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Rebekah Brooks Found Not Guilty in Phone Hacking Case Brooks Acquitted and Coulson Convicted in Phone Hacking Case
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON — In another dramatic turn in a case that has transfixed Britain, Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper holdings in Britain, was acquitted on Tuesday of phone hacking and other charges. Andy Coulson, a former tabloid editor and onetime head of communications for Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty on at least one count. LONDON — She rose from being a secretary in Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire to running it. She called prime ministers her friends. Then she found herself in the middle of one of the most riveting trials in years, accused of illegally intercepting voicemails and other crimes, alongside her husband and her former deputy, who it turned out, was also her lover.
The verdicts came after a week of deliberations by the jury, and after lengthy hearings into a scandal at the Murdoch newspaper empire that shook the British police, news media and political elite, and forced Mr. Murdoch to shut down one of his leading Sunday tabloids, The News of the World. And on Tuesday, in the latest twist in her extraordinary saga, Rebekah Brooks, the protagonist of Britain’s phone hacking trial, who more than any other defendant had come to symbolize the freewheeling tabloid press and its proximity to power, was acquitted of all charges against her.
The verdict drew an apology from Mr. Cameron, who has been under fire from opponents who accused him of poor judgment in hiring Mr. Coulson. “I am extremely sorry that I employed him,” Mr. Cameron said. “It was the wrong decision, and I am very clear about that.” Her former lover, Andy Coulson, who succeeded her as editor at the now defunct Sunday tabloid at the heart of the hacking scandal and who was later a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, was found guilty of a conspiracy to intercept voice mails. Of the seven defendants in the case, Mr. Coulson was the only one to be convicted Tuesday; the jury has yet to decide on two other charges against Mr. Coulson and another defendant.
Ms. Brooks, 46, and Mr. Coulson, 46, were tried along with five other defendants on an array of charges, including phone hacking and perverting the course of justice. The seven-month trial was tense and at times tawdry, and gave a rare view of the inner workings of British tabloid journalism and of the systematic eavesdropping on the mobile phones of celebrities, sports figures, politicians, members of the royal family and ordinary people caught up in the news. One defendant said the intercepts were conducted “on an industrial scale.” That single conviction belied the outsize impact of a yearslong saga that produced parliamentary hearings, humbled Mr. Murdoch, led to a new media law and spurred a cleanup of the worst practices in tabloid newsrooms.
Mr. Coulson, who has denied the hacking charges, was the only one of the seven defendants who was found guilty on any count on Tuesday; he was convicted of conspiracy to intercept mobile phone calls and messages. British news media outlets reported that the jury was still considering some charges against him and one other defendant — Clive Goodman, 56, the former royal-news editor at The News of the World — related to accusations of paying police officers for access to royal telephone directories. The trial embarrassed many in Britain’s media and political establishment, inducing additional political heartburn for Mr. Cameron, who on Tuesday apologized publicly for having hired Mr. Coulson as one of his top aides in 2007. Testimony in the trial revealed that former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered to act as an “unofficial adviser” to Ms. Brooks after she was implicated in the case.
Ms. Brooks, who has always insisted on her innocence, was acquitted of phone hacking and three other charges, including seeking to obstruct justice. She was overcome by emotion when the verdict was read, reporters in the courtroom said, and was led away by a court official. Mr. Coulson clenched his jaw, then took a deep breath and stared straight ahead. Tense and at times tawdry, the trial has also exposed in great detail the inner workings of British tabloid journalism — the six-figure price tags paid for celebrity scoops, the scavenging in trash cans and the systematic eavesdropping on the cellphones of celebrities, sports stars, politicians, members of the royal family and others caught up in the news.
The other people acquitted were Stuart Kuttner, 74, a retired managing editor; Ms. Brooks’s husband, the racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, 52; Ms. Brooks’s former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, 50; and Mark Hanna, 51, a former security director. Ms. Brooks and Mr. Coulson, both 46, were close colleagues and friends who rose from scrappy tabloid newsrooms to become members of the London elite. Part of the prosecution’s case was that their relationship was so intimate that they would have shared what they knew about how their newspapers were operating, including the phone hacking. But in the jury room, their parallel careers diverged with finality.
