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00:00:00it is a scandal one that's rumbled on for more than 20 years and counting
00:00:10damaging lives I had an inescapable abuser sewing distrust I come a recluse and shaking
00:00:23an industry to its core apologies by some and over a billion pounds spent by two of
00:00:30Britain's biggest newspaper groups on legal fees and on payouts to thousands of victims
00:00:37whose lives have been invaded by phone hacking and unlawful information gathering and yet for
00:00:43many the pain endures not least for a prince who continues to fight this is a David versus
00:00:52Goliath situation the Davids are the claimants and the Goliath is this vast media enterprise
00:00:59and it's not just the rich and famous this wasn't salacious gossip we were just normal
00:01:06people who got involved in a horrific incident recent claims go even further burglary the
00:01:13whole door had been taken off its hinges eavesdropping on people's live phone calls and blagging their
00:01:20private information as one courtroom battle concludes other Fleet Street Giants face trial
00:01:27now accusations of cover-ups against some newspapers it is clear to me that we were not told the full
00:01:35truth have reignited this controversy the yard covered it up giving some new drive in their fight
00:01:43for the truth I don't think there's anybody else in the world that is better suited to be able to see
00:01:49this through than myself I'm trying to get justice for everybody can you just describe what it is that
00:02:04you're looking at a very young photograph of me from my school days and headlines saying Harry's taking drugs smoking dope with pals in the pub
00:02:14um what goes through your head when you see that now um I don't even know what to say anymore
00:02:28being that young and being under constant surveillance and distrusting everybody around you yeah it's it sucks
00:02:44it's been a bitter legal battle that finally reached its conclusion last December Prince Harry's high
00:02:54court case against mirror group newspapers today is a great day for truth as well as accountability
00:03:02the judge ruled that phone hacking and unlawful information gathering was habitual and widespread at the
00:03:11mirror the Sunday mirror and the people for more than a decade this case is not just about hacking it is
00:03:20about a systemic practice of unlawful and appalling behavior for both sides it was the end of a punishing legal
00:03:31process with one side claiming victory the other seeking to draw a line under the saga but it all might
00:03:38not have happened without the persistence and financial firepower of an aggrieved and angry prince this is
00:03:48the first time Prince Harry has spoken about his win did you feel vindicated yeah and I did feel vindicated phone
00:03:56hacking has been going on for a long time it's some especially the the defendants you know claim to for it to be
00:04:02historical well there's a huge amount that um that has come to light now that people and the British
00:04:08public especially simply have no idea about
00:04:11the judge ruled that 15 out of 33 articles about his past girlfriends a conversation with his brother his
00:04:20deployment to Afghanistan were all the result of unlawful invasions into his privacy in total he's
00:04:27reportedly been awarded hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages can you just spell out to me
00:04:33what kind of criminal tactics mirror group newspapers used against you well there's voicemail interception
00:04:40blagging of flight records it was always referred to as just phone hacking but there's the unlawful
00:04:45information gathering and the use of private investigators that was there was really the the
00:04:50the the the second secondary part to this when you got the judges ruling that you had been hacked
00:04:58what was your reaction to go in there and and come out and have the judge rule in our favor was obviously
00:05:06huge but to for him to to go as far as he did with regard to you know this wasn't just the individual
00:05:15people this went right up to the top this was lawyers this was high executives and to be able
00:05:21to achieve that in a trial and that's a it's that's a monumental victory Nick Davies is the journalist
00:05:30who exposed the phone hacking scandal the judgment that mr. justice vancourt handed down is devastating
00:05:37he identifies by name senior journalists across the mirror group titles he identifies the chief executive
00:05:47of the mirror group at that time the chief legal officer and he says of all of them you were on the
00:05:52wrong side of the line here you knew this was going on you failed to stop it it's it's a really
00:05:58really devastating judgment Prince Harry's settled case against mirror group newspapers isn't the only
00:06:04lawsuit on the table he's playing a pivotal part in two other live cases first against Rupert Murdoch's
00:06:16newsgroup newspapers the publisher of the Sun the second against Associated newspapers the publisher of the
00:06:22Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday a powerful news group who've been sucked into this storm for the first
00:06:28time all part of Harry's mission this is a David versus Goliath situation the Davids are the claimants and the Goliath is this
00:06:38vast media enterprise I'm trying to get justice for everybody to understand these courtroom conflicts you need to go back 30 years
00:06:51Britain in the 90s was in the midst of change technology altering the way we lived and celebrity culture had
00:07:00become a national fascination the tabloid papers held the cards the power to sway elections to make or
00:07:10break careers and as the 90s were drawing to a close one little girl in Wales was becoming a rising
00:07:21star I never look back at old headlines or old stories that were written about me I think that
00:07:44whole period of my life was so colored by what the tabloid press were trying to do to us because they
00:07:52they sort of poisoned it in a way Charlotte Church launched into the world's media spotlight at just
