"Former adviser to UK leader sentenced in phone-hacking case" New York Times July 05, 2014
LONDON — A judge on Friday sentenced Andy Coulson, a former senior editor in Rupert Murdoch’s news empire and a onetime adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, to 18 months in prison for his part in the phone-hacking scandal that convulsed Britain’s press, police, and political elite and inspired calls for tighter regulation of journalists.
Related: Sticking It Where the Sun Doesn't Shine in Britain
You see what is going on over at the BBC, 'eh?
After a trial that spanned almost eight months, Coulson was found guilty last week on a charge of conspiring to intercept phone messages.
Five other defendants were acquitted. They included Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary and Coulson’s onetime lover.
Reporters in the courtroom said Coulson displayed no emotion when the sentence was read out Friday. If he is given time off for good behavior, he could be paroled after serving half of his sentence.
Standing alongside him in the courtroom were four other people involved in the hacking scandal who had admitted their part in the scandal earlier in the trial and who were sentenced to up to six months.
Coulson, who edited Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid from 2003 to 2007, and the newspaper’s former royals editor, Clive Goodman, also face a retrial on separate charges of making illegal payments to police officers in return for two royal telephone directories.
Prosecutors called for the retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict. That has been an underplayed aspect of the scandal as my propaganda pre$$ has mostly focused on salacious nothings regarding the Murdoch spying operation.
--more--"
Related: Their Miss Brooks
I'm glad she is not ours.
"Ex-British tabloid executive aquitted in phone hacking" by Alan Cowell and Katrin Bennhold | New York Times June 25, 2014
LONDON — She rose from being a secretary in Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire to running it. She called prime ministers her friends. Then she found herself in the middle of one of the most riveting trials in years, accused of illegally intercepting voice mails and other crimes, alongside her husband and her former deputy, who it turned out, was also her lover.
And Tuesday, in the latest twist in her extraordinary saga, Rebekah Brooks, the protagonist of Britain’s phone hacking trial, who more than any other defendant had come to symbolize the freewheeling tabloid press and its proximity to power, was acquitted of all charges against her.
Her former lover, Andy Coulson, who succeeded her as editor at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid at the heart of the hacking scandal and who later became a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty of a conspiracy to intercept voice mails. Of the seven defendants in the case, Coulson was the only one to be convicted Tuesday....
That single conviction belied the outsize impact of a yearslong saga that produced parliamentary hearings, humbled Murdoch, led to a new media law, and spurred a cleanup of the worst practices in tabloid newsrooms.
The trial embarrassed many in Britain’s media and political establishment, inducing additional political heartburn for Cameron....
One reason among many that it was mostly under covered by the pre$$. They holler patsy terrorist more often than anything else.
Testimony in the trial revealed that former prime minister Tony Blair offered to act as an “unofficial adviser” to Brooks after she was implicated in the case.
When is someone going to arrest that lying war criminal?
Tense and at times tawdry, the trial has also exposed in great detail the inner workings of British tabloid journalism — the six-figure price tags paid for celebrity scoops, the scavenging in trash cans and the systematic eavesdropping on the cellphones of celebrities, sports stars, politicians, members of the royal family, and others caught up in the news.
Were they in the employ of GCHQ?
Brooks and Coulson, both 46, were close colleagues and friends who rose from scrappy tabloid newsrooms to become members of the London elite.
It's a LOVE STORY!
Part of the prosecution’s case was that their relationship was so intimate that they would have shared what they knew about how their newspapers were operating, including the phone hacking. But in the jury room, their parallel careers diverged with finality.
A steamy love story fir for a tabloid!
He was found to have admitted enough knowledge of what was going on that he could be convicted on at least one charge of conspiracy to intercept cellphone calls and messages. She apparently managed to convince the jury that she was sufficiently removed from it that it was possible she was unaware.
Or the jury was fixed.
When the verdict was read and Brooks was cleared of charges related to phone hacking, hiding evidence, and bribing public officials for information, she appeared to be overcome by emotion and was led away by a court official. Coulson clenched his jaw, then took a deep breath and stared straight ahead.
During the trial, the jury heard that Coulson commented “brilliant” when a journalist played him an intercepted voice mail left for James Bond star Daniel Craig by actress Sienna Miller. When a reporter was working on a story about Calum Best, a television celebrity, Coulson told him to “do his phone.”
Prosecutors had presented phone data confirming widespread hacking during Coulson’s editorship of News of the World from 2003 to 2007. There was far less evidence of hacking from 2000 to 2003, when Brooks was in charge.
The most controversial instance of hacking, however, did occur on her watch, in 2002: News of the World intercepted the voice mail of a kidnapped teenager, Milly Dowler, who was later found dead. When The Guardian disclosed the hacking in 2011, it galvanized public outrage at unscrupulous tabloid practices and helped pave the way to the trial.
What a dowler for Rupe.
Related: Can't Read British Text Message
Then call it in instead.
During the week in question in 2002, however, Brooks was on vacation and her then-deputy, Coulson, was in charge. The prosecution failed to convince the jury that as Coulson’s boss and on-and-off lover, Brooks must have known.
Gross.
Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University in London, said many in Britain had expected her to be convicted.
“People will be outraged that the prosecution couldn’t make a good enough case,” he said.
Maybe they were not trying real hard or did it on purpose. Has happened here.
--more--"
Whatever happened too that Iraq War inquiry and tribunal anyway?
At least the on-the-take police are to be trusted in Britain:
"Review finds bias at Scotland Yard" Associated Press July 03, 2014
LONDON — London Metropolitan Police expressed disappointment on Wednesday about an employment tribunal’s finding that police discriminated against a black female officer because of her gender and race.
The tribunal said Carol Howard, a 35-year-old firearms officer in the Diplomatic Protection Group, had been ‘‘singled out and targeted’’ as a black woman.
It said police aggressively undermined Howard when she joined the overwhelmingly male and white unit. It said police wrongly questioned her honesty, suspected her of tampering with sickness records, and improperly questioned her about her private life.
Lawyer Kiran Daurka, who represents Howard, called the judgment ‘‘a damning indictment’’ of the police.
She said police have failed to change discriminatory practices in the 15 years since the force was found to be ‘‘institutionally racist’’ by an official inquiry into its investigation of the notorious murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Police investigators looking into Howard’s claims followed a policy of deleting all references to sex and race discrimination in their file, the tribunal found.
Isn't that destroying evidence?
The only explanation for this policy was a desire to remove all written references to discrimination because tribunal proceedings could only be started in cases where discrimination was found, the tribunal said.
In a statement, police denied there is such a policy. The Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard, said in a statement it was disappointed by the tribunal’s findings and would seek legal advice on the issue....
--more--"
How much did you have to pay them for the story?
