The Sun Newspaper Might Finally Get Shut Down

The Previous Hacking Scandal

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Last time the News UK divs were up in court, as part of the Leveson enquiry, it was proved that the News of the World had been phone hacking since at least 2005. Clive Goodman, the News of the World royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective, both got sent to prison for hacking a bunch of people, including members of the royal family.

On their release from jail, News UK gave Mulcaire and Goodman a hefty pay out, the poor dears. Goodman got close to a quarter of a million quid for his troubles. See children, crime does pay.

The payout was probably a goodbye kiss and the cost of their silence. Goodman was adamant that the people at the top of News UK knew that hacking was going on, and felt that others more senior should be sent down and punished accordingly. Initially it seemed like he was going to make a bit of a fuss about it all. Funnily enough, since the pay out, he’s remained suspiciously quiet.

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It seems that the general consensus from the public, those who were hacked, the people who worked at those News UK newspapers at the time and the lawyers and judges involved in the case, that everyone at a senior level in News UK knew this sort of shady spying was going on.

Tapping someone’s phone for a headline is a fucking disgrace and it’s pretty appauling that the top geezers received nothing more than some minor financial hiccups.

Historically, the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the Press Complaints Commission and parliamentary committees had all investigated News UK tapping allegations in the past, none had kicked up a fuss, until the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone (above) came to light in 2011. Hacking a murdered girl’s mobile is pretty dark. Especially when they deleted voicemails, giving her family hope and holding up the police investigation. Yeah, the police took notice then.

After that gigantic cock up, official bodies had to do something. There was no getting out of it. The police, before that point, had always been strangely quiet about hacking…. hmmmm… suspicious. As our roving reporter Hugh Grant explains, they were waist deep in the muck too, so they were never likely to fess up: