Yahoo News Transcript Highlights: Murdochs Give Evidence
Former News Of The World editor Rebekah Brooks followed Rupert and James Murdoch in being questioned by MPs over the phone-hacking scandal. Here are transcript highlights from the hearing.
Mrs Brooks, News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son James, the News International chairman, faced the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
It is made up of chairman John Whittingdale ( JV ), Therese Coffey ( TC ), Damian Collins ( DC ), Philip Davies ( PD ), Paul Farrelly ( PF ), Alan Keen ( AK ), Louise Mensch ( LM ), Adrian Sanders ( AS ), Jim Sheridan ( JS ) and Tom Watson ( TW ).
Rupert Murdoch is referred to as RM and his son James JM . Rebekah Brooks is referred to as RB ;
JM: It is a matter of great regret, my father's, and everybody at News Corp and these are standards that these actions do not live up to, the standards that our company tries to live up to all around the world.
JM: It is our intention to put these things right, to make sure they don't happen again.
RM: This is most humble day of my life.
JM: The company relied on both the police having closed the investigation and the repeated assertions that there was no new evidence for them to reopen their investigation.
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JW: When this committee took evidence in 2009, we heard from the editor of the News of the World legal manager of News International and News of the World editor, Colin Myler, the former editor Andy Coulson, the chairman of News International, all of them told us that there had been a thorough investigation, no evidence had ever been found all that anybody else was involved. That is clearly not correct. Were any of them lying to this committee?
JM: The company relied on three things throughout for a period of time up and tell the new evidence emerged The company relied on a police investigation into 2007, and this is before... I became chairman. There was a police investigation which had successful prosecutions brought against two individuals, and the editor of the News of the World resigned. The company relied on both the police having closed the investigation and the repeated assertions that there was no new evidence for them to reopen their investigation. The company relied on the PCC which had a report, which said there was nothing more to miss at the time and the company relied on the legal opinion of outside counsel that was brought.
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TW: You have repeated repeatedly that News Corporation had a no tolerance view of phone hacking by employees?
RM: Yes
TW: Did you still believe it when you made your Thatcher speech and made it clear we will be vigorously pursuing the truth and we will not tolerate wrongdoing. If you were not lying then, somebody lied to you. Who was it?
RM: I don't know. That is what the police are investigating and that is what I am looking into.
TW: Are you aware that in March of 2003, Rebekah Brooks gave evidence to that committee admitting paying police?
RM: I am now aware of that.
TW: I think she amended it seven or eight years afterwards. Did anyone else in your investigation become aware of this at the time?
RM: I did not know of it. Let me just say something, and this is not as an excuse, maybe it is an explanation of my laxity. We employed 53,000 around the world. We are proud great, and ethical and distinguished people and professionals. Perhaps we are appointing people in my trust to run those editions.
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TW (TO RM) : Were you informed about the findings of an investigation (commissioned by News International) from your son, Mr Murdoch or by Rebekah Brooks?
RM: I forget, but I expect by my son. I was in daily contact with them both.
TW: When were you informed about the payments made to Max Clifford?
RM: I was not informed.
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JS: Mr Murdoch, why did you decide to risk the jobs of 200 people before pointing the finger at those responsible for running the company at the time of the illegality, your son and Rebekah Brooks?
RM: When a company closes down it is natural for people to lose jobs. We are continuing to see that those people are employed in other divisions of the company. That is if they are not part of the small group, I don't know how big the group, whatever the group was who were involved with the criminality.
JS: Did you close the paper down because of the criminality.
RM: Yes, we were ashamed by what had happened so we brought it to a close.
JS: People lied to you and lied to their readers.
RM: We had broken our trust with our readers.
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JS: Why did you enter the back door of Number 10 when you visited before the last general election?
RM: Because I was asked to.
JS: Why was that?
RM: To avoid photographers, I don't know, I just did what I was told.
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RM: We had been supporting the Thatcher government, the Conservative government that followed, and we thought it had got tired. We changed and supported the Labour Party 13 years ago, with the direct loss of 200,000 circulation.
JS: Did you ever impose preconditions on the Labour or Conservative Party?
RM: No. The only conversations I had was one with Mr Blair where we were arguing about the Euro.
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JS: Mr Murdoch, do you accept that you are ultimately responsible for this whole fiasco?
RM: No.
JS: Who is responsible?
