What can we expect from the Leveson report this week?

This week Lord Justice Leveson concludes his report and will announce his findings and recommendations this Thursday. After months of intense interviewing where we have all enjoyed watching the likes of Rupert Murdoch and our good friendly Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair squirm under the questioning from the committees appointed to question these media sorts. With the charging of Andy Coulson and Rebecca Brooks we look to be finally seeing some justice in terms of big names getting outed as criminals as they rightly are they may well protest their innocence till the time the door on their cell is slammed shut but there can be no doubt of what they knew. Andy Coulson who played a huge part in seeing well known socialist Tommy Sheridan jailed for perjury will hopefully see that sentence quashed and over turned in place of Andy coulson going to jail. But one of the big questions will be will the report by Leveson change the way the press report and behave. I don’t think it will in any major way we live under capitalism where the press is still owned despite all the bad headlines for our press it’s still a law to itself in many ways. The political establishment are especially keen to see the press remain unregulated and all the rumours are that David Cameron will give the press a ticking off but go easy on them and give them one last chance. This will be interesting given the backlash from the public after the phone hacking scandals and if Cameron is seen to ignore the findings or simply just pay lip service to the report this could play very badly for the prime minister. I don’t think full regulation is what people want but the public do want to see a fully accountable press in terms of privacy and invasions of this. I don’t think we will get this for as long as the press is not under democratic control of the masses. But Leveson has left his mark on the press and any eventualities that come out this week will be big news without a doubt. The press has had a big warning will it listen? I doubt it but people’s attitudes have changed slightly. The outrage when a dead young girl’s phone was hacked was huge people were rightly angry and wanted revenge will Levisohn take account of the public’s mood on this and make recommendations that fit 2012 and beyond. Whatever happens three will still be a unregulated press of some description who will still try and push the boundaries as much as they can apteral we’d still wish to know if our thieving MP’s are on the fiddle still and exposing their lies where they can. Only a publically funded democratic system of socialism where the media will be under the control of the workers deciding how much media coverage each story gets and ensuring its fairness and unbiased representing the views of the many not just the narrow interests of a few rich individuals can be called anything near a free press until then the idea we have a free press is a simple pipe dream.

Andy Coulson arrested and charged, time for Tommy Sheridan’s conviction to be quashed

With the excellent news of Andy Coulson being arrested and charged on suspicion of purgery during the former Scottish socialist party leader Tommy Sheridan’s trial.
Prime Minister David Cameron's former director of communications Andy Coulson has been arrested by police and charged with perjury.
Mr Coulson, 44, has now been released, after being detained at his London home at 06:30 BST by Strathclyde Police.
He arrived at a police station in Glasgow shortly before 15:30 BST.
Mr Coulson was formally arrested on Wednesday evening as part of an investigation into evidence at the trial of former MSP Tommy Sheridan.
He left the police station at 21.30 BST on Wednesday evening.
A Crown Office spokesman said there was no legal obligation for Coulson to stay in Scotland, and he was free to return to his home in London.
The spokesman said no date had been set for any court appearance.
Earlier, a police spokeswoman said: "Officers from Strathclyde Police's Operation Rubicon team detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning under section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act 1995 on suspicion of committing perjury before the High Court in Glasgow."
Mr Coulson gave evidence at the perjury trial of former Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan in 2010.
Mr Coulson was called to give evidence at Sheridan's trial as he was editor of the News of the World between 2003 and 2007.

This was posted earlier from the defend Tommy Sheridan campaign
The Defend Tommy Sheridan Campaign is delighted at the arrest of Andy Coulson in London today, for committing perjury in the High Court in Glasgow during the trial of Tommy & Gail Sheridan in 2010.

This is a hugely significant development, given that it comes after an exhaustive investigation by Officers of Strathclyde Police’s ‘Operation Rubicon’.

Mr Sheridan has been regularly briefed by Strathclyde Police Officers over the past 10 months, as the primary complainant in Operation Rubicon, which was instigated after a dossier of evidence, was furnished to them in July 2011, by his then solicitor Aamer A war and Tom Watson MP.

Throughout his trial, Mr Sheridan consistently argued that he was being hacked by the News of the World and that senior executives at News International were conspiring against him. This was denied by Andy Coulson.

It now appears that Strathclyde Police have evidence that lead them to believe him to be lying.

