CATCH UP HERE: TEN IMPORTANT EVENTS IN TEN DAYS

1. A News of the World reporter became the first journalist from Rupert Murdoch’s UK company to be convicted by a jury of conspiring with a public official to commit misconduct in a public office, a verdict with grave implications for News Corporation. A Daily Star reporter was acquitted at the same Old Bailey trial. Read more here2. The Daily Mail lost a five-year libel action brought by Andy Miller, a businessman it falsely accused of corrupt behaviour. After appealing against defeats at every level up to the Supreme Court, the Mail faces costs of around £3m. And though the paper libeled Miller on its front page, it has failed to publish any report of its own defeat before the Supreme Court.3. A former investigations editor at the Sunday Mirror, Graham Johnson, became the second Trinity Mirror journalist to be convicted of phone hacking after pleading guilty. The court heard that he had been instructed in the hacking technique by a senior colleague. Read more here.4. Mazher Mahmood, the former News of the World journalist known as the ‘fake sheikh’, failed in a legal bid to gag a forthcoming Panorama programme about his activities. Mahmood was declared an untrustworthy witness by a judge last July.5. Ian Edmondson, a former news editor of the News of the World, was sentenced to eight months in jail for ordering the hacking of 334 phones. He is the eighth Murdoch employee convicted of hacking and both sides in his case agreed that hacking was ‘common knowledge and industry-wide and had been so since the late 1990s’. Read more here.6. The trial of six current and former Sun journalists on charges of corrupting public officials heard that three million News International emails were missing following a decision to accelerate the mass deletion of emails taken by former chief executive Rebekah Brooks. This appears to be a serious underestimate. The court also saw a 2006 memo insisting that all cash payments to sources by the Sun were signed off by Brooks. Read more here and here.7. Television actor Tom Ellis won substantial damages and a court apology from the Sunday Mirror over unfounded allegations about his personal life. Read more here.8. The Press Recognition Panel, recommended by the Leveson Inquiry and created under Royal Charter, formally came into being. This is the independent body charged with checking whether press self-regulators meet the basic standards of independence and effectiveness needed to give citizens cheap, swift and appropriate redress when they suffer press abuses.9. IMPRESS, the press self-regulator that is not owned and dominated by the big newspaper groups, appointed a former financial ombudsman as its chair.10. The Advertising Standards Authority condemned the Sun for demeaning women after it offered a date with a page 3 topless model as a competition prize. Read more here.ENDS

Download the full report:

Download report

Queries: campaign@hackinginquiry.org

related Posts

No items found.