The phone hacking scandal burst into the open in July 2011 with reports that the voice mail of an abducted teenager, Milly Dowler, had been intercepted by an investigator employed by The News of the World in 2002. At that time, Ms. Brooks was editor of the newspaper and Mr. Coulson was her deputy. He was found to have admitted enough knowledge of what was going on that he could be convicted on at least one charge of conspiracy to intercept cellphone calls and messages. She apparently managed to convince the jury that she was sufficiently removed from it that it was possible she was unaware.
During the trial, prosecutors presented phone data relating to widespread hacking during Mr. Coulson’s editorship of The News of the World from 2003 to 2006; he resigned in early 2007. There was far less specific evidence of hacking during Ms. Brooks’s editorship, from 2000 to 2003. When the verdict was read and Ms. Brooks was cleared of charges related to phone hacking, hiding evidence and bribing public officials for information, she appeared to be overcome by emotion and was led away by a court official. Mr. Coulson clenched his jaw, then took a deep breath and stared straight ahead.
Mr. Coulson denied that he had agreed to or had authorized phone hacking, but admitted that he had known it was done in one instance. Ms. Brooks said she was unaware of hacking at the paper during her tenure. During the trial, prosecutors had presented phone data confirming widespread hacking during Mr. Coulson’s editorship of News of the World from 2003 to 2007. But there was far less evidence of hacking from 2000 to 2003, when Ms. Brooks was in charge.
Throughout the scandal and the trial, much attention focused on Ms. Brooks, who had been one of the most powerful figures in British tabloid journalism, at the intersection of politics and the press. She was an associate of many influential people, including Mr. Cameron and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who sought the electoral endorsement of Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers, particularly of the mass-circulation tabloids. The most controversial instance of hacking, however, did occur on her watch, in 2002: News of The World intercepted the voice mail of a kidnapped teenager, Milly Dowler, who was later found dead. When The Guardian disclosed the hacking in 2011, it galvanized public outrage at unscrupulous tabloid practices and ultimately led to the trial.
But the role played by Mr. Coulson also had wide political significance because of his position as an adviser to Mr. Cameron, both in the opposition from 2007 to 2010 and after the Conservative Party took power in a coalition after the 2010 election. During the week in question in 2002, Ms. Brooks was on vacation and her then-deputy, Mr. Coulson, was in charge. The prosecution apparently failed to convince the jury that as Mr. Coulson’s boss and on-and-off lover, Ms. Brooks must have known.
“David Cameron has very serious questions to answer,” Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour opposition, said after the verdict. Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University in London, said many in Britain had expected her to be convicted. “People will be outraged that the prosecution couldn’t make a good enough case,” he said.
“We now know that he brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street,” Mr. Miliband said, referring to the address of the prime ministerial offices and residence. “This isn’t just a serious error of judgment, it taints David Cameron’s government, because we now know that he put his relationship with Rupert Murdoch ahead of doing the right thing.” Ms. Brooks and her husband, Charlie, a racehorse trainer who was also acquitted of charges of hiding evidence (along with his pornography collection) from the police, left the court in a taxi without offering comment. The other people acquitted were Ms. Brooks’s former personal assistant, Cheryl Carter, 50; Mark Hanna, 51, a former security director; and Stuart Kuttner, 74, a retired managing editor. The jury is still considering further charges against Mr. Coulson and Clive Goodman, 56, the former royals editor of News of the World, on charges related to paying police officers for access to royal telephone directories.
Before the trial, Mr. Cameron said that if it turned out that Mr. Coulson knew about the phone hacking, then Mr. Coulson would have lied to the prime minister, among others. At times Britain’s phone-hacking scandal has felt like a badly scripted television drama, with all its barely believable turns and twists: the father-daughter-like relationship between Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Brooks; her $17.6 million severance payment from News International (renamed News UK since) when she first faced charges; a steamy love letter to Mr. Coulson that was read out in court; and a tabloid-style defense strategy that featured the kind of highly personal revelations for which the tabloids Ms. Brooks once edited might have paid six figures, like the adultery and the daughter she had by a surrogate mother.
