In November 2005, employees of England’s royal family realized that someone was eavesdropping on their voice mail conversations. The communication secretary and the aide to Prince Charles and the private secretary to Princes William and Harry discovered that new voice mail messages left on their phones had already been played and listened to by someone because they were classified as “old” messages. Hundreds of voice mail messages were being heard by unauthorized listeners. Employees of the royal family were able to quickly narrow down the source of the privacy violation when the News of the World, a highly sensational British tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, published a story about Prince William hurting his knee.

Prince William had told only a very small group of friends this information, making the newspaper the probable source of revealing the information.

The royal family asked the police to investigate the phone hacking. In January 2006, Scotland Yard verified that the News of the World was indeed the party involved in hacking into the royal family’s phones. The two principal people identified as the hackers were reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. The two men had obtained the personal identification numbers (PINs) required to access the voice mail accounts of the royal family. The News of the World published voice mail messages verbatim that were hacked from royals’ phones. The Queen and Prince Charles are not frequent cell phone users, so the hacking threat was limited to other royal family members. On August 6, 2006, the British police arrested three people involved in intercepting phone calls and messages to Clarence House, Prince Charles’s residence. The arrests were the result of a 7-month investigation by the police that had determined “public figures beyond the royal household have had their telephones intercepted which may have potential security implications.” Goodman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to intercept telephone calls “without lawful authority” and was sentenced to 4 months in prison. Mulcaire was also convicted of hacking phone messages while working as a consultant to the News of the World and was sentenced to 6 months in prison.4 The editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, resigned from his position after accepting responsibility for the hacking that occurred during his tenure.

A major concern over the episode was that Scotland Yard was zealous in getting a conviction on hacking related to the royals, yet officers did not seem interested in pursuing leads on hacking that took place on phones not owned by the royal family. In fact, Scotland Yard was accused of not following up on many leads that would have led to a more comprehensive investigation of the role the News of the World and other newspapers had in hacking phones to get information. In 2006, the police had taken files belonging to Mulcaire that had a listing of thousands of mobile phone numbers and 91 mobile phone PIN codes used to get access to the victims’ voice mail accounts. Critics of Scotland Yard stated that the police have a very strong positive relationship with News of the World and did not want to put that relationship in jeopardy by investigating the News of the World’s involvement in hacking mobile phones. The police were able to get information from News of the World reporters about potential leads for high-profile arrests, and the News of the World wrote highly favorable stories about the police based on their leads to the police. The response by Scotland Yard to these criticisms was that officers’ duties do not include the monitoring of the activities of the media. In addition, Scotland Yard had more important investigations to work on instead of moving forward on the phone hacking investigation. However, Scotland Yard did release the names of some non-royals whose phones had been hacked. This led to lawsuits by the victims, and Scotland Yard could no longer control the level of the investigation because the plaintiff lawyers were demanding evidence obtained by Scotland Yard.

This created a financial windfall for those names that were identified by Scotland Yard. As one plaintiff lawyer stated, “Getting a letter from Scotland Yard that your phone has been hacked is rather like getting a Willy Wonka golden ticket . . . Time to queue up at Murdoch Towers to get paid.”

News of the World

Murdoch bought News of the World in 1969, and its circulation in 2012 was 2.9 million readers, which is down from a high 10 years ago of 4 million readers. The culture at News of the World was a “take no prisoner” and “do what you have to do” attitude toward getting information that would lead to a good story.

Coulson, the editor of the News of the World, was allegedly aware that the reporters were actively hacking into phones to get good leads. The hacking was usually a very simple process. In fact, when reporters were asked the origin of the information at staff meetings that included Coulson, the answer would be “We’ve pulled the phone records . . . [and/or] . . . I’ve listened to the phone messages.”

Most mobile phone companies will assign a generic password as the default PIN number to a phone for voice mail such as 1111 or 4444. Many users never change the default pin number, and as a result, the reporters and private investigators only need the person’s phone number to hack into the phone. A common method of obtaining the voice messages is to make two phone calls simultaneously to the targeted phone. The first phone will lock up the phone line, and the second phone will be automatically sent to voice mail. The reporter then presses the PIN number to retrieve the messages and sometimes even deletes them to block any competing newspapers from also having access to the same voice mail messages.

After Coulson resigned from the News of the World, he was hired by the Conservative Party as the head of its communication team. The position is known in the media as the “chief spin doctor,” whose job is to put a positive light on any information pertaining to the Conservative Party. This was a critical appointment for the party because Coulson had strong ties to the Murdoch empire and the Conservative party was trying to regain Murdoch’s support, which had shifted to the Labour Party for Prime Minister Tony Blair and subsequently Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The leader of the Conservative Party is David Cameron. When Cameron won the general election and became prime minister on May 11, 2011, he promoted Coulson to be the top communication advisor in the prime minister’s office. One of the objectives Murdoch wanted from the British government if Cameron were elected was to reduce the financial support for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC was a major competitor for Murdoch’s media empire, and it was one of the strongest critics of Murdoch’s operations. Within a week of the election, Murdoch was invited to the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street for a private meeting with the newly elected prime minister. Two months later, the British government announced that it was going to review the expenses and budgets at the BBC because the government was concerned about the extraordinary level of waste that was occurring using taxpayer’s money....

Questions

1. Is it likely that Rupert Murdoch did lose sight of the operations at News of the World because his empire had gotten so large? Explain.

2. Is phone hacking ever acceptable? Explain.

3. Are practices such as phone hacking used frequently in the media industry? Do you agree that this is always an unethical practice in this industry? Explain.