Phone hacking: A scandal that has diminished Britain
David Cameron’s friendship with Rebekah Brooks and employment of Andy Coulson puts him at the heart of the phone hacking story.
The Telegraph | from July 15, 2011
The chief executive of a newspaper company resigns after allegations that her colleagues have hacked into the phone accounts of murder victims and their families; a Prime Minister moralises noisily in Parliament, trying to distract attention from the fact that he has been spending family holidays with this disgraced CEO, and that he appointed as his director of communications a man who employed those phone hackers; meanwhile, the country’s most senior police officer is forced to admit that he, too, engaged someone implicated in the scandal – a ruthless and abrasive tabloid journalist from the same newspaper company – as his personal adviser.
This is the United Kingdom we are talking about, not one of those southern European countries whose corruption Britons have traditionally found so amusing. It will be a long time before we can make any more jokes at the expense of Italy or Greece. After the revelations of the past week, the whole world has learned the shameful truth about modern Britain: that its leading politicians and policemen have been lining up to have their palms greased and images burnished by executives of a media empire guilty of deeply criminal – and morally repugnant – invasions of personal privacy.
Rebekah Brooks, the former News of the World editor who stood down as chief executive of News International [on Friday], has at least belatedly recognised the role she played in nurturing this culture. David Cameron, in contrast, has thrown Andy Coulson to the wolves rather than explain precisely why he admitted to his inner circle a man who, when he was editor of the same paper, presided over reporters who hacked the Royal family’s mobile phones.