Daily flayed for stand on UK phone-hacking

LETTER ACCUSES THE GUARDIAN OF SIDING WITH THE GOVT AND ITS CLOSE ALLIES, THE NEWSPAPERS THAT PERPETRATED THE CRIMES

LONDON: The investigation by The Guardian into phone-hacking triggered a series of events since 2011, including the closure of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and the Leveson Inquiry, but the newspaper’s support to the Theresa May government closing the second part of the inquiry has irked many.

Part two of the inquiry was scheduled to consider the extent of improper conduct and governance failings by individual newspaper groups, how these were investigated by police and whether police officers received corrupt payments or inducements.

The inquiry’s closure last week sparked much criticism, but The Guardian’s support to the move in an editorial has surprised many. Calling it a betrayal, leading media academics and others have lodged a strong protest with the newspa- per, whose dogged investigation of phone-hacking over several years was led by journalist Nick Davies.

Their letter to the newspaper stated: “Your editorial…constitutes a fourfold betrayal. It betrays your own journalists, who, with Nick Davies leading the way, laboured bravely and brilliantly to expose criminality and wrongdoing at national newspapers.

“It betrays the blameless and often vulnerable victims of those crimes, who were promised a full public inquiry, including the allimportant Leveson part 2.”