00:08:0111 years old you give us a little burst oh just like I see off the orchestra see off the orchestra
00:08:08well you can try I haven't been hitting them this evening there you go a household name overnight with
00:08:15no idea of what to expect it was incredibly exciting we were a working-class family from South Wales and
00:08:25and this sort of stuff just didn't happen to people like us you know it was proper fairytale stuff
00:08:30I was aware of the press coverage that I was getting but I had absolutely no context for it
00:08:39I'd never read anything any sort of newspaper or I was reading things like smash hits
00:08:45um but that was about it this new global superstar was in demand but once the angelic child became a
00:08:55teenager 11 hours and I'm 18 the tabloid tone shifted I'm just gonna know exactly where I'm going
00:09:01little fuckheads they're gonna follow us they cannot follow us we're gonna have to lose a mark
00:09:07from the ages of like you know 15 to 21 essentially I had an inescapable abuser the press
00:09:21they used to cut holes in hedges and stuff where where we lived and where where where my friends
00:09:28lived so they could use long lenses and we wouldn't necessarily know that they were there
00:09:33and then of course when I was acting like a normal teenager
00:09:40they sensationalized that to such a point where you would have thought that I was like
00:09:47a completely out of control
00:09:51person on hard drugs and then you know have everybody believe that
00:10:01it's so dehumanizing
00:10:07many of the stories went beyond press intrusion
00:10:11from the age of 16 onwards she was being hacked by the news of the world
00:10:17there were so many articles that stood out to me as being like there is no way like like where are
00:10:26they listening there's just a level of paranoia and anxiety we used to say God have they tapped have
00:10:34they tapped our phones are they have they got microphones in our house Charlotte believes an
00:10:40article in the Daily Mail was the result of phone tapping there was one story I remember where I was
00:10:47having an argument with my mum and dad on the phone I was literally by myself nobody could have overheard us and it was a live conversation it was a live conversation which ended up in the Daily Mail
00:10:59it's just such a violation and there was just there was so many stories like that
00:11:05the Daily Mail say that Charlotte has never complained about this article and it was based on an overheard conversation in a public place they categorically deny unlawful information gathering as does the journalist who wrote the story
00:11:20but for the papers looking for a scoop anyone connected to Charlotte became collateral damage
00:11:27my mother was already an incredibly venerable woman her mental health was really bad
00:11:33I found her after taking an overdose she was in a really bad way and that was straight in the press
00:11:42straight in the press no idea again where it came from
00:11:45I mean it was horrific and she's never been able to to fully come back from the abuse that she suffered
00:11:53my parents they weren't public people
00:11:59um they had never courted it and
00:12:02they just got absolutely
00:12:06mullered completely mullered by the tabloid press
00:12:09um like they were fair game
00:12:11like I was fair game why was I fair game
00:12:14their motivation could be put down to one factor
00:12:19money
00:12:21there was this ruthless determination to beat the opposition you have these big profit-seeking corporations and they passed down the need to make profit
00:12:32which gets translated into a need to find stories in order to sell more copies in order to have more readers
00:12:39and the criminality in these newspapers is the logical outcome of the constant drive for more and more profit
00:12:46from their bosses
00:12:51if you wanted to career in newspapers and you wanted to career in the tabloid
00:12:55you had to put your head down and do what you were told
00:12:57and so you saw this kind of escalating screw of anxiety going on with people trying to find out
00:13:06well how do you get the scoops
00:13:08where are these stories coming from
00:13:10even now few from inside the tabloid world admit to being part of any illegality
00:13:25paul mcmullen spent seven years at the news of the world one of britain's most popular papers
00:13:37these days he runs a pub on the south coast
00:13:39what sort of pressure was there to deliver exclusives and stories uh the news of the world
00:13:46if you did less than 12 exclusives a year you got fired but sometimes the methods to get those stories
00:13:53were unlawful was that justified uh perfectly yeah because what is in the public interest and i think
00:14:00the public is capable of saying what it's interested in and the very fact that five million people put
00:14:07their hand in their pocket and paid a pound to read it surely that is public interest enough
00:14:14isn't there a difference between public interest and what interests the public no it's exactly the
00:14:18same it has to be can you list for me the kinds of um unlawful tactics that you took part in yeah i
00:14:27did loads of illegal things stole things uh i mean blagged things i didn't blagging even that now is
00:14:35illegal i mean i'll tell you a great blag uh on bob geldoff if you like to give you an idea so
00:14:43bob he got off with this girl in france so we rang up the hotel and said because i speak french i said
00:14:50we are monsieur geldoff's accountants can you send us his bill so they faxed us over the bill
00:14:55everything he'd had on room service all the numbers he'd called so he just called through all the numbers
00:15:00and worked out who his new girlfriend was which i think is a brilliant piece of investigative
00:15:06journalist reason but is that illegal yes oh well anyway it probably wasn't in the 90s
00:15:15then there's the act of voicemail interception or phone hacking a legally gray area until it was made
00:15:21a crime in the year 2000 but paul tells me it didn't stop the news of the world from doing it on an
