don’t think somebody could have held their head in their hands and said sorry so many times.”

What links these two contradictory stories?

Simple. On June 14, News Corporation hired Edelman, a global PR company, to try to dig the Murdochs out of the hole they were busily excavating for themselves. As NBC Chicago reports it:

A large public relations firm co-based in Chicago has been hired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to help it manage its way through the ongoing phone-hacking scandal.

“Edelman has been retained by the Management and Standards Group at News Corp to provide communications support and Public Affairs counsel,” confirmed Cheryl Cook, the agency’s Executive Vice President and Director of Media Services.

No U.S.-based Edelman office will be doing any work for News Corp. All activity will be come from Edelman’s London office, said Cook.

The hypocrisy implicit in the Digger’s volte face is staggering. But what is truly nauseating is the way the Dowlers are being exploited by the Murdochs for the second time. First their daughter’s phone is hacked by News Corporation’s employees in order to increase sales of his publications. Now they are being used as passive stooges for the Digger’s PR-driven ‘fightback’.

It’s pass-the-sickbag time, folks. It’s hard to imagine anyone being taken in by this cant. But then an awful lot of people used to buy The News of the World.

So why did Old Crone quit?

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It seems that Tom Crone, who has been News International’s chief lawyer for over 25 years, has quit. Two questions arise from this unexpected development: 1. why did he go now? and 2. What role did he play in the hush-money payments to Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford (the ones that James Murdoch he authorised without knowing the full story)?

“Whether he jumped or was pushed still isn’t clear”, writes the Christian Science Monitor.

But his role at the paper, particularly in a decision three years ago to pay large out-of-court settlements to two men whose phones were hacked into by the company’s employees, is sure to be under scrutiny in the coming weeks and months.

Mr. Crone told Parliament in 2009 that he’d recommended and approved a $1 million settlement paid to Gordon Taylor, the head of the Professional Football Association, whose phone had been illegally hacked by NotW reporters. Colin Myler, then NotW editor, told Parliament that he, Crone, and James Murdoch collectively decided to make that payment. That hearing came after The Guardian newspaper broke the story of the paper’s payments. Celebrity publicist Max Clifford also reportedly received a settlement of over $1 million.

That has raised tantalizing questions about how much James knew about the illegal practices at NotW – both during his time at News International and before.

Yep.

How to mislead Parliament: a letter from Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade)

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A section of the letter Rebekah Wade (as she then was) sent to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in 2009. I particularly like the bit where she states her belief that the Guardian coverage “has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”.

Mrs Brooks, by the way, is (or, should I say was?) David Cameron’s riding-out companion.

Murdoch and metaphor

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Just about the only truly memorable phrase uttered by Edward Heath, the Tory Prime Minister in the 1970s, was his description of Tiny Rowland, the boss of Lonhro (who also, for a time, owned the Observer) as “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. (Rowland famously replied that he would not want to be its acceptable face, which was quite a good riposte.) But Tiny has long since passed to his reward. The Digger and his spawn are proving worthy inheritors of his title.

Jeremy Hunt’s get-out-of-gaol card

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As I write, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt is wriggling on an exquisitely sharp hook. He has to find a way of stopping the Digger’s take-over of BSkyB without triggering a very expensive lawsuit from News Corporation. It may be simpler than he thinks. Apart altogether from the question of whether anyone involved with the Digger is a “fit and proper” person to run a broadcasting company, there is the fact that his decision to approve the BSkYB takeover was apparently based entirely on “assurances” received from News Corp about what would happen to Sky News. Given what we now know about the way News International has concealed information from the police, misled Parliament and possible obstructed the course of justice, Hunt could easily — and plausibly — maintain that no assurances from such a source can be taken seriously.

Who said what? — and when?

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Here’s Statement #1, dated September 2009.

“Concerns about News of the World hacking are codswallop that looks like a politically-motivated put-up job by the Labour party.”

Statement #2, dated July 2011.

“It is unbelievable that victims of some of the most odious crimes in recent years might have had their suffering prolonged and intensified by such blatant intrusion into their lives. If true, it suggests that there was no limit to the callousness of the journalists and provate investigators involved. And if some police officers were indeed paid as part of this process, there is only one word for this: corruption”.

So who made these statements?

Yes, you guessed it: Boris ‘Bollinger’ Johnson, currently Mayor of London.