Why the phone-hacking story won’t go away
Hanging on the telephone
WHEN A NEWSPAPER is written about on a rival’s front page, you can be sure it isn’t good news. So it proved in July 2011, with a flurry of stories about illegal news-gathering techniques at the News of the World, a tabloid that once boasted of shifting more copies than any other English language newspaper and that, thanks to its principal obsession, was known to reporters as the Screws. Within three days Rupert Murdoch ordered the closure of the paper he had bought in 1969, his first acquisition outside New Zealand and his native Australia. “Thank you,” its final headline blared, “& goodbye”. That, it seemed, was that.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Hanging on the telephone”
Britain November 14th 2020
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- The law on foreign takeovers is being tightened
- Biden puts pressure on Johnson to do a deal with the EU
- Boris Johnson’s profligacy problem
- Why the phone-hacking story won’t go away
- Britain’s nuclear industry faces a do-or-die moment
- Rishi Sunak pitches the City to the world
- How Princess Diana shaped politics
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