00:15:28industrial scale did you hack anyone i didn't really have to because um well i was senior enough
00:15:37not to have to do it the people who did it were the reporters who were trying to get on and they were
00:15:43bullied by the bosses but though it hacked everyone's phone i mean literally everyone's phone we had a
00:15:48number we were going to listen to it it was almost an industry standard technique uh everybody did it all
00:15:56the time we didn't see it as bad we didn't see it as illegal so you could say it's pretty victimless
00:16:01crime you didn't even know but don't people have a right to privacy you might want privacy but you
00:16:08don't need it the only people who actually need it are people who are doing something fundamentally
00:16:13wrong or bad and that's why we had all our surveillance techniques to catch them out
00:16:20now it's alleged the tricks of some of the tabloids went far beyond just phone hacking
00:16:29there was microphones in window boxes medical records all blagged and stolen
00:16:34in those days the paparazzi was something else i mean something extraordinary
00:16:54doesn't mean it doesn't happen still today to me to other people but um
00:16:59you know i remember i remember that night out i remember the paparazzi trying to get in the door
00:17:06um to get in the car i remember being hit over the head by cameras i remember my security doing
00:17:10everything they could to try to keep them away it felt like harassment
00:17:17it felt horrible then it feels horrible now
00:17:19how do you feel today here i seem to have no privacy taught
00:17:31just look towards towards me and then we'll go off come in under all right guys that's it
00:17:36wherever i went whatever i did there could well be uh a photographer or a journalist waiting watching
00:17:46some say the loss of privacy is simply the price you pay for fame and fortune but hugh grant believes
00:17:56that as his profile grew so too did the illegal acts used against him this isn't something that's
00:18:03only about phone hacking there was microphones in window boxes outside the house there were trackers
00:18:11microphones dropped into my car uh there were medical records of me and and mothers of my children for
00:18:18instance all blagged and stolen out of the nhs and uh perhaps most spectacularly the burglary of both my
00:18:32flat and my office the actor recently made these claims in legal action against the sun allegations
00:18:39the newspaper has always denied can you take me back to that moment when you discovered you've been burgled
00:18:47uh so in the case of my flat burglary yeah it was quite spectacular in that the the whole door had been
00:18:54taken off its hinges up it's a big walk up like four floors up and yes they'd been through the flat
00:19:02and nothing was stolen they'd been there to get uh information and a lot of information about the
00:19:09interior and the contents of my flat appeared in newspapers a couple of days later and uh there's never
00:19:15been a burglary before or since but back then hugh says even contacting the police brought its own risks
00:19:22these people live above the law and the police i'm afraid at that least at that stage were as dangerous
00:19:29as the reporters if you called the police about anything i remember my girlfriend getting mugged
00:19:34just around here if you called them you were absolutely sure that the first person who would
00:19:39turn up would not be a policeman it would be a reporter because the met just got straight on the
00:19:43phone to the the tabloids tipped them off
00:19:45most of the more difficult or illegal acts were farmed out to private investigators pis specializing
00:19:56in what was known as the dark arts and sometimes they had links to the police
00:20:03peter which isn't his real name was a serving officer whilst moonlighting as a pi he says he worked for
00:20:10mirror group and news group newspapers we mainly specialized in the surveillance side of things
00:20:16anything from accessing voicemails getting into people's emails phone tapping if you personally
00:20:24couldn't get hold of information how did you go about finding it what did you do
00:20:27we had a network of subcontractors who could help us with getting any information that we wanted
00:20:36some of them were more prevalent in blagging some were good at it stuff and some were good at phone
00:20:44tapping do you think that the people who commissioned your work knew that the information could only have
00:20:50come from unlawful methods it was a bit like the wild west really it was very open everything was
00:20:58talked about i don't think that there were ever a time where anyone would say you need to be careful
00:21:05about this but away from fleet street their victims and the public had no idea
00:21:12until in 2005 a chain of events at the news of the world exposed their unlawful tactics the royal
00:21:22correspondent of the news of the world clive goodman is plotting away in the news of the world office
00:21:26not doing terribly well there's this private investigator in the in the background glenn malcare
00:21:30who's helping other people to hack voicemail goodman hooks up with him and says come on help me out here
00:21:35mate the mistake that goodman and malcare made was to target the one group of people in this country
00:21:43who have more prestige and more power than rupert modoc and his company the royal family
00:21:50they systematically targeted phone numbers from the royal household and to some extent
00:21:54they were successful their hacking did bring in exclusives about prince harry and william
00:22:00but the details were so specific they could only have come from one place voicemails buckingham
00:22:06palace grew suspicious and contacted the police in august 2006 clive goodman and glenn malcare are
00:22:14arrested the police sees the private investigators notebooks containing thousands of names and mobile
00:22:22numbers but no one else at the news of the world is charged within months scotland yard closes the
00:22:28police investigation only giving their reasons years later our inquiries showed that in the vast
