Could there be a more emotive firecracker tossed into the flagellation that is the New of the World hacking scandal? A more despicable, heinous act than accessing ‘Murdered Millie’s’ phone messages? – for she is one of us, adopted by the news reading public, ‘Our Millie’ resides with Baby ‘P’ and ‘Our Maddie’ in the national index of outrage – we feel the pain of her family as they strive to believe that she is still alive, deleting her overfull inbox herself.

Until ‘Our Millie’ hit the headlines yesterday afternoon, the only paper serving up serious coverage of the hackgate scandal was the Guardian, and the New Statesman, with the BBC providing a reluctant left flank covering fire. The Guardian has enjoyed 13 straight years of gorging itself on Public Sector advertising to keep itself afloat, all other media organs must rely on ‘hot stories’ to keep the advertising flowing in. They couldn’t afford to poke the hornet’s nest that they themselves resided in.

I have written before of my own involvement in the unsavoury trade that was obtaining information for the Fleet Street boys. We didn’t hack mobile phones – they hadn’t been invented, we surely would have done had they been – and thought nothing of it.

As a story broke, the calls would come in from both sides of ‘the street’; our task was the duplicity, the lies, the falsehoods that would elicit information so that the whiter than white Fleet Street boys needn’t waste time chasing fruitless leads, but could present themselves at the door of the vicar’s cousin, the victim’s father, the adulterous wife,  and obtain the all important exclusive first person account for the next day’s press.

I was married to a New of the World journalist; I know first hand the drinking that goes on to numb the senses and allow yourself to sympathetically extract the tearful account that will permit your victim to humiliate themselves for the delectation of the rag reading public who are keen to know the colour of the vicar’s underpants, that he once shagged his Mother-in Law – wow! What a story! – that allows you to present yourself at the Editor’s desk to be patted on the head with your job preserved for another month – Good lad! A corker! Sucking the toes of the Duchess of York indeed! – first class stuff!

Do you imagine for one moment that they stand in front of that desk and say ‘actually Sir, I don’t deserve the credit, that £500 expenses you sanctioned went to a seedy little man in a first floor back office over the change bureau in Oxford Street, he did all the leg work for me, I didn’t ask how he did it, and he wouldn’t tell me if I did, but he tracked down the school that the Mother in Law worked in, and when I stood outside her classroom and threatened to tell the world everything, she burst into tears and made me promise not to say he had bedded her too’…..

That is not to say that the Editor is unaware, he was once that terrified journalist too, terrified that he will lose his foothold in Fleet Street, terrified that another exclusive will never come his way, terrified that the Sutton and Cheam Guardian is the only future for him and his mortgage. He knows. They all know. They all drank like fish.

Do you imagine that the Private Detective agency who took that £500 would ever say how easy it was to obtain that address? Would explain how to do it to the Editor to save him the expense again?

Do you imagine that the young girl – yeah! That was I! – busy telephoning her way round every school in the area until she found the teacher called ‘x’ would ever have returned the £50 that was her share for the task set? Would have gone home, bereft of the rent money, but satisfied that her morality was preserved. Not a chance.

The entire edifice that was Fleet Street, ‘the news’, is based on information that others would prefer you didn’t have – that is why it becomes news, not a press release.  Changing its name to Canary Wharf won’t have changed anything. Canary’s sing when they are fed, and they have always been fed. HERE and HERE.

‘Missing Millie’ was just that when her mobile was ‘hacked’ – the phrase du jour to describe the difficult task of entering ‘1234’ into a phone before her number to see whether she had had the wit to change the default password. A missing teenager, not much of a story, unless you can add a weeping parent, a shifty looking boyfriend, a distraught best friend. Your job depends on you doing just that.

Could there be a more despicable, heinous crime than doing that? Yes, there could.

It would be the act of disinterring her memory and redistributing her as ‘Murdered Millie phone hacked’ for political purposes.

Yes, the journalists deleted a spam message from an employment agency – and told the Surry police what they had done straight away. It was no secret. No scandal. No political football.

Now we have the foam flecked, syntax garbling John Prescott, whose phone number once appeared in a sheaf of papers found in the office of a private detective, rolled onto the evening news to whip up outrage against the coalition government ‘who have allowed this to go on for far too long’, pictures published of David Cameron attending Murdoch’s summer party – hey! He must have known too! Murdoch must have whispered over the canapés – didn’t he employ a spin doctor who had once worked for Murdoch? Game, set and match.

‘Murdered Millie’s’ phone hacked, messages deleted from dead girl’s phone, perversion of justice, all on Cameron’s watch. Pile in boys, ‘Murdered Millie’ might just revive the moribund Labour party.