RM: The people that I trusted to run it and the people they trusted. I worked with Mr Hinton for 52 years and I would trust him with my life.
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JS: You have already suggested (the decision to close the NOTW was) because you felt ashamed; it was not a commercial decision?
RM: Far from it.
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TC: What level of financial payout would it have taken to require an authorisation from the board of News Corporation?
JM: For the full board it is in the millions but I don't know the exact answer.
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RM : ...each newspaper has an editorial manager. They have to approve the expense claims of every reporter The reporter has no authority to pay money on their own.
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TC: I appreciate Mr Murdoch's statement at the beginning, given you have been in the media spotlight and perhaps not appreciated the attention you have had, without wanting to suppress investigative journalism, will this make you think again about how to approach your headlines and targets in future that could be from Hillsborough 96 to celebrities, will you think about?
RM: I think our editors certainly will. I am not aware of any transgressions. It is a matter of taste. It is a difficult issue. We have in this country a wonderful variety of voices. They are naturally very competitive. I am sure headlines can occasionally give offence. It is not intentional.
JM: I think it is important to say one of the lessons, if you will, from all of this for us is that maybe we do need to think, as a business as well as an industry, in this country more forcefully and thoughtfully about journalistic ethics. Over the next six months, and over the years, we would like to be judged on the actions the company takes to put it right.
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JW: ...is it your intention to launch a new Sunday tabloid newspaper?
RM: No, no decision on that. There are no plans to have a News International title coming out on Sunday in the tabloid market.
JM: No immediate plans for that... That is not the company's priority now. The company has to move forward on all these other actions and really get to grips with the facts of these allegations and get to grips with them as best we can.
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AS: Are you familiar with the term wilful blindness? It is a term that came up in the Enron scandal. It states that if there is knowledge that you could have had an should have had but chose not to have, you are still responsible.
RM: I am aware of that phrase and we were not ever guilty of that.
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PD: Mr Murdoch senior, in answers to the questions from Mr Watson seemed to indicate that you had a rather hands-off approach to your company. The point you made was that News of the World was less than 1% of your entire worldwide business and so you would not really be expected to know the ins and outs of what was going on. Could you just give us an illustration of how often he would speak to the editor of your newspapers? How often would you speak to the editor of The Sun and the News of the World?
RM: Very seldom. Sometimes I would ring the editor of the News of the World on the Saturday night and ask if there was any news and that was just to keep in touch. I would ring the editor of the Sunday Times nearly every Saturday. Not to influence what he had to say at all, I am very careful to promise any remark I made it to say I am just inquiring. I am not really in touch. If there is an editor that I spend most time with it is with the editor of the Wall Street Journal, because I am in the same building. I work a 10 or 12 hours day and I cannot tell you the issues I have to handle. Maybe because the News of the World had problems because it was so small in the general (context) of the company, but there were a lot of other things.
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RM : No, I would like to (speak to the editor of The Sun twice a day), but no.
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PD: ...sometimes you would speak to the editor of the News of the World on a Saturday night. The editor of the News of the World says, it has been a standard week, we have paid Gordon Taylor £600,000.
RM: He never said that last sentence.
PD: Surely something as big as that, paying someone a million pounds, £700,000 surely you would have expected the editor of the News of the World to drop it into the conversation during your weekly chat.
RM: No.
PD: What did you discuss with him?
RM: I would say 'what's doing?'. He might say we've got a great story exposing X or Y, or he would say 'nothing special'.
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PD: It seems to me on the face of it that the News of the World was sacrificed in order to try to protect the position of Rebekah Brooks at News International, that in fact, rather than her departure being announced, News of the World was offered up as an alternative to try to deal with the whole thing. Do you regret making that decision and closing News of the World to try to save Rebekah Brooks? In hindsight do you wish you had accepted her resignation to start with in order that that paper could continue in its fine tradition and all of the people out of work could still be in work?
RM: I regret very much that people will not be able to find work. The two decisions were totally unrelated, absolutely and totally unrelated.
PD: So when you came to the UK you said your priority was Rebekah Brooks.
RM: I am not sure I said that, I was quoted as saying that, I had about 20 microphone stuck in my face.
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JM: It is important to note, and I want the clear with the committee, that the company is doing everything it can to make sure that journalists and staff at the News of the World who had nothing to do with any of these issues, who were completely blameless in any of these things, and many have done tremendous work journalistically professionally, commercially for the business, that we find employment for them wherever we can... It is a very regrettable situation, and one that we do not take lightly in any way.