00:22:35majority of cases there was insufficient evidence to show that tapping had actually been achieved
00:22:42the pair are convicted in january 2007 though the paper's editor andy coulson says he had no idea it
00:22:50had been going on he resigns and moves on to a new job as director of communications for the then
00:22:56opposition leader david cameron i believe in giving people a second chance in february the paper's new
00:23:03editor says an internal investigation found it had been a rogue exception carried out by a single
00:23:09reporter in their newsroom the news of the world succeeded at that time at strapping down a cover-up
00:23:14they were allowed to get away with claiming nothing to see here one dodgy reporter that's it
00:23:20and they very very nearly got away with that the police didn't act quickly enough i was deputy editor
00:23:28of the news of the world before the hacking era later on i again before the hacking era i was deputy
00:23:34editor of the daily mirror and editor of the sunday mirror people in the industry weren't buying it or
00:23:40at least most of most of them were especially anybody with any tabloid experience but the scandal
00:23:45was about to evolve beyond celebrity to those caught up in tragedy prompting public outrage and years of
00:23:54claims court cases and compensation i was contacted by a complete stranger who was in a position to know
00:24:04the whole truth about the phone hacking saga and he sent me an email and said here's my mobile phone
00:24:10number contact me but whatever you do don't leave a voicemail message
00:24:26five years had passed since the arrests at the news of the world britain had moved on and at the
00:24:32tabloid papers it was business as usual but then the story took on a new dimension centered on millie
00:24:40dowler a teenager who'd been murdered seven years earlier tonight it's alleged a private detective
00:24:47working for the news of the world hacked into the missing girl's mobile phone and listened to her
00:24:53messages i understood that the targeting of millie dowler was the most powerful story we had done so
00:24:59far and said so to the editor when i filed it i didn't foresee the extent to which it would make the
00:25:06whole house of cards collapse and people felt completely outraged that a couple of journalists
00:25:13were tampering with a live police inquiry into the murder of a schoolgirl and this went beyond anything
00:25:21to do with hacking into the phone of a celebrity this was on another scale something had to be done
00:25:28politicians don't want to alienate the press they never have but if the public feel that way then
00:25:40the politicians can't ignore it and the politicians didn't just days after the story broke the prime
00:25:48minister david cameron announced a two-part public inquiry into the scandal these are the questions that
00:25:55need answering why did the first police investigation fail so abysmal what exactly was going on at the
00:26:03news of the world and what was going on at other newspapers that weekend after 168 years the news of
00:26:10the world closed for good with this sentimental final front page
00:26:15the news of the news of the news of the news of the news of the news of the news of millie dowler
00:26:21wasn't a lone example it's now thought thousands of people who weren't famous were potentially
00:26:27targeted in the same way at least four explosions of rock central london in a major coordinated terrorist
00:26:34attack paul dadge was propelled onto the front pages when he was photographed helping the wounded
00:26:42in the aftermath of the 77 london bombings it's obviously a memory that's deeply ingrained upon me
00:26:54more so mentally
00:27:00but yeah it's that that picture changed my life i just wanted to help people on that day
00:27:06i can just remember hearing the shutters of the cameras growing a click click click click click click
00:27:15i was now being held up as this heroic poster boy when in effect for me
00:27:23people had died underground and i found that very difficult to fail with
00:27:36for the media that photo teased a mystery they couldn't wait to reveal do you know if she had
00:27:43been in the blaster train or the one that had you i don't know that no i didn't ask you that
00:27:46do you know which hospital she's in don't know that no hungry for the next scoop every journalist
00:27:52wanted to know the identity of the woman behind the mask by the time i'd left that concourse
00:27:58the story had been told to pretty much everybody who was there and everybody importantly had my
00:28:05mobile number because i just said there's my mobile you know if you need anything else let me know and
00:28:09i'll help you out as much as i can days after the hacking of millie dowler's phone came to light
00:28:16police contacted paul to let him know he too had been hacked by the news of the world
00:28:21i wasn't surprised because there was such an enormous pressure on journalists to deliver the
00:28:29story of myself and the person i was pictured with and i remembered at some point i got told
00:28:36by one journalist that she was going to lose her job if she didn't get this story
00:28:46he's since received compensation and newsgroup newspapers expressed regret
00:28:51for the distress caused we weren't celebrities this wasn't salacious gossip we were just normal
00:28:58people who got involved in a horrific incident when something like that happens it makes you feel
00:29:04very vulnerable because you've lost control of the story of what you want to tell and what you don't
00:29:13want to tell and that's very very hard just take its toll on you
00:29:23the leveson inquiry began on the 14th of november 2011. 57 celebrities politicians and members of the
00:29:32public who were victims of press intrusion gave evidence across its 97 days
00:29:37one of them christopher jeffries a retired school teacher who found himself in the center of a media
00:29:45storm during a murder investigation i could barely go out in effect i'd become a prisoner in my own house
00:29:59christopher had been the landlord of joanna yates a young woman whose body was found in bristol on
