Peter Burden - News of the World?: Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings

(Burden) has certainly done his homework in putting together a well-documented exposure of underhand tactics, gross intrusion and embarrassing cock-ups

Those of us associated at some point with NoW will share my regret at seeing the paper so deeply in the brown stuff. In its prime, the paper was never sleazy, but a skilful mixture of gravitas and humour

How different today. The most shameful quote in the book is pinned on a former news editor, Greg Miskiw, talking to reporter Charles Begley Miskiw is alleged to have told him: Charles, that is what we do - we go out and destroy other peoples lives.

British Journalism Review

Reviewed by Derek Jameson, a former editor of the News of the World. As a Fleet Street editor, he turned down job applicant Mazher Mahmood. I didnt think he could be trusted, he says. The full text of the above review can be found in the British Journalism Review Volume 19 Number 3, September 2008.

This is a book for anyone whos ever questioned the assertion that a story is in the public interest and anyone concerned with the individuals right to privacy.

Hereford Times

A fascinating portrait of the News of the Worlds legal manager Tom Crone in Peter Burdens engrossing new book.

Journalisted

He (Burden) wants to strike a blow for the victims of the press, and seems to have no selfish motives for doing so.

The Independent

News of the World? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings
First Edition

First published in hardback by Eye Books Ltd in 2008
First published in paperback by Eye Books Ltd in 2009

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Text copyright Peter Burden 2008

Cover design by Robin Chapman
Text layout by Anastasia Sichkarenko
Edited by Julia Dillon

The moral right of Peter Burden to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Printed and bound in Great Britain

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The European Convention on Human Rights - Article 8

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the help and advice of Matthew Engel, Roy Greenslade, John Harris, Sir Simon Jenkins, Tim Toulmin, John Whittingdale MP, Ron Mackay, Max Clifford, and all those who, sympathetic to my cause, have allowed me close enough to overhear their treacherous murmurings.

For this edition:

Max Mosley, James Price QC, Steve Grayson, Ian Cutler, Bob and Sue Firth.

This is not a textbook for journalists. It is intended to explain in laymans terms the anarchy that has developed in some sectors of the British Press. It sets out to be an accurate and dispassionate examination of slovenliness and malpractice in British journalism which in any other profession would be exposed and brought to face justice. There is a growing body of opinion that newspapers like the News of the World - by no means the only culprit - are out of control and unaccountable.

The Red Tops - bright-bannered and branded with outsize, eye-grabbing headlines - are operating beyond the law because the bodies and statutes in place whose function it is to protect the innocent and the privacy of both public and private individuals are too weak to achieve a balanced restraint.

Like many members of the public, I am alarmed that after the recent explosion in communications and unprecedented free flow of information around the globe, both truth and privacy appear to be more vulnerable than ever. I am not a journalist, nor have I ever been, thus I am not a member of a journalistic freemasonry which tends - with no doubt honourable intentions - to protect its fellows from each other. For the sake of clarity I have focused on the activities of one newspaper over recent years in the hope of encouraging those who legislate on the workings of our national press to revisit the bases on which it is monitored and contained.

In the year between the first appearance of this book in hardback, and this edition, it was inevitable that people would contact me with their own News of the World experiences and anecdotes. Where I felt they had something useful to add to the first edition, I have taken them in.

Inevitably, too, fresh events have unfolded in and around the paper, most notably, perhaps in the celebrated case of Max Mosley vs. News of the World. As this may come to represent a turning point in the way in which British tabloids behave, I have included an extended reference to it at the end of Chapter .

November, 2005

Late afternoon sun brightened the pale stone of Hawksmoors handsome church of St George and glinted on the triangular cap of Canary Wharf a couple of miles to the east. It gleamed, too, off the sleek, black hair of a thickset, middle-aged man walking past the gates of the leaf-strewn churchyard. As he strode briskly across The Highway in Wapping, the Saturday afternoon traffic was light, and a breeze rippled the last few leaves on the plane trees that edged the broad thoroughfare.

The dapper, pinstriped figure reached the south side where the usual hubbub of football on the widescreen and raucous amateur commentary spilled from the corner door of The Old Rose. Among the crowd of drinkers that had replaced the dockworkers who once filled the bars were several newsroom colleagues, journalists who had already filed their stories for the next issues of the two mighty Sunday newspapers - the News of the World and The Sunday Times - which in a few hours would explode from the converted tobacco warehouse on the cobbled street behind the old East London pub.

The former warehouse, now a fortress of tinted glass and concrete thrust up from the Victorian dockside building, is the British hub of News International, one of the largest and most powerful media conglomerates in the world, largely owned and entirely controlled by Australian-born media mogul, Keith Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch is widely considered to be one of the most controversial newspaper owners the world has ever known. A brilliant and ruthless business strategist, unrestrained by political or ideological loyalties, over the years he has shown the world his willingness to take commercial gambles on a mind-numbing scale, brazenly changing political horses and editorial direction without a qualm, to suit his current trading priorities. His editors are well aware that on a Murdoch paper the needs of the bottom line are generally expected to out-trump journalistic integrity.