Police arrested David Cameron’s former spokesman on Friday over the scandal that has shut down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, forcing the prime minister to defend his judgment while promising sweeping new rules for the British press. As Cameron was fielding hostile questions over why he hired Andy Coulson from the editor’s chair at the tabloid in 2007, despite knowing that one of his journalists had been jailed for hacking into voicemails in search of scoops, Coulson was being arrested by police on suspicion of conspiring in the practice.
Cameron said he took “full responsibility” for his decision to hire Coulson, who quit Downing Street in January when police relaunched inquiries. But the premier rebuffed direct criticism and strove to spread the blame for an affair that has generated public outrage against the press, politicians and police. “Murder victims, terrorist victims, families who have lost loved ones in war…” he said: “That these people could have had their phones hacked into in order to generate stories for a newspaper is simply disgusting.”
So widespread was the rot, Cameron told an emergency news conference after Murdoch shut down his best-selling Sunday paper, that only a completely new system of media regulation and a full public inquiry into what went wrong over a decade at News of the World would meet public demand. “This scandal is not just about some journalists on one newspaper,” Cameron said. “It’s not even just about the press. It’s also about the police. And, yes, it’s also about how politics works and politicians too.”
PRESS BARONS’ GRIP: While defending himself, the Conservative leader said politicians of all parties had been in thrall to press barons for decades and he indicated a new willingness to challenge the Murdoch empire by withholding overt endorsement of News Corp’s bid for broadcaster BSkyB . Shares in the pay-TV chain fell 4 percent after the media ministry said it would take events at the News of the World into account and take its time before giving any approval. Cameron also criticised his friend and neighbour Rebekah Brooks, Coulson’s predecessor as editor and now a top executive and confidante of Murdoch. She should have resigned herself, he said, after closing down the newspaper at a cost of 200 jobs. Cameron’s Labour opponent Ed Miliband, and his Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, offered broadly similar prescriptions for addressing what many Britons believe is a tabloid press out of control in its readiness to invade the privacy of both celebrities and vulnerable people. But media and civil liberties groups will resist efforts to impose regulation they believe would curb free speech or thwart scrutiny of corruption and hypocrisy.
PRIME MINISTER’S JUDGMENT: Cameron is still likely to face the stiffest questioning over his association with Coulson, 43, who brought a sense of what grass-roots wanted to the wealthy Cameron and his privately-educated fellow Conservative leaders. “Very bad things had happened at the News of the World. He had resigned. I gave him a second chance,” Cameron said of hiring Coulson in 2007. “I wasn’t given any specific sort of actionable information about Andy Coulson.”