00:30:06christmas day in 2010. i opened the door at which point i was told i was being arrested
00:30:14on suspicion of the murder of joe yates it is the psychological equivalent i think of being given a
00:30:23a knockout blow he spent three days in police custody by the time he was released without charge
00:30:31headlines had untruthfully painted him as a snooping over sexualized predator linking him to a convicted
00:30:39pedophile and even a previously unsolved murder the picture that was being painted in the tabloids
00:30:48it was a sensational story there was something they wanted to exploit
00:30:53it was perfectly clear that in reporting the case as they had one of the motives of the newspapers was to
00:31:05whip up as much public anger against me as they could he was awarded substantial damages and a public
00:31:16apology from eight newspapers for more than 40 libelous articles but recently he learned some papers
00:31:23may have been using unlawful tactics against him and is now bringing a claim against newsgroup newspapers
00:31:29owners of the sun and the news of the world the allegation is that i was subjected to all sorts of
00:31:38illegality but it's further confirmation that there are almost no debts to which certain elements of the
00:31:49media will not stoop
00:31:55whilst the leveson inquiry gave victims of press intrusion the chance to share their experience
00:32:01most of the 300 people giving evidence were insiders from the worlds of press politics and the police
00:32:09there is a great deal of official secrecy around what actually goes on in the power elite
00:32:13and suddenly there they were being forced to talk in public four prime ministers senior civil
00:32:20servants senior police officers and the most secretive beasts in the jungle newspaper editors
00:32:25hauled out on oath in public now tell us what's been going on those at the helm of the news of the world
00:32:33were quick to make denials witnesses mr coulson please no they didn't wield too much power over politicians
00:32:41i'm not sure i necessarily buy the theory that a newspaper's endorsement will influence its readers
00:32:50directly in that way no they didn't influence the police um i felt that the contact i had with police
00:32:59officers and particularly commissioners and senior police officers was always appropriate
00:33:04and above all no they didn't know about the industrial scale hacking that went on inside the paper i think
00:33:12the senior executives were all misinformed and shielded from anything that was going on there
00:33:22someone took charge of a cover-up which we were victim to and i regret
00:33:29this inquiry wasn't just about the news of the world
00:33:32the entire tabloid industry was under scrutiny but just one journalist was willing to blow the
00:33:48whistle on unlawful behavior at another paper james hipwell was a columnist at the daily mirror
00:33:57i was sitting next to the showbiz journalists and i saw phone hacking going on from the middle of 1999
00:34:05i would say that i saw it happen every day there were eight or ten journalists on the show business
00:34:11desk and most of them were engaged in phone hacking can you tell me who was your editor at the time and
00:34:18did he know about what was happening my editor was pierce morgan he was somewhat obsessive about
00:34:25celebrity news there was no question that he knew what was going on because he would ask them you know
00:34:33where did this story come from and did you get the impression that this was just a technique used by
00:34:38mirror group newspapers no i mean on one uh occasion i remember great laughter in the newsroom
00:34:46and so i asked what was going on and this journalist had he'd hacked into the voicemail of one of the
00:34:52one of these spice girls um and um he knew that his uh one of his opposite numbers on the sun was
00:35:01going to be hacking the same phone and would have picked up the same message message and he didn't
00:35:06want um that journalist here the message so he just deleted it the sun deny this james lost his job on
00:35:14the city column after he was caught insider trading lawyers for the mirror papers at the leveson inquiry
00:35:20tried unsuccessfully to discredit him suggesting these claims were his revenge some might accuse
00:35:27you of having an axe to grind because you lost your job at the daily mirror that didn't really come into
00:35:34it i mean um i see the mirror now as a criminal enterprise my column was part of that criminal
00:35:41enterprise i accept that i i know that some you know we needed to be reigned in and it's not often
00:35:50in your life that you you get a an opportunity um to look back at what's just happened and reflect on it
00:35:58um and try to try to try to put things right
00:36:05but james was a lone voice amidst a clamor of denials from mirror group bosses almighty god that the
00:36:12evidence i shall give the truth the whole truth denials that two high court judges presiding over
00:36:20civil cases against the papers have since found to be untrue is it true uh that there was phone
00:36:27hacking going on amongst the show business team uh no not to my knowledge the inaccuracy of this
00:36:33statement has been established i have seen no evidence to show me that phone hacking has ever
00:36:39taken place that children's around miss bailey knew or turned a blind eye to it from about the end of
00:36:462006. are you able to help us again as to whether or not it's true i'm afraid i'm not i have already
00:36:54found that she was involved in it and she clearly had knowledge of it i have no reason or knowledge to
00:37:01believe it was going on but did you see this sort of thing going on mr morgan no you sure about that
00:37:10one hundred percent there is compelling evidence that the editors of each newspaper knew very
00:37:17well that voicemail interception was being used extensively and habitually and that they were happy
00:37:24to take the benefits of it i think the police need to investigate this because we could have a situation
00:37:30where a number of important witnesses to a government-backed british taxpayer-funded inquiry