“I have an old-fashioned view about innocent until proven guilty,” Mr. Cameron told Parliament in 2011. “But if it turns out I have been lied to, that would be the moment for a profound apology. In that event, I can tell you, I will not fall short.” “My personal life was a bit of a car crash,” she said in the witness stand early on.
On Tuesday Mr. Cameron said: “I take full responsibility for employing Andy Coulson. I did so on the basis of undertakings I was given by him about phone hacking, and those turned out not to be the case.” Ms. Brooks was a longtime protégée of Mr. Murdoch’s, and has been called his “fifth daughter” in the British news media. At 31, she became editor of News of the World. A decade later, she was running his British newspapers. All the while, she accumulated a glittering list of friends. Mr. Cameron, a neighbor in the Oxforsdshire countryside, rode her husband’s horses.
“I always said that if they turned out to be wrong, I would make a full and frank apology, and I did that today,” Mr. Cameron said. The tabloid culture revealed in the trial was one in which paying as much as $240,000 for a single article was deemed justified, if that meant beating rivals, even at other Murdoch papers, to a scoop. In one striking example, News of the World tracked down the prostitute Divine Brown, who had been arrested with the actor Hugh Grant in Los Angeles in 1995, and offered her £100,000, or about $160,000, for an exclusive. “Hugh Told Me I Was His Sex Fantasy,” the resulting headline read.
The case has also raised an array of concerns about Mr. Murdoch’s influence over British public life through his newspapers, and it revealed details about the nature of the relationship between Mr. Coulson and Ms. Brooks. During the trial, she acknowledged that they had become intimate. The testimony was such that Ms. Brooks is unlikely to fully recover her reputation — and the trial has humbled a once mighty and swaggering tabloid press, regardless of the outcome. Newspapers may become a little more boring, observers said, but at least they appear to stay within the law these days.
“It’s probably very easy to blame work, but the hours were very long and hard and you got thrown together in an industry like that,” she said, recalling in particular moving into a hotel close to the office during the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003. “It was wrong, and it shouldn’t have happened, but things did.” “The tabloids have become rather less tabloidy,” said John Lloyd, co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Indeed, given the economics of the industry, he suggested, these changes are unlikely to be reversed. The tabloids, Mr. Lloyd said. “are losing power all the time.”
Ms. Brooks and her husband left the Old Bailey courtroom on Tuesday in a taxi without offering comment on their acquittals. In an internal memo to his staff on Tuesday, Mike Darcey, the current chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s News UK, urged staff members to “hold your head high.”
Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University in London and a commentator on media issues, said many in Britain had expected her to be convicted.
“People will be outraged that the prosecution couldn’t make a good enough case,” he said.
Even so, some analysts said the trial had already changed British journalism and humbled a once mighty and swaggering yellow press, regardless of the outcome. The scandal prompted an array of parliamentary, police and public inquiries into the practices and culture of the British press even before the trial began.
“The tabloids have become rather less tabloidy, or at least they stay within the law,” said John Lloyd, co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
Given the economics of the industry, these changes are unlikely to be reversed, Mr. Lloyd said. The tabloids “are losing power all the time,” he said.
“Much of what they do — sex scandals and celebrities — is now widely available on several online outlets,” he said.
In a statement, Mr. Murdoch’s News UK — the successor company to News International, which Ms. Brooks had led — said there had been many changes since the hacking scandal broke.
“We said long ago, and repeat today, that wrongdoing occurred, and we apologized for it,” the company statement said. “We have been paying compensation to those affected and have cooperated with investigations. We made changes in the way we do business to help ensure wrongdoing like this does not occur again.” It went on to say that the company supported a new regulator in Britain, the Independent Press Standards Organization.
In a separate internal email message, Mike Darcey, the current chief executive of News UK, urged staff members to “hold your head high.”
“We should all be proud of what we do here, and the way we do it,” Mr. Darcey said. “Our journalism is world class, and is conducted under the strictest standards of ethics and governance.”“We should all be proud of what we do here, and the way we do it,” Mr. Darcey said. “Our journalism is world class, and is conducted under the strictest standards of ethics and governance.”