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PF: This is a serious question to Mr Murdoch senior; is it not time for the organisation to say enough is enough, this man allegedly hacked the phone of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, is it not time the organisation to say "do your worst you have behaved disgracefully, we will not pay your costs".
RM: I would like to do that. I don't know the status of what we are doing or what his contract was and whether it has any force.
PF: If the organisation is paying his fees, with you give the instruction that that should stop?
RM: Provided it is not in breach of legal contract, yes.
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PF: We are left in a situation where, you having looked into this affair, having co-operated with the police, you cannot tell us who lodged the file with Harbottle and Lewis, who was aware of its contents, and who kept you from being in full possession of the facts. This is evidence that is... now being submitted to the police that contradicts all the assurances we were given, not in one but in two Select Committee inquiries. I hope you would agree that that is unsatisfactory.
JM: I can say that the company at the time engaged an outside law firm to review a number of e-mails... The opinion was clear and the company rested on that.
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PF: Given the picture that has been painted of individuals on a newsdesk acting as gatekeepers for a private investigator, do you think it is possible at all that editors of your newspaper would not have known about these activities?
RM: I can't say that, because of the police inquiry.
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AK: Do you regret, Mr Rupert (Murdoch), that it has become a family organisation?
RM: When the job became available of the head of BSkyB several people applied, including my son. Not just board committees, but outside experts, etc. And they made the conclusion that he was the right person.
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DC: In the Watergate investigation, looking at that, to what extent you think that the use of confidential private information and phone records and phone hacking is permissible in the extent of a news story?
RM: Phone hacking is something quite different, but investigative journalism, particularly competitive, does lead to a more transparent and open society, inconvenient though that may be too many people, and we are a better society because of it society because of it.
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RM: There would have been a terrible outcry sorry to say this, (and I) do not know your circumstances, or anybody else's around here, when the Daily Telegraph bought a series of stolen documents, all of the expenses of MPs, it caused a massive outcry. It has not been properly addressed. There is an answer to that, I think and we will look at it, Singapore is the most open and clear society in the world, where every minister gets at least \$1 million every year, and the Prime Minister, much more, and there is not any temptation, and it is the cleanest society that you could find anywhere.
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RM: There is an excuse for newspapers to campaign for a change in the law, but never to break it.
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RM: I was brought up by a father who was not rich, but was a great journalist. He, just before he died, bought a small paper, specifically saying in his will it had given him the chance to do good.
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JM: As I have said to the committee earlier, this has been a frustrating process, my frustration, I think, my real anger to learn that there was new evidence emerging, as late as the end of 2010.
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HEARING SUSPENDED AFTER ATTEMPTED ATTACK ON RUPERT MURDOCH
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LM: Can I ask you very specifically, Mr James Murdoch first, when did you become aware that the phones, not merely of celebrities and members of the royal family, but all victims of crime had been hacked? When did you become aware that the phone of the murder victim Milly Dowler had been hacked?
RM: The terrible instance of voice mail interception around Milly Dowler only came to my attention when it was reported in the press... I can tell you, it was a total shock it was the first I'd heard of it.
LM: ...are you absolutely confident that no employee or contractor of News Corp or any of its properties hacked the phones of 9/11 victims or their families?
RM: We have no evidence of that at all.
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LM: Are you doing a global review? Have you heard of any allegations of phone hacking in your other territories?
RM: I'm not aware of any allegations in any of those other territories.
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LM: Have you considered resigning?
RM: I have not.
LM: Why not?
RM: Because I feel that people I trusted, I am not saying who, I don't know what level, have let me down. I think they behaved disgracefully and betrayed the company and me. It is for them to pay. I think that frankly, I am the best person to clean this up.
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TW: Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook.
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JW: News International issued a statement in July of 2009 saying that there is not evidence to support allegations the News of the World journalists had access voice miles of any individual, that they had instructed private investigators to do so or that there was any systemic wrongdoing. Would you now accept that is not correct?
RB: Firstly, before I answer, I would like to add my own personal apologies, to those of James and Rupert Murdoch. Clearly what happened at the News Of The World... and certainly the allegations of voice mail interceptions of victims of crime... is horrific and abhorrent.
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TW: There are many questions I would like to ask, but I shall not be able to do so today because of the criminal proceedings. Why did you sack Tom Crone?