00:37:39have lied and that's just simply unacceptable
00:37:47perhaps the most shocking revelation to come out of prince harry's court action
00:37:51is that these unlawful tactics continued during the leveson inquiry
00:38:00what is so strange about the fact that they continued committing the crime
00:38:04is that it looks as though they think that they are beyond the law
00:38:07impunity but by then they know they're not beyond the law the risk level is astonishing when the 16-month
00:38:16inquiry came to an end in 2012 its key recommendation for a new tougher industry watchdog was effectively
00:38:24ignored by the papers with concerns over press freedom we do have an independent regulator
00:38:32but most of the press are not in any way attached to it
00:38:36and the regulator cannot function if none of the organizations that is intended to regulate
00:38:45actually join it many say the tabloids under the spotlight had got off lightly but then a new case
00:38:53brought fresh scrutiny and i went paranoid you know didn't want to speak to nobody
00:39:06can you describe what what's happening there and how much it comes into my mind you know
00:39:21people didn't take it as much as the one the one things they can't take away from it's memories like that
00:39:29them times were like best times in my life until i start getting hacked in that
00:39:34for years many thought phone hacking only happened at the news of the world
00:39:54the publisher paying out compensation to its victims but each case was settled out of court
00:40:01they are not truly sorry only sorry they got caught but then another newspaper group was sucked into the
00:40:09scandal in 2015 the publisher of the mirror became the first to face a high court trial in a civil case
00:40:18eight people accused the mirror of phone hacking one of them was paul gascoigne
00:40:31in the 90s britain was gripped by gaza mania widely regarded as one of the best footballers england has ever
00:40:45produced many labeled him a genius oh here's that's going that's going to finish it here
00:41:01in england it's brilliant becoming famous but once you're famous they just try and knock you down as much as they can
00:41:20as the 90s came to an end injuries and excesses had taken their toll on his career
00:41:26there was divorce and struggles with alcohol i finished playing football started drinking heavy
00:41:38i said it was in a bad way to be fair he soon found himself in the crosshairs of the tabloids
00:41:46whose fascination with his fall from grace led to the repeated hacking of his phone to get stories
00:41:52and i went paranoid so i went out and bought six phones so i just kept on changing numbers i thought
00:42:01right in pocket i'm getting hacked again so i'll go buy another mobile phone and get rid of that one
00:42:08and then i got so scared to speak to someone or check into the hotel room and use a hotel phone
00:42:14you know and you think god up when's i going to stop yeah and then i got just i i come a recluse
00:42:22you know you want to speak to nobody
00:42:29with every story published his suspicions turned on those around him even those he was closest to
00:42:36i was just speaking to my mom and dad and just them the next day had come out in the papers
00:42:45so i went mad i said what the fuck are you speaking of the papers for
00:42:48i said we haven't spoken to them i said you have the only two i've spoken to
00:42:54i love me mom and dad so to think they were thought they were hackers wasn't good
00:43:06what did headlines like that do to you oh it's horrific then eventually you end up reading the
00:43:19story and thinking fucking hell it will go again i don't trust anybody anymore you know it's sad that
00:43:26really in paul gascoigne's case against the mirror newspapers his legal team submitted 18 articles
00:43:39about him published in the early 2000s the newspaper group admitted all of them were the
00:43:45product of unlawful information gathering throughout that time he'd been struggling with addiction
00:43:54and been treated in rehab do you think that the actions the illegal actions of the tabloids
00:44:01oh yeah definitely problems i'd bring my therapist and say listen i feel like i'm gonna have a drink
00:44:07because i i know i'm getting hacked again and he just said no paul you're just paranoid now
00:44:13and i said no listen i know i'm getting fucking hacked saying stupid it's happening again
00:44:24working for a different newspaper the news of the world paul mcmullen remembers how gascoigne was
00:44:31pursued is there anyone that you now regret targeting yes i uh i do regret targeting paul gascoigne because
00:44:44a he was a hero of mine he was actually quite a sensitive soul i remember one particular evening he drove up
00:44:52to visit his dad in newcastle and he turned up there were like five paparazzi sitting outside his
00:44:57dad's house so he was convinced that his dad or his wife or his kid had rung up the papers to get
00:45:04like five grand to tell him where he was and so he went and stayed in a travel lodge on christmas day
00:45:10on his own and it's like oh casa man it was us we're just listening to your phone you know it's not
00:45:14your dad it's not your daughter it's not your i mean suspicion is terrible how do you feel about that now
00:45:20i actually feel terrible you know of uh uh i and we kind of destroyed his life and i'm not saying
00:45:31we made him an alcoholic but sometimes at the screws we went too far
00:45:36in may 2015 paul gascoigne and the other claimants case against the mirror would conclude with emphatic
00:45:51victory it was the first time a judge had ordered a newspaper group to pay damages the victims awarded
00:45:59an unprecedented 1.2 million pounds gascoigne would also settle separately with the sun
00:46:07in 2021 without any admission of liability by the paper
00:46:21you know when i've got the fishing rod in my hand i stop thinking about everything i just concentrate on
00:46:26the fish it's only until i put the the rod away and obviously some of the problems come back that's