Fiona MacDonald, Secretary of the Defend Tommy Sheridan Campaign said: “It now appears that Mr Coulson’s evidence was nothing but bare-faced lies. Tommy, his family, his friends and his supporters have consistently said that this was the case. Mr Coulson’s arrest has vindicated all of us. We look forward now to seeing justice prevail and for Tommy’s conviction to be overturned.

Ken Ross, Chair of the Defend Tommy Sheridan Campaign said: “The offence of perjury has a very high bar. To be charged with this offence means that the lies told under oath must be seen as being pertinent to the outcome of the case. Given that Strathclyde Police appear now to have taken this view, by the sheer fact that they have arrested Mr Coulson for Perjury, this must surely mean that Tommy now has substantial grounds to appeal his conviction.

“Mr Coulson and his colleagues have wrecked peoples’ lives for years. The net is now closing in on them. We await with relish his conviction and that of others at News International.

**ENDS**

End of The news of the world, time fora free democratic press

So the demise of the News of the World will be greeted with lots of celebrations from trade unionists and working class activists who have been on its wrong end for years.

We clearly on this blog do not wish for any innocent workers to be caught up in all this and fear this is likely to happen with the closing of the paper this weekend.
This is a sad consequence of the paper deciding to close. We hope those workers can find another job very soon and be represented by a unin the NUJ, national union of journalists if they can be.

But this rehiterats our point as socialists for a call for a open democractic media run by the workers for the workers. there should be no profit involved in telling the news. Making money out of peoples misfortunes and happenings is not on and i do hope this will be the end of it although i dont hold out much hope for that.



On Thursday the 200 staff working on the News of the World were given 90-day statutory redundancy notices and were told their jobs were gone by Rebekah Brooks, News International's chief executive.

The National Union of Journalists responded: "This is an act of damage limitation to salvage Murdoch's reputation and that of News International, both of which are now tarnished beyond repair ... Closing the title and sacking over 200 staff in the UK and Ireland, and putting scores more freelances and casuals out of a job, is an act of utter cynical opportunism".

30 sub-editors at the Sun newspaper walked out in protest when they heard of the shocking treatment of their colleagues at the NoW.

The rights of workers within News International are minimal and this is a direct result of the smashing of trade union organisation by Murdoch following the Wapping dispute in 1986.

The Rupert Murdoch owned News of the World (NoW) phone-hacking scandal is being exposed in all its brutal venality. The revelations that Milly Dowler - the 13 year old murdered in 2002 - had her voicemail hacked by the private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was working for the News of the World, has caused mass outrage.

A 'boycott the News of the World' campaign is gaining huge support.

So publicly toxic is the NoW becoming that even multinational companies like Ford and Tesco are pulling or considering pulling advertising from the paper.

On top of this it is currently being reported that some of those who lost family members in the 7/7 bombings in 2005 have also been targeted for hacking by the NoW.

The police have told the parents of the two girls, Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, also murdered in 2002 in Soham, that they're phones were, in all likelihood, hacked.

All child killings are now to be looked at by the current police phone-hacking investigation to see whether their families were also victims of the NoW's gutter methods.

Establishment cover-up
These new and shocking revelations come from documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire in 2006, but are only now coming to light. This follows political and public pressure for a new inquiry following what was widely seen as a cover-up by the Metropolitan Police during its first 'investigation' in 2006.

Then the police claimed that Mulcaire targeted only a very small number of people.

News International gave assurances that "only one rogue reporter" was involved in illegal phone-hacking. The then editor of the NoW, Andy Coulson resigned after Mulcaire and the paper's "Royal Correspondent", Clive Goodman, were jailed.

Coulson went on to be appointed as David Cameron's chief media adviser but resigned late last year.

However, Sean Hoare, a former reporter who worked for Coulson at The Sun and The News of the World, told The New York Times that he had played tape recordings of hacked messages for Coulson and that his former boss "actively encouraged me" to break into the voice-mail accounts of public figures.

Hoare told the BBC Coulson was "well aware that the practice exists. To deny it is a lie, is simply a lie."

Unbelievably, even as late as December 2010 Scotland Yard claimed not to have found any new evidence of criminal activity. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said there was "no admissible evidence" to support the claims that public figures' phones were hacked.

