15 Dec 2011

Ex-editor reveals fears about tabloid’s practices

A former News of the World editor has said that he feared there were “bombs under the newsroom floor” in the form of a history of illegal practices at the paper, following his appointment.

Giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, Colin Myler revealed that he felt “discomfort” over the extent of phone hacking among the now-defunct Sunday tabloid’s journalists.

Mr Myler became News of the World editor in January 2007 after Andy Coulson resigned following the jailing of the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire.

Mr Myler told the inquiry: “It’s fair to say that I always had some discomfort and at the time I phrased it as that I felt that there could have been bombs under the newsroom floor.

“And I didn’t know where they were and I didn’t know when they were going to go off.”

But he said that trying to get the evidence or establishing the evidence that police already had was another matter.

Mr Myler stressed that he did not believe phone hacking went on at the News of the World while he was editor.

He said he assumed that the police inquiry into the illegal interception of voicemail messages by the paper, which resulted in the convictions of Goodman and Mulcaire, had not uncovered evidence against other journalists.

‘Rogue reporter’

Mr Myler said he initially accepted the line that hacking was restricted to one “rogue reporter” based on the fact that police had not interviewed any other member of staff from the News of the World other than Mr Goodman.

But Mr Myler changed his view after seeing the so-called “For Neville” email, which contained transcripts of illegally intercepted voicemail messages and was apparently destined for the News of the World’s chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck.

He told the inquiry that the rogue reporter defence couldn’t be correct because the ‘For Neville’ email indicated that at least another reporter had transcribed it and it named another reporter.”

Mr Myler denied that the News of the World carried out a “cover-up” by paying Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive Gordon Taylor £425,000 plus costs to settle his claim over the hacking of his phone by the paper.

But he accepted that the company wanted to avoid the embarrassing publicity that could have resulted if the case had gone to trial.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, suggested: “You mentioned the bombs under the newsroom floor, but this was creating a tendency for one or more of those bombs to explode if there were a trial.”

Mr Myler replied: “Possibly that would have been the case… The company, not unreasonably or unsurprisingly, wanted to try to get things back on track after Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman went to jail.”

Mr Myler also revealed during questioning that he had never read transcripts of the Mulcaire and Goodman trial.

“I had to rely on the people there to provide me with the information,” he said.

Apology

Meanwhile, former News of the World reporter Daniel Sanderson said he wanted to apologise to the mother of Madeleine McCann after her personal diary was published without her permission.

Kate McCann told the inquiry last month that she felt “violated” when the intensely private journal appeared in print in September 2008.

Mr Sanderson arranged to buy a Portuguese translation of the diary from a journalist in Portugal, had it translated back into English, and wrote up a story about it, the inquiry heard.

But he said that he understood the paper would not publish the personal diary without Mrs McCann’s express permission.

He said it was left to Ian Edmondson, the News of the World’s head of news, to clear its publication with Mrs McCann.

“I was told at the time that we would not be publishing the diary unless we had specific, express permission from the McCanns,” he said.

Mr Sanderson said he would apologise to Mrs McCann after giving evidence to the inquiry, adding: “I did feel very bad that my involvement in the story had made Mrs McCann feel the way that it had.”