13 years the Labour party had to investigate the hacking scandal; by their own admission, they were too scared to for fear of their own dirty little secrets being uncovered. They knew of the payments to police officers. They knew Millie’s phone had been accessed. They knew of Prince Charles’s humiliation at the hands of the ‘Tampax tapes’, of Diana’s affairs, they knew of the methods employed – and they said nothing.

“It’s utterly disgraceful that they’ve let this scandal run on for as long as it has. No more cowardice – we want action.”

No, they are not talking about the 13 years that they let it ‘run on for’ – they are talking about the 12 months that it has taken a different administration to prise the facts loose. And they are presenting it as a political football to boot into the ‘enemy’ goal post.

It’s all because Cameron attending Murdoch’s summer party, all because Rebecca Wade asked her ‘friend’ Cameron to intervene when it looked as though she might be fired – do you really imagine she didn’t ask a host of Labour politicians to intervene as well?

It’s all Murdoch’s fault, he knew Millie was murdered, he knew his journalists has cynically deleted evidence in respect of a crime, course he did Prescott, course he did – and if you are very lucky, you might be able to imprint that message on the public consciousness and prevent another despicable media organ falling into the hands of the right wing press and leave the Guardian and the New Statesman to peddle your pernicious lies alone.

Millie won’t have died in vain then, will she? We’ll forget the mental picture of the fat Prescott in his socks and suspenders grunting over his unfortunate diary secretary pinned to his desk, we’ll only remember the honourable ex-deputy prime minister rolled onto the 6 o’clock news to explode with faux outrage at the cynical Tories and their criminal hacking of a dead girl’s mobile.

The cynical exploitation of ‘Murdered Millie’ and the hypocritical glee of the spitting, snarling left wing politicians offend me far more than the journalist who accessed the voicemail of a missing teenager. In fact if Prescott appears again, I’m going to put my boot through the screen.

SayThatAgain
July 12, 2011 at 18:16

”the journalists deleted a spam message from an employment agency – and
told the Surry police what they had done straight away. It was no secret. No
scandal”

Is that really true? Did the police know as soon as it was done? Then how
come the family were left to think otherwise?

john malpas July 7, 2011 at 05:39

Non of this would happen if the lascivious public were not eager to pay to
get peoplers secrets.
Up to now it has the protection of socialism – ‘we
only do it to the rich’.
But righteousness is a coat everyone likes to
wear.
Basically it is all your fault.

M Barnes July 7, 2011 at 09:30

I think the interaction between press and reading/ viewing public is more
complex and 2-way than you suggest. Yes, the Public can ultimately vote with
their wallets. And yes, our desire to read emotion-soaked news stories has
undoubtedly fed illegal activities by journalists – that old ‘human
angle’.
But here’s the BUT. The Press have fed and so boosted that
appetite. Try an experiment. Put a spoonful of sugar in your tea. After a
while you won’t notice the sweetness. Now put 2 spoonfuls in. After a while
you won’t notice the sweetness, and on and on. There are things printed now
that would have been inconceivable 10 years ago. If the press were to say
‘we only give the public what it wants’ they would be denying that they have
any impact on the world. That simpy isn’t the case. Of course they have an
impact: from positive through indifferent to negative.
I agree that
righteousness is a popular coat and unfortunately for the NoTW, the public’s
venom will be particularly corrosive because it will be fueled by the
knowledge that they have been party to all this. I hope (cos I’m an
optimist) that, when the furore dies down, some more considered actions will
be taken. The trick will be to preserve the good while minimising the
opportunity for the bad. I’m just a punter, what do I know? Is this sort of
behaviour good for the Press as a whole?
And I should clarify – although
a broadsheet reader, I don’t have a snobby thing about tabloids. I rather
liked the fake sheik stuff and I accept the case that tabloids can run great
campaigns (whether I agree with them or not). But this? ermmm no.

M Barnes July 6, 2011 at 15:49

Well it’s an entertaining post and certainly picks off the obvious
hypocrites – John Prescott shooting his mouth off, the Guardian (as with most
of the broadsheets) re-running tabloid stories under cover of deploring them.
Bravo. Politicians seeking to manipulate a terrible tragedy for their own
nefarious ends… mwhah, hah hah and a twirl of their villainous moustaches. But
it’s a bit easy isn’t it?
The Press are beginning to sound as out of touch
as those MP’s with their expenses. ‘The system said it was ok’ isn’t the same
as it being ok. For decades the press have been free to pursue celebs by any
means, fair or foul, for exclusives. The heady power of being able to make or
break anyone, when they pleased, how they pleased has to have been
intoxicating. And so they started to apply those fair and foul means to
non-celebs to whom dreadful things had happened – all for the story, the
byline, the increased circulation and the profit resulting. It was inevitable
that lines would be crossed. That this particular line seems huge because of
our emotional reaction to the Milly story, rather than because of it’s
inherhent illegality is kind of beside the point. Elements of the ‘Press’ have
been spinning out of control for ages.
I rather doubt Coulson or Brooks
knew simply because it was so widespread. I also doubt the NoTW is the only
beneficiary of various PI’s dubious practices. But here’s the thing: If a
business with national prominence had knowingly created a working environment
that pressured employees to the extent of ‘anything goes’,the result being
illegal activities and the press got a hold of the story, what would have been
the headlines? If I ask ‘where did you get this?’ and the answer is ‘don’t
ask’ my next statement is ‘no, you’ll tell me right now’ not a wink, a shrug
and an ‘oh right, I won’t’. But then, I am a business woman, not a journalist.