It was only when actress Sienna Miller's civil case was breaking that their was a change of mind and the Met Police issued a statement saying they were to launch a fresh investigation into hacking after receiving "significant new information".

This significant new information had been in their hands since 2006!

First the Guardian newspaper in 2009 claimed thousands of people had been hacked. Then the New York Times in 2010 exposed the fact that the Metropolitan Police had actually seized 4,332 names, 2,987 mobile phone numbers and 91 PIN codes (needed for accessing voicemail messages) from Glenn Mulcaire when he was arrested in 2006.

This alone would clearly indicate that phone hacking and other activities were indeed being practiced on an 'industrial scale'. Mulcaire's documents run to 11,000 pages and contained the mobile numbers and other personal information of thousands of targets.

All the revelations about Milly Dowler, the 7/7 families and the parents of other murdered children were in the hands of the police in 2006.

The extent of police collusion to cover-up the NoW activities is breathtaking. Andy Hayman, who led the 2006 inquiry for the Met, now writes for the Times and other Murdoch papers.

As Labour MP Paul Farrelly, a member of the select committee who looked into the phone hacking scandal commented: "Had Mr Hayman been in charge of the Watergate inquiry, President Nixon would have safely served a full term."... "We were very critical of the evasiveness displayed by Mr Yates (Hayman's replacement) in the police evidence to us."

News International are desperately trying to erect a cordon sanitaire around their chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. Brooks was the editor of the NoW from 2000-2003 and claims to know nothing of any phone-hacking.

Significantly, News International executives have passed to the police inquiry details of payments to police officers signed off by Andy Coulson, for "information".

It seems likely that they are preparing to offer up Coulson as a sacrifice to protect Brooks.

Payments to police
The widespread use of payments to police officers is another reason why the Met police indulged in a blatant cover up. It exposes the embedded links between the Murdoch press and sections of the state machine including the British government.

Both Murdoch and Brooks regularly met with Tony Blair and now David Cameron to push for their right-wing political agenda to be implemented.

In particular Murdoch has been lobbying Cameron and the Con-Dem coalition to allow News Corporation to own BSkyB outright, which would give then an unassailable position as the UK's most powerful broadcaster.

Alongside this, News International executives, particularly Murdoch junior, have launched a broadside against the BBC and its "monopoly", calling for an end to licence fee payments going to the corporation.

Their aim is to establish a totally dominant position for not just their titles, but also the political ideology they promote - free market capitalism and a virulent hostility to the interests of the working class.

News International's four UK papers - The Sun, The Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World - hold a 37% share of all newspaper circulation. Sky TV is already the biggest broadcaster in terms of revenue - £5.9 billion last year alone with profits just under £1 billion.

This puts Sky ahead of the BBC and ITN in terms of financial resources. Murdoch is desperate to win 100% control of BSkyB (he currently holds 40%), so he can access the full cash-cow that is Sky TV.

Full trade union-led public inquiry needed
Demands for a full and open public inquiry are growing into the phone-hacking scandal and the collusion of the police and many politicians. Cameron has now conceded an inquiry but only after police investigations are concluded.

We demand a full and transparent investigation by a democratic and accountable committee that would involve elected workers' representatives, including those of the print trade unions who Murdoch tried to destroy during the Wapping dispute.

Full access to all the documents seized from Mulcaire and other information must be handed over by the police to an independent inquiry.

Under capitalism, our media is neither fair nor impartial - but ultimately serves to defend the prevailing capitalist system and the abuse of power and control by a rich and powerful elite.

Especially today, in the wake of a huge economic crisis of capitalism, the media will aim to peddle the lie that working class people should pay for a crisis they did not create.

At the same time the Murdoch press are silent about the rich bankers and top bosses whose bonuses are back to pre-crash levels, in stark contrast to the millions who are facing unemployment and savage cuts in public services.

That is why we campaign for the democratic public ownership of the major media corporations as the only way to break their abuse of power and ensure a democratic media.

It would then be possible to ensure democratic access to the press based on an allocation to different ideas, including socialist views, dependent on their levels of public support.

Tommy Sheridan case
During the Tommy Sheridan [the well known Scottish socialist and ex-MSP] perjury trial former NoW editor Andy Coulson claimed that he knew nothing about the hacking of Tommy Sheridan's phone, even though Tommy's details were found in Mulcaire's seized documents.