RB: He was not sacked when we closed to News of the World after 168 years. Tom Crone was predominantly the News of the World lawyer. There were new legal teams, and there was not a job for him when we closed the News Of The World.
TW: I must have misunderstood what James Murdoch said, he implied that you had sacked him, but I might (be mistaken). It has been a busy day.
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TW: Did you have any contact (with Glenn Mulcaire)?
RB: Not at all... I did not know that Glen Mulcaire worked (for NOTW). I did not know the name until 2006.
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TW: Do you have any regrets?
RB: Of course I have regrets. The idea that Milly Dowler's telephone was accessed by somebody being paid by the News Of The World, even worse, authorised by somebody at the News Of The World, is abhorrent to me, as it is to everybody in this room.
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LM: You had said that you had paid the police in the past. The manner in which you said that to the committee, you said it almost as though the implication was, everybody was doing it, all tabloid newspapers... Were payments to the police widespread across Fleet Street? Were they confined to News International titles.
RB: I can say that I have never paid a policeman myself. I have never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer. If you saw, at the time of the Home Affairs Select Committee recently, you had various crime editors from Fleet Street discussing that in the past payments have been made to police officers. I was referring to that wide held belief, not a widespread practice.
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RB: Like I have said, at the time I was the editor of The Sun, and I can say that absolutely, The Sun is a very clean ship, it is a great newsroom.
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DC: For the record, you were editor of the News Of The World during the period of the abduction and the murder of Milly Dowler. For something like this, would it be normal to expect that it would be the editor, the most senior member of the editorial staff on duty that day, the lawyers who would sign off on anything, because of the incredible sensitivity of material?
RB: That is probably true, on any story, but particularly as you say on such a sensitive story, the lawyers would be involved, talking to the news editors, the executives on the newsdesk, as to where the information came from, as to what would be the veracity of information.
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RB: When were we first aware that the telephone of Milly Dowler had been phone hacked? A couple of weeks ago. I only heard about it on Monday evening when the story broke in the media.
DC: Nothing was said to you at the News of the World to suggest that the telephone had been phone hacked, that that had been authorised by an employee of the News Of The World?
RB: Of course not, no.
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DC: It seems incredible that you as the editor were so unaware of such fundamental issues.
RB: In some ways I think the opposite, I don't know anyone in their right mind who would authorise, have knowledge of, sanction or approve of anybody listening to the voice mails of Milly Dowler in those circumstances. I don't know anybody who would think it was a right and proper thing to do at this time or at any time.
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PF : Can you remember calling any editors after the Guardian story (in July 2009) to discuss how they might cover or not cover the story to downplay it? Do you remember calling editors including Paul Dacre...?
RB: I don't remember calling him about it, but he and I would talk about industry matters on occasions. I only knew what I'd read on The Guardian.
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TC: Do you have any regrets about any of the headlines that you've done, now that you've been in the spotlight yourself...?
RK: I don't think you would find any of the editors in Fleet Street who did not feel that some headlines they had published had been a mistake.
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RB: If you are asking me about the members of the press and members of the police force, whether they have a symbiotic relationship of exchanging information in terms of the public interest, then they do... Most journalists who work as a crime editor or crime correspondent have a working relationship with their particular police force.
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PD: How often did you speak to or meet the various prime ministers there have been since you were editor of News Of The World, The Sun, chief executive of News International? How often would you speak to or meet Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron respectively?
RK: Gosh. Prime Minister David Cameron... I read we had met 26 times. I do not know if that is absolutely correct... Prime Minister Gordon Brown... In the time he was in Downing Street and while he was Chancellor, I would have gone maybe six times a year.
PD: And with Tony Blair?
RK: Probably similar, maybe in the last few years a little more... Strangely, it was under Labour prime ministers that I was a regular visitor to Downing Street, and not the current administration.
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PD: How many of those prime ministers would ask you as editor or chief-executive, how often or would they ever ask you not to publish a story? Would they know something was in the news and would they ask you to spike a story?
RK: I can't remember an occasion a prime minister has asked us not to run a story. I can remember many occasions when a cabinet minister, politician or prime minister has been very unhappy at the stories we were running, but not that they ever pleaded directly for it not to run.
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RK: I know you have heard unreserved apologies from Rupert and James Murdoch, I would like to reiterate my own my own. The most important thing is to discover the truth behind the allegations, particularly for Milly Dowler's family, but also for other victims of crime.