There’s a word I keep thinking of….. Hubris. It’s a great word.

This hacking story has uncovered some stuff that I think the reading public
need to consider. Are we happy for the police to get paid by the Press for
information? To what extent do the rules apply to a free press and are we
happy for a few eggs to get broken while that omlette of scandal, expose and
legitimate public interest is whipped together? Are editors of newspapers
entitled to a privacy not afforded to anyone else?
I support a robust, rude
Press. However I have serious issues with their arrogant, zero sum assertion
that for a functioning democracy we have to have a free press (also free to
break the law under it’s own cognisance) or a censored press and no democracy
soo hands off folks. Rubbish. It may be difficult but figure it out. I am not
satisfied that the Press understand there are lines, never mind where they are
and whether they should be crossed. Who guards the guards?

InLikeFlint
July 6, 2011 at 22:52

Well said.

Alex July 6, 2011 at 14:17

Brilliant post Anna – it’s refreshing to see that there are at least a few
people out there that can see this circus for what it is.

Don’t get me wrong, those responsible need to be brought to justice, and
when found guilty, be punished accordingly. However there is something very
nauseating about the false cries of indignation coming from those who are
seeing this as an excuse to bash anyone that doesn’t think the same way as
they do about wider issues.

ivan July 6, 2011 at 13:04

The question that no one asks. What is the Guardian trying to hide?

The oldest ploy in the book of misdirections is to shout ‘look at him’ in
order to cover your misdeeds. Every kid in school does it at some stage and
here we have a paper that is aided by the BBC – there has to be a cover up by
them of something, maybe they were the ones doing the hacking and the NotW
were only small fry.

Peter MacFarlane
July 6, 2011 at 12:51

Good post.

And don’t forget that as well as the party political angles, this synthetic
shitstorm will be used to shackle the freedom of the press, too.

Yes, it’s another “beneficial crisis”, folks!

Livewire July 6, 2011 at 04:36

It’s interesting when you look at Prescotts ‘career’. From Prestatyn (Rhyl
had the 2nd highest crime level in Britain a few years back, due to street
disorder) he was MP for Hull (had the highest level of crime in Britain due to
car crime).
In government he smoothed over the cracks in the simmering
warfare between Brown & Blair which allowed Brown to survive & go on
to wreck the economy further, a great job for his constituents and costing
Labour over 90 seats at the last GE. His proud achievement was HIPs, a hidden
tax on house sales hated by all except for a grateful
breed of parasite who
formed (assessors),classic corporatism where the state passes laws to enrich
spivs, since watered down to be an energy efficiency box-ticking form.
I
assume that the ministerial code only covers financial conflicts of interest,
in other walks of life screwing a subordinate is deemed an abuse of power, one
area where the NOTW has it’s place to curb the politicos’ libidos, despite the
phone-tapping allegations in the Dowler case.
Now ermine-vermin, a bloated
bloodsucker whose existence subtracted from peoples’ lives. Why-oh-why can’t
the scumbag do an Elvis and die on the bog after a crate of pies?

Anna
Raccoon July 6, 2011 at 07:04

Now then Livewire, you haven’t been paying attention – you have missed
out an important part of his career….https://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/donkey-racing/

Sister Eva
Longoria July 6, 2011 at 09:45

Now that’s what I call pulling no punches!

Livewire
July 6, 2011 at 11:22

Too many puns around the word seamen, one doesn’t want to be
uncouth…

David C July 5, 2011 at 23:18

Spot on Anna, and disgraceful that the BBC spin it for all it’s worth in
order to give Murdoch a kicking.

Farmer Geddon
July 5, 2011 at 19:27

Oh the irony of it all.

The state’s allowed to monitor all of our email & telephone details for
2 years & we put up with it.