He also denied ever paying bribes to police officers. Furthermore, Bob Bird, the Scottish editor of the NoW said he knew nothing about the hacking of Tommy Sheridan's phone or any other surveillance methods used by the NoW.

He also claimed that he could not find emails between the NoW and Glenn Mulcaire about the investigation that the paper did into Tommy Sheridan, as they had been "shipped off to Mumbai".

Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has been to the forefront of the campaign to get to the truth about the phone-hacking scandal, has been told that the email correspondence is in fact in a warehouse in London.

The reality is that the jury were denied a full picture of the lengths, including the money they paid, that the NoW went to undermine Tommy Sheridan. If they had been given all the facts then it is likely the jury would have arrived at a different verdict.

In addition, had these revelations about the NoW hacking of Milly Dowler and others, including Tommy Sheridan, been made available before Tommy Sheridan's perjury trial, rather than covered up by the police, there would have been no possibility of a conviction.

As it was the jury only found him guilty by eight to six and this conviction, in the light of what has happened in the last few days, must now be overturned.







Strong trade union influence in the newspaper industry can also help prevent the use of illegal and anti-working class methods of investigation, including phone-hacking.

A free democractic press must be born out of this crisis and fresh clean ideas brought forward for the industry.

"This must be accompanied by raising now the need for the nationalisation of the printing presses, television and radio, under popular management and control, as the most democratic means of overcoming the dictatorial stranglehold presently exercised by the press moguls and their acolytes.

"This is not to suggest 'state control' of the press ... We oppose the state monopoly of news and information as existed in the Stalinist states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

"...The real alternative is democratic working-class and popular control of the press and media in general. This would not result in a monopoly for the government or one party but allow access to the media in proportion to political support.

" ... Capitalism and Stalinism defend undemocratic control of the media by a minority. Scientific socialism, Marxism, socialism and democracy stand for taking the 'production of information' out of the hands of a minority to put it in the hands of a majority and allow full freedom of discussion".


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News of the World phone hacking scandal

The dirty tactics of our modern day media

I've been wanting to blog about this topic for some time now but this last week has urged me into it with the resignation of one Andy Coulson as David Camerons communications chief whatever one of those is these days. I think from how i understand it is so out of touch tories can stay in touch with what the everyday person on the street thinks so they dont have to enter out of their ivory towers.

Cynical i know but no more cynical than a lot of newspapers and our press in this country. Andy coulson was forced to resign in the end for reported phone tapping to famous members of the celebrity world and important polititians. While i do think polititians do want things both ways sometimes their right to privacey yet the headlines when they want them i do think phone tapping is a step too far in all this.

In Britain we have one of the most intrusive medias in the modern world you can argue it is due to us wanting to know this apparently is why they do this, in our interests. Well i'm not interested and find a lot of their tactics they use to gain a story and a scandel is downright rude and intrusive sometimes.

Newspapers in this country are turning into being nothing more than being worth the paper they are written on. All they focus on now is celebrity scandels big shocks and big headlines that will grab the imagination.

Gone are the days of great investigative journalism and well researched stories on factual information. Oh no its got to be a scoup or a scandel for you to wake up on a sunday morning to read about.

Recently it has been the football world which has been shamed with a lot of these sex scandels that come up very often now. England footballers playing away from home being photographed and caught with their pants down is all we seem to read these days.

So i make two points do we rally want to be reading this ? and if not why do we continue to buy this tosh and secondly how are these various media sources the press for a want of a better word allowed to get away with such crude dodgy often dirty tactics to get their story.

Why cant we have the news reported that we actually want to know not what they think we should know.

Murdochs media empire

After watching dispatchs tonight on channel 4, i was horrified to hear how much power Rupert murdoch actually whelds now. To have murdoch within a earshot of the most powerful man in britian, the Prime minister. I for one am very worried about where this will eventually lead to.

I afor one am really worried how the right wing media - news corp can influence the government at quitea high up level.This is not healthy for a democratic country i feel.

I think the communications advisor to david cameron is in a really dodgey position now and now this documentary has aired people will be more aware of the shadey world of the media in this country now.

The most worrying party is the role of the police in all this, they sem to have their hands tied in waht they can do. i think their reputation is on the line here if they are not careful.