A senior former News of the World journalist goes public to corroborate claims that phone hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the tabloid while the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, was deputy editor and then editor of the paper.Paul McMullan, a former features executive and then member of the newspaper's investigations team, says that he personally commissioned private investigators to commit several hundred acts which could be regarded as unlawful, that the use of illegal techniques was no secret at the paper and that senior editors, including Coulson, were aware that this was going on."How can Coulson possibly say he didn't know what was going on with the private investigators?" he said.
A senior former News of the World journalist goes public to corroborate claims that phone hacking and other illegal reporting techniques were rife at the tabloid while the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, was deputy editor and then editor of the paper.
Paul McMullan, a former features executive and then member of the newspaper's investigations team, says that he personally commissioned private investigators to commit several hundred acts which could be regarded as unlawful, that the use of illegal techniques was no secret at the paper and that senior editors, including Coulson, were aware that this was going on.
"How can Coulson possibly say he didn't know what was going on with the private investigators?" he said.
Since late last week, the UK has been convulsed by a press scandal broken, for once, by a U.S. newspaper. The New York Times reported in its magazine last Wednesday that starting in 2005, The News of the World, a British tabloid, hacked into the voicemail accounts of various British worthies, including the princes William and Harry. That disclosure, in itself, was not a scoop; the British public has known about the digital break-ins since shortly after they occurred, as the News and other tabloids went on a bender at the time promoting stolen bits of royal gossip (some of which related to a visit Harry had taken to a strip club, prompting a rival rag, The Sun, to publish the inevitable headline, "Harry buried Face in Margo's Mega-Boobs. Stripper Jiggled ... Prince Giggled"). In fact, it's been a good three years already since two News of the World employees, royal editor Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator, were jailed after pleading guilty in the affair.
