The Phone-Hacking Scandal: How Murdoch's UK Empire Fell

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to The Rest is Politics Plus.

To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room, and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com.
That's therestispolitics.com.

This episode is brought to you by Spotify Portal for Backstage. But you're wondering, what's Portal?

Well, it's an internal developer portal built to improve developer experience and boost productivity. All software components are centralized.
Documentation is automated and easy to maintain.

New projects and components? Just a few clicks. With your best practices already built in.
Think, less friction, more innovation. Ready to double your productivity?

Try Spotify portal at backstage.spotify.com.

Welcome to The Rest is Politics. Alistair here.

Not with Rory, but with Michael Wolf, because this week in our series on one of the 21st century's most significant figures, Rupert Murdoch, we're looking at one of his worst legacies within the UK, the scandal of phone hacking.

When it was revealed that they were even hacking the phones of dead children, it shocked Britain to its core, exposed the very, very dark side of our media.

If you're interested in a little bit more, we've left a clip for you here. To hear the full episode and get all the benefits of a Trip Plus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com.

Did you think that phone hacking would bring him down? I thought it had the capacity to. Not necessarily because of the crime itself, but because of their catastrophic handling of it.

I mean, I can't remember what some were up to, but they're into the hundreds of millions in terms of the cost already. Now, in a sort of multi-billion company, that may not be so much.

But I thought reputationally, if you can match the reputational damage to the financial damage, I could see that it might have done. And I thought

his appearance at the select committee when Wendy Dane probably first entered public consciousness here in a big way because when the guy somehow smuggled through parliamentary security a custard a pie, whatever it was.

And of course, in a weird sort of way, I think that sort of helped Murdoch in a bit because that's what people remember about it.

And then they remember Wendy standing up and prepared to take this guy on. Whereas James, who's sitting there looking like a bit of a kind of wet fish, doesn't quite know what to do.
No, and actually,

because the marriage is breaking up at that point, although no one knows it, so Murdoch is pissed that she comes out looking like the hero.

I think the moment of maximum, maximum vulnerability was this revelation, which

really shocked people. Because

when it was people like me and John Prescott and Hugh Grant, political people, celebrities, they probably didn't really care.

When it was emerging.

Or that we deserved it, Michael, because we'd sold out Rupert Murdoch, which I'm grateful that you've retracted that statement earlier. When it emerged that Millie Dowler,

who'd been murdered,

and others who'd been kidnapped victims and children who'd been abducted, that they were actually hacking the phones of murdered children to find out whatever.

You got to one point where Millie Dowler's parents, at this stage, didn't know she was dead, were phoning and leaving messages

to the extent that with all the other messages going on there, the voice boxing ended up being full. And the reason this was so horrific is because her parents are out of their minds with worry.

They're phoning constantly, leaving messages. And

they get this message that the mailbox is full. And then they keep phoning.
And after a while, they can leave a message. So they think, oh my God, she's deleting her messages.
That's great.

That means she's alive. So this actually leads them to think she's alive.
And that, I think, is what really cuts through to the public and thinks, you people are really, really bad.

And that's what led to David Cameron, who people felt had been very soft on Murdoch for the obvious reasons, political, chipping Norton, etc.

That's what led to Cameron saying, we have to have this inquiry into press ethics. And that was the Leveson inquiry.
No, I mean, that's the point at which

this story becomes ⁇

I mean it becomes horrific. You know, the point

is celebrities and politicians, well, maybe you do have something to hide and maybe they should find it out.

But suddenly we're in this territory

of hacking people who have nothing. I mean, they have no, this is not not, there is no news value here.
This is just human suffering that tabloids make some of their living on.

And it emerges, they've been

doing it to British soldiers who've been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to find out what their families are saying and doing, bombing victims. in the 7-7 London bombings.

The mother of another murder victim, an eight-year-old girl called Sarah Payne. So this is just off the scale.
James Murdoch resigns.