InLikeFlint July 5, 2011 at 19:14

Nobody comes out of this particularly well. Whatever the circumstances of
the original ‘hack’, it is inexcusable that it could have been sanctioned by
anyone in authority at NoTW. It is equally distasteful to see a certain amount
of bandwagon-jumping going on by people anxious to see Murdoch brought down –
there is clearly a wider agenda at work – but that does not excuse what
happened to the Dowler family, it was wrong, pure and simple. After the
revelations concerning Johann Hari recently, it is clear that journalism is in
a state of considerable flux at present. But if you think Murdoch is bad, what
about the Barclay Brothers? Is the Mirror Group squeaky clean? Can anyone
(including the broadsheets) cast the first stone? An interesting take on this
story can be found on the ‘Fleet Street Fox’ blog here: http://www.fleetstreetfox.com/2011/07/gulag-anyone.html

Ian R Thorpe July
5, 2011 at 17:12

Its quite amusing to watch the liberal media throwing shit at the news of
the world as frenetically as they are throwing whitewash at Dominique Strauss
– Kahn. Can you imagine the reaction if a conservative investment banker
rather than a member of the left wing international elite had been accused of
assaulting a black chamber maid?

Engineer July 5, 2011 at 15:16

Anna, you write with clear, and justifiable, disgust.

The sight of cynical politicians spluttering with false indignation about
the failure of the ‘other lot’ to get to grips with a problem that they
themselves kept under careful wraps for some years is one of the reasons that
the public is so disenchanted with politics.

May the fleas of a thousand badgers infest the armpits of Prescott, Tom
Watson, et.al. Their cynical exploitation of a grieving family’s distress for
their own political gain sickens me to the core.

Ted Treen July 5, 2011 at 14:41

Although things were definitely heading that way earlier, the (in)famous
headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” in April ’92 was perceived as a
self-evident fact by the soi-disant intellectual elite. And they’ve viewed it
with trepidation ever since.

Unfortunately, they have some cause to;- for the last few decades, the
electorate has been treated by this same ‘elite’ with contempt – much as the
Pilgrim Fathers treated the indigenous indians in America when buying
Manhattan Island for a few baubles.

Our electorate have been treated as simple-minded children by our revered
rulers – “Throw them a few distracting nothings (bread & circuses again)
and we needn’t bother with them any further”. Whilst hindsight has proved this
course of action to be highly effective, the reverse side of the coin is now
coming into play to bite our dear overlords.

Whilst (in common with so much else in today’s Britain) the electorate has
been “dumbed down” and does not even think about politics in any depth at all,
they are also easily told what to do by whatever propaganda is spouted by
their chosen red-top.

By such means are governments now elected!

Gloria Smudd
July 5, 2011 at 14:19

*Swoon*

Sister Eva
Longoria July 5, 2011 at 14:47

Betrayal betrayal betrayal! This is worse than Eastenders. Oh well, life
goes on tra la la

Gloria Smudd
July 5, 2011 at 13:41

“… come and watch Come Dine With Me and share a bag of Werther’s Originals,
…”
……………………………….
You silver-tongued fox, you! How could I ever resist?
See you tonight…

Gildas theMonk
July 5, 2011 at 14:02

I’ll open a bottle of Sanatogen too if you like

Matt Wardman
July 5, 2011 at 13:00

This sounds like freelance debt collectors.

SadButMadLad July
5, 2011 at 12:57

You had a small mistake in the last sentence, it should read “In fact if
Prescott appears again, I’m going to put my boot through his face – not that
it would do much to change his appearance”.

HTH

Gildas theMonk
July 5, 2011 at 12:19

I agree with a lot of that most excellent post. First, it is clear that
neither I nor the public in general give a flying…fig about the press poking
their noses into “celebs” and politician’s phones. Whether Sienna has got a
new Vitton bag or is sleeping with Jude or Gavin or even Sadie ..well so what?
I can tell you I wouldn’t mind getting a £100K for having my phone hacked. I
would be revealed as having failed to collect some letters and as having new
Tesco points, or some such. Oh, and Agnes from the Dog and Duck doesnt want to
come and watch Come Dine With Me and share a bag of Werther’s Originals, thank
you very much.
With the Millie Downer issue, very different considerations
apply. Here we have prying into the affairs of an innocent teenager who was
missing and needed to be found, and who as we now know had been cruelly and
vilely murdered by a monster. If reports are to be believed then this may have
possibly interfered with evidence and raised the hopes of her parents. Imagine
what state they must have been in.
Cruel. Inhuman. Unacceptable.
If it
is true it must be treated with a criminal prosecution (I can think of
charges) and a prison sentence for all concerned.
Where I agree also with
you Anna is that there are other aspects to this . One is the unscrupulous
mega mouth snark Prescott trying to piggy back his claim for compensation onto
the matter. The others include the competence, or otherwise, of Metropolitan
Plod in investigating the issue. It seems to have been either an incompetent
or half hearted inquiry or series of inquiries. Which leads to the question of
whether there was political pressure by those who might want to be friends
with the seemingly all powerful Murdoch and his media empire to make it all go
away. Who could such people be? I leave it to others to draw their own
conclusions.
Oh, hello Tony *waves*