00:46:33why i love miss football so much because i think why i was one of the best players in the world that 90
00:46:39minutes for me was my freedom i could do whatever i wanted for that 90 minutes
00:46:45it is a common thread that runs throughout a legacy of paranoia and broken relationships
00:47:01and none have played out more publicly perhaps than those affecting prince harry
00:47:09harry's girl to dump him seems as though they knew something before i even did
00:47:15my first time to do it as well as well as phone hacking mirror group newspapers commissioned
00:47:20private investigators to blag the flight information credit card details or phone bills of prince harry's
00:47:28then girlfriend chelsea davey what sort of feelings does a headline like that uh creating you
00:47:35it's in paranoia and fear and worry concern distrust around the people around you um clearly a headline like
00:47:43that has absolutely no public interest whatever whatsoever it's a big there's a big difference
00:47:48between uh what interests the public and what is public interest so you know what happens in my
00:47:54private life between myself and then girlfriend is is exactly that between us
00:48:02other victims of hacking that i've spoken to have described the paranoia that it creates
00:48:06you identify with that i think paranoia is a very interesting word because yes then it could be
00:48:16paranoia but then when you're vindicated it it proves that you weren't being paranoid you know same
00:48:22same with my mother you know there is evidence to suggest that she was being hacked in the mid 90s
00:48:29probably one of the first people to be hacked and yet still today the press the tabloid press
00:48:35very much enjoy painting her as being paranoid um but she wasn't paranoid um she was absolutely right
00:48:44of what was happening to her to her and she's not around today to to find out the truth does your
00:48:50mother motivate you in this league yeah yeah there's all sorts of things that motivate me while it's never
00:48:56been proven in court that princess diana was hacked the past remains raw some more questions
00:49:05whether there's an element of payback here too no i think i think i i i know that it is clear now
00:49:11to everybody that the risk of taking on the press and the the risk of such retaliation
00:49:20from them by taking these claims forward it's clearly not in my interest to do that look at what
00:49:27has happened in the last four years to me my wife and my family right so that was a very hard
00:49:31decision for me to make which is how how bad is it going to get some people would say that that you
00:49:38know you're taking on these these high profile battles but that actually attracts more attention
00:49:43onto you there is more than enough attention on me and my wife anyway there was they pushed me too
00:49:49far it got to a point where you're damned if you do you're damned if you don't i don't think there's
00:49:55anybody else in the world that is better suited and placed to be able to see this through than
00:50:00myself it's still dangerous and all it takes is one lone actor one person who reads this stuff to act on
00:50:08what they have read and whether it's a knife or acid whatever it is and these are things that are
00:50:16generating concern for me it's one of the reasons why i won't bring my wife back to this country
00:50:21both your father and your sister-in-law have been unwell it's a reminder i guess to all of us that
00:50:26life is precious does it ever just make you think this is not worth it life is just too short for these
00:50:33legal battles um i don't think the legal the continuation of these legal battles is
00:50:39is the sort of the two things are completely separate um you know my father and my sister-in-law
00:50:46and me you know following through on these legal battles are two completely different things
00:50:53the scars run deep from the personal to the political with claims unlawful tactics were used to
00:51:02target those at the very heart of power
00:51:14i think the press had enormous power at that time and i think it's a lesson for all of us that we're
00:51:20in a democracy and it's the people not the press that must rule
00:51:23in 2007 just as the phone hacking scandal was starting to emerge gordon brown became prime minister
00:51:40at that time amidst a frenzy of unlawful information gathering it's claimed no one was safe not even the
00:51:47the inhabitant of number 10. there seemed to be no limits to what this group would do
00:51:56the intention was obviously to to embarrass or or even to to to get rid of me much of it has only
00:52:02become known to me in in the last year or two he claims he was targeted by journalists from rupert
00:52:08murdoch's newsgroup newspapers my bank account was broken into my building society account was broken into
00:52:15my gas bill my electricity bill my telecommunications bill i know that they tried to get information
00:52:21from the police computer about me all these things happened to me during the period i was chancellor and
00:52:26prime minister he's been accusing the company since the leveson inquiry but they strongly deny all of this
00:52:34the former prime minister believes he was being spied on as the country was facing difficult times
00:52:40we still don't know the extent of the surveillance if of course when you're talking about national
00:52:47security you're talking about at that time afghanistan and iraq being military exercises you're talking
00:52:55also about very confidential information about the state of the banking industry during the financial crisis
00:53:01if any of that we find was being tapped then that would become a serious national security issue that has to
00:53:07be further investigated we can see calls going into the mobile phone of gordon brown when he was
00:53:14chancellor of the exchequer and prime minister the murdoch company wants to say well these may have
00:53:19been legitimate calls from journalists just imagine the picture you're a journalist there trying to
00:53:24write a story anything ah i need to check a fact i know i'll call the prime minister he'll tell me