James is not only not only resigns, he's basically forced out because, and certainly within the company, they believe that he may be arrested and they have to get him out of the country as fast as possible.

Right. Andy Coulson is then arrested in July 2011.
He's charged. He's convicted.
He goes to prison. He's the only one of this whole escapade of the senior management that goes to prison.

Rebecca Brooks, as we've said earlier, she was charged but not convicted, and including her husband, who was also charged because there was laptops going missing, usual stuff.

Then we have this committee appearance. They were obviously trained out of their, you know, they were media trained like to the nth degree,

but I don't think they really did themselves much good at that. Rebecca Brooks is then arrested July 2011, but she gets off.
Now, but she goes through a long trial.

A long, long, you know, and it's, you know, I sat through that trial. Actually, I got held in contempt for that trial.
Why?

Because British laws are kind of.

What did you do? I just wrote something. Apparently, you're not allowed to.

Well, you're allowed to write about it. Tell me,

what education do we have to give you now, Michael?

What do you do? I wrote about the trial. And you said she's guilty.
Yeah, I probably said that.

You can't do that, Michael. Well, in my country, you can't.
I know you can, but that's why the rule of law is breaking down. Here, you are innocent until proven guilty.

So then we have the Leveson inquiry. And this, I think, is where your justified criticisms of us, the political class, and our...

I think this is where it comes to a head. I am by now in what Tony Blair used to call my jihadic mode.

I'm absolutely convinced this is the moment at which this this wretched media culture in our country has to be changed and Cameron has the opportunity to do it.

David Cameron said that if Lord Leveson produces recommendations which are not bonkers, was his phrase, we will implement them.

The regime that was brought in for press regulation was little more than a sort of, it was another win for the press.

And what's more, Leveson II, which wasn't happening at the time because of all the criminal investigations going on, which was into relations between News International and the police.

That was dropped subsequently

by the Conservative government. So you talk about missed opportunities and blame it on me for not challenging Murdoch at the wedding.
That was a massive missed opportunity.

And I still think we're paying a price. Aaron Powell, it's a broader discussion about whether you think

the tabloid press has continued with its particular power, given the fact that the tabloid press is a shadow of what it once was

even 15 years ago. That's true.
That is true.

And as somebody who comes from a tabloid journalist background, I find that very sad on one level. But I think in a way, the good that was in tabloids had gone anyway.

But I still think our media culture has been very, very badly damaged. I think it's damaged our broadcasters.

Because I think the problem with our broadcasters today is they're still massively influenced by written press.

So even though the power, the sort of numbers of people who read the written press has gone down, their influence within the political debate is still pretty strong, even with social media, AI, and all the other stuff that's coming along.

So, there we are. My God, we got through a lot in that episode, Michael.
You know, I mean, it just goes that there is always a lot at every point in Murdoch's career. I mean,

more than in all other careers, in some sense. I mean, because he's partly partly because he's operating

in so many different venues at a given period of time,

but also because he's doubling down constantly. Good.
Well, that's this episode.

And in the next episode, we're going to be back in the United States and we're going to be talking about the rise and rise of the Fox News

behemoth alongside the rise and rise and fall and rise of Donald Trump. We'll see you then.
See you then, Michael.

Hi, it's David from The Rest is Classified here with a very special message for listeners of The Rest is Politics.

We've just released a two-part series on the pager attacks that were carried out by Israel's foreign intelligence service, Basad, against Hezbollah in the aftermath of October 7th.

Now, for a political and military organization like Hezbollah, command and control is absolutely everything. And the Israelis had tried to destroy the group and ultimately failed.

But in the low-level conflict that the two sides were engaged in post-October 7th, Israel was facing the prospect of a two-front war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take critical action.

As Hezbollah grew increasingly paranoid, they turned to the Pager as a secure alternative, but what they bought instead was a lethal Mossad plot.

Within days, Hezbollah's command was wiped out when the Israelis assassinated its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

To hear the full episode, you can listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcast as we break down this incredible geopolitical gamble and all the spycraft behind the explosive attacks that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.