Ex-News of the World managing editor denies telling staff to falsify names
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Version 0 of 1. The former managing editor of the News of the World has flatly denied telling journalists to "falsify" the names of those the paper made cash payments to for stories or pictures. In his first day in the witness box at the hacking trial, Stuart Kuttner said he "most certainly did not" suggest "journalists should provide a false name and addresses on the forms" for cash payments. Kuttner twice said the number of cash payments were "few", saying he considered such demands as the equivalent of normal requests for payments to contributors to the paper. "The suggestion of falsification, deliberate falsification, I would reject with all the force I have," Kuttner told jurors at the Old Bailey. The court has previously heard that the former royal editor Clive Goodman used three aliases for cash payments while the self-confessed hacker Glenn Mulcaire had a number of pseudonyms for payments, including David Alexander and Paul Williams. Kuttner has denied a single charge that he conspired with others, including former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, to hack phones between 2000 and 2006. Goodman and Coulson have denied conspiring to pay public officials for royal telephone directories. Coulson and Brooks have denied a separate charge that they conspired with Kuttner and others to intercept voicemails. Kuttner described Brooks as "a very dedicated, ambitious" person and raised a smile with Coulson in the dock when he described him as "very focused and balanced newspaper man". Both are previous editors of the News of the World. The 74-year-old newspaper veteran was asked to describe a number of other senior News of the World journalists, including three who have already pleaded guilty to hacking related charges – James Weatherup, a former news editor was not "hungry enough", and might have progressed further had he been "a little bit more hungry"; the paper's former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck was "very focused and tenacious" while Greg Miskiw was "very hard working". But, he added "I do not think we clicked". Kuttner described Goodman as an "enigma" who didn't like to go out of the office for stories. Another senior journalist who cannot be named for legal reasons, was described by Kuttner as "impatient". Kuttner was also asked if he had come across Mulcaire, who has pleaded guilty to hacking, before his arrest in 2006. "I am loathe to say I had no dealings, but I have no recollection of any dealings with Glenn Mulcaire," he said. He added that he it was "possible" but he could put it "no higher than that" that he might have telephoned him to say "When can I expect payment?" Kuttner told jurors he reviewed "thousands" of financial documents a week, sometimes so fast he would have almost described it as a "superficial" process. Kuttner, who held the position for 22 years and worked with up to 15 editors, said that controlling the finances was the "major part" of his job, but he also liked to keep his hand in with the journalism on the paper. He said his 29-year career at the paper, was built on "trust". "The culture in newspapers in my overlong experience is one of trust. You trust people bringing in the stories, people who create the financial documents and until proven otherwise, until the matters that led me here, as far as I know I was never let down". Asked about the quantity of financial documents that would come before him in any given week he put it at thousands. "That review process sometimes, I was going to say superficial, but quite fast is the major part of the managing editor's work. I was going to say hundreds, but that would be a considerable mistake, probably amounts to thousands per week," He opened his defence, which the judge has told the jury is expected to last four days, by describing his 53-year career in newspapers. He started his career at the Stoke Newington and Hackney Observer at the age of 16 and after a brief stint on the People worked at the Evening Standard under Charles Wintour, whom he described as his "formative editor". He covered many of the big stories in the 1960s and 1970s, the jury heard, including the Profumo affair, the Moors murders in 1965, a coup in Greece in 1967, the Paris student riots in 1968 and the Jeremy Thorpe scandal which led to Thorpe's acquittal for the murder of Norman Scott in 1979, something he described as an "important" case to investigate. The jury heard that Kuttner has suffered two heart attacks since retirement in 2009 – one in March 2010 and one in July 2011. He has also suffered a brain stem stroke. The trial continues |