Beyond Contempt

The Inside Story of the Phone Hacking Trial

Peter Jukes

• Publisher: Canbury
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780993040771
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Droit des médias et du divertissement

PREFACE: The Untold Story

'There has never been any trial like this, ' a defence barrister told me during a smoking break outside the main doors of the Old Bailey – a place where a surprising number of journalists, lawyers and detectives congregated. He added: 'There will never be another trial like this.'

Weeks before the phone hacking trial began in October 2013 the Daily Telegraph commentator Peter Oborne billed it as 'the trial of the century.' Yet it had taken almost the whole of the century so far to arrive. Two years had already passed since the News of the World closed in 2011 and eleven years since the newspaper had hacked the mobile phone of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler.

In a sense it was, as one prosecutor described it, 'the trial nobody wanted.' In 2006, the Metropolitan Police had limited its inquiries into hacking to avoid a high-profile trial, partly to spare the Royal Family embarrassment. Neither the defendants nor their employer, News International (since re-branded News UK) wanted an Old Bailey showdown. And for all the glamour of some of the targets of hacking, compared to other famous murder or terrorism trials, the stakes could seem small: there were no dead bodies, no violent attacks against other individuals, or attempts to overturn the state.

Yet, the state was, somehow, at risk. Two of Britain's most senior police officers had resigned in the wake of the hacking scandal in 2011. Rebekah Brooks, former Murdoch protégé and not so long ago arguably the most powerful woman in Britain, had achieved the extraordinary feat of being friend to three successive prime ministers. Andy Coulson, her deputy and successor as News of the World editor, had been the Prime Minister's director of communications at Number 10. Meanwhile the News of the World's hacking victims ranged from actors and footballers to Cabinet ministers and princes. The tabloid had a reputation for exposing the private secrets of the rich and famous, without fear or favour; the trial promised to be as sensational as its front pages. When the judge, Mr Justice Saunders, warned in his opening remarks that not only the defendants but also 'British justice is on trial, ' he might well have been concerned that intense media interest in such high-profile defendants could generate coverage that would improperly influence the jury.

The trial was unique in other ways. Normally the state in the form of the police and prosecutors holds the balance of power. Much of our legal system has evolved to help to redress that imbalance. But at the hacking trial the financial might of Rupert Murdoch's media companies News UK and News Corp reversed the situation. Privately funded criminal defences are rare: to have six of them (all the final defendants, bar Goodman) was unprecedented.

There are already several books about the phone hacking scandal. My publisher, Martin Hickman, co-wrote one, Dial M for Murdoch, exploring the origins of the scandal and the legal and political campaign in Parliament to expose it. Another, Hack Attack, tells of the long battle waged by the Guardian 's Nick Davies to uncover the truth. Also published this summer was The News Machine, by the Independent on Sunday 's deputy editor, James Hanning, with Glenn Mulcaire, the infamous private investigator whose notebooks provided the bulk of the trial evidence. There are therefore many things I won't cover in this book because they are or will be covered elsewhere: the role of Mulcaire and the origins of phone hacking at the News of the World. Or its cover-up. Or the cover-up of the cover-up. Or the role of media in politics. Or Rupert Murdoch's global empire. Or David Cameron's decision to appoint Andy Coulson as his press spokesman. Or Europe's largest planned media acquisition, the BSkyB takeover.

Beyond Contempt is not even primarily about the evidence heard at the Old Bailey. I'm not going to replicate what is already in the public domain; my crowd funding supporters could rightly claim their money back. This book is all about what couldn't be reported at the time: the documents and legal arguments embargoed till the verdict; behind the scenes activities by lawyers, police and journalists; and the backstage colour and comment which, given our stringent rules about prejudicing a jury, could have landed me in deep trouble if it had been expressed during the case.

This is partly a story about what it's like to report a long trial. While the reporters were sequestered in the Old Bailey, one gained a husband, another nearly lost his life (but in the end, only his appendix). There was friendship, hilarity, tension, and – in the last few weeks – some contention. There was also, as Brooks once alleged in an email to Will Lewis, suggestions of an 'old-fashioned Guardian-BBC hit job': but not against News International. A rather curt copper was rude to a female journalist in Court 12 when he tripped over her on the way to the evidence room. Two male reporters, from the Guardian and the BBC, stepped in to her defence. Voices were raised, but no blows traded.

No matter how objective I try to be about Court 12, this is also ultimately my story. Even on days when the evidence was dull and 'read' in the dry monotone of a barrister or detective, there was always something new to learn.

Court reporting is, as someone once described policing, 99 per cent boredom and 1 per cent terror. I was a completely inexperi- enced 'blogger' roaming around the legal minefields of the Old Bailey. Despite my lack of legal training, I knew that reporting any of the backstage drama, legal argument or comment described above could have been Contempt of Court (telling the jury things they were not supposed to hear), which is punishable by a large fine or imprisonment. One false move therefore could jeopardise the trial and lead straight to jail. Right at the end of the trial, when the jury retired, this book came up in Court 12 in a discussion on reporting restrictions. When I asked a defence barrister why I was singled out, he said: 'I don't want to have to visit you in Wandsworth Prison, Peter.'

I've also decided to use myself as a character in the drama, not because I want the attention but because my unfamiliarity with the law is a useful (and occasionally amusing) story-telling device for similarly baffled members of the public. Many people have also expressed an interest in how I stumbled into covering the case using social media.

Finally, too, I can answer the thousands of questions that so many people have had, which I could not answer for fear of falling foul of the contempt laws, or because I just didn't know. I was also constantly asked to comment on the evidence, what I thought of the guilt or innocence of the defendants and how I rated the various prosecution and defence arguments. Having refrained from anything but reporting for over 30 weeks now, at last I can speak out.

Yet in some ways I feel uncomfortable expressing an opinion. The glory of court reporting is this lack of comment. Going through the process of just saying who said what, when, has been completely refreshing. I see the phone hacking scandal and British journalism in a new light. I hope I've developed a more sceptical ear for commentary, a sharper eye for fact, and a willingness to present both sides of an argument and to let others come to their own conclusions. Our newspapers tend to mix fact and comment in a way that would perturb many American journalists. Often, many of our newspapers seem to more closely resemble vehicles for provocative comment than fact-finding enterprises. That said, Fleet Street arose in the vicinity of the Inns of Court in the discur- sive tumult of the early coffee shops, where opinionated lawyers argued the toss, scribes penned affidavits and pamphleteers sold scandalsheets. A search for disclosure and judgement in the shadow of the noose.

Clearly not all the public's interest in the criminal justice system is in the public interest. One telling of the hacking trial is that it was an old-fashioned witch-hunt disguised as a modern trial. There's undoubtedly a lot of prurience in trial coverage. Opposite the Old Bailey is the Magpie and Stump pub. Though housed in a bland modern building, it stands on the same place as an inn which sold special 'hanging breakfasts' to those who wanted a comfy upstairs room to watch someone swinging from a tree. In the same pub, court reporters carry on that tradition, discussing the demise of unpopular defendants. Indeed, before the News of the World focused on celebrity and sex, it was famous for court reporting, particularly salacious divorce and libel cases.

For serious and lurid reasons this book is called Beyond Contempt. The title was embargoed until the verdict because the resonance – an echo of 'beneath contempt' – could have been unfair to the defendants. As you'll see, that's not my intent. More importantly, the book explores some of the limitations of free speech and the law in a world of social media where every individual has become a publisher. In British law, the right to a fair trial outweighs the right to freedom of expression. As the Crown Prosecution Service notes:

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights... the right to freedom of expression, is a qualified right, and inter- ference of it in the form of restrictions may be appropriate where this is necessary and proportionate in pursuit of a legitimate aim such as the protection of the rights of others to a fair trial(Article 6 ECHR), or to privacy (Article 8 ECHR).

I suspect some journalists are rethinking this balance. Even Rebekah Brooks, a powerful newspaper editor who championed the rights of a free press, seemed to grasp the limitations of free expression when she protested about 'trial by media.' Before and throughout the trial, many defendants complained about media coverage. Andy Coulson was angered by the Guardian's exclu- sive on his imminent arrest. Charlie Brooks, Rebekah's husband, explained that the intensive close protection of his wife (she texted her mother that she had more security than the Prime Minister) was partly because she feared a career-destroying photograph of her arrest. Defendants repeatedly ascribed their 'no comment' interviews to police to the fear that their answers would seep into print – an irony, perhaps, given that as journalists most had run stories from police leaks. During the trial this tension between disclosure, open justice and a fair trial was a nail-biting, moment by moment dilemma.

[ Continues: buy the book to read more ]

240

INDEX

A

1. A Comedy of Errors, 1
2. A Few Good Men, 1
3. Actus reus, 1
4. Akers, Sue, 1
5. Alam, Faria, 1, 2
6. Allen, Lily, 1
7. Angiogram, 1, 2, 3
8. Article 8, ECHR, 1, 2, 3
9. Asprey, Helen, 1, 2
10. Associated Press, 1
11. Attorney General, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

B

1. Bad character applications, 1, 2
2. BBC, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
3. Beckham, David, 1, 2
4. Beeton, Mrs, 1
5. Bell Pottinger, 1
6. Best, Calum, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
7. Best, George, 1
8. Blackadder Column, 1
9. BlackBerry, 1
10. Blackhaw...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: The Untold Story
• Charges
• Legal Teams
• Not War and Peace
• Passion and Prejudice
• Sex, Lies and Voicemails
• Demolition Job
• Mistrial of the Century
• I’ll Be the Judge of That
• Hostile Witness
• The Office Cat
• Interlude: The Trial that Might Have Been
• Holding Court
• Rogue Male
• Commedia Dell’Arte
• Last Man Standing
• Route to Verdict
• Back in the Box
• Truth’s Boots
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Supporters
• Reviews
• About
• Sponsors
• Copyright