00:53:30while some have been punished over the years many argue that if senior figures at the tabloids
00:53:37gave the orders they have quite frankly got away with it
00:53:43there have been multiple police operations
00:53:47once andy coulson was a king amongst the press pack
00:53:52and in 2013 a dramatic trial where former editor of the news of the world andy coulson was convicted
00:53:59and the editor before him rebecca brooks was cleared i am innocent of the crimes that i was charged
00:54:06with but in total in a story with thousands of victims just eight journalists and a single senior
00:54:14news figure have been convicted anyone with a sense of fair play would have to conclude that it's unfair that
00:54:23so few people appear to have been found guilty and paid the price for what was an industry-wide or at least
00:54:33tabloid-wide crime i don't hold massive grievances against the foot soldiers or these guys who did this stuff
00:54:41not against them but i i remain bitter and determined to exact justice on the executives who commissioned
00:54:52this stuff some argue that few faced justice because of a police reluctance to take on those
00:54:59at the helm of the powerful newspapers the police to an extent the met in particular were you know had
00:55:06to be dragged screaming and shouting into and put into investigating there's a mixture of police
00:55:12incompetence and police coziness with with certain newspapers there was almost a mutual back-scratching
00:55:20relationship the relationship between the press and the police was due to be scrutinized in the second
00:55:29part of the leveson inquiry but it was dropped by the conservative government in 2018
00:55:37michael not his real name is a former undercover police officer in the late 90s he infiltrated
00:55:43a private investigation firm to gather evidence about a different crime but soon learned about the
00:55:49work the company was doing for some of the tabloids including the news of the world if it earned money
00:55:56they were doing they were associated with criminals corruption corrupt police officers to a high level
00:56:04they would actually brag there was nothing we can't get hold of we can't even get hold of the queen's
00:56:09medical records they would mention things about burglaries i was even asked once if i don't do a
00:56:16burgery for them and they had tentacles into everything
00:56:23michael spent almost a decade undercover reporting everything back to his bosses at the met but even while
00:56:29scotland yard was investigating phone hacking at the news of the world owned by news international he
00:56:35says his intelligence was ignored what do you think about the fact that nothing happened for so long
00:56:42my honest opinion why they tried to tie it up and sweep under the carpet was because it involved the
00:56:50metropolitan police's reputation senior officers were too close to news international
00:56:57so i think that's what it was the yard covered it up
00:57:06perhaps another reason some have not been brought to justice is that potential evidence has quite
00:57:12simply disappeared yes it's the unlawful information gathering but the biggest piece to this is the
00:57:18cover-up it's been claimed at the height of the scandal senior figures at rupert murdoch's newsgroup
00:57:26newspapers tried to conceal wrongdoing it was back in 2010 just a few months before the met police
00:57:35launched its biggest operation yet the murdoch company destroyed over 30 million emails during
00:57:45a period of about six months people were beginning to sue and sienna miller in particular was suing
00:57:53and her lawyer had sent a letter to the murdoch company saying you must preserve evidence they
00:57:58destroyed all of the emails up to the end of 2004
00:58:05newsgroup newspapers fiercely deny deliberately deleting any evidence and have said the company
00:58:11was carrying out a long-scheduled clear out of old computer servers it's very hard to accept the
00:58:19murdoch company explanation i think that because of the timing at least we all are allowed to say
00:58:27are you sure about that because it really does look suspicious both the crown prosecution service
00:58:34and the judge in rebecca brooks's trial found no evidence of wrongdoing but gordon brown says new
00:58:40information has since come to light it is clear to me that we were not told the full truth
00:58:47this is a cause for a criminal investigation and i want the metropolitan police to reopen their
00:58:53investigations into what happened the truth is important because we are talking about basic civil liberties
00:59:03until then those chasing justice must pin their hopes on getting a damning verdict
00:59:08through the civil courts prince harry and others are due to take on the sun next year the paper's
00:59:15publisher have so far avoided trial by offering huge settlements without accepting liability as they did
00:59:22with hugh grant if you're innocent why do you shove so much money at someone not to go to court
00:59:28he had been determined to take his case all the way to trial but settled in recent months the rules of
00:59:35civil litigation are designed to prevent cases going to court they want to keep the courts unclogged
00:59:40and therefore if you turn down a big settlement say i want my day in court and you go on and
00:59:47the judge finally at the end of the trial says i find in your favor mr grant but i'm giving you
00:59:52this settlement and if it's one penny less than that settlement that you were offered by the other
00:59:57side earlier months earlier you have to pay both sides costs which i was advised in this case would be
01:00:03about 10 million quid and much as i want these things to come to light in a trial i shied at that
01:00:12fence 10 million quid it's too much meanwhile prince harry's case accusing the sun of unlawful information
01:00:20gathering continues are you determined to go all the way to trial whatever the cost um that is the plan
01:00:29if i can get to trial then we're talking over a decade's worth of evidence most of which has never
01:00:37ever been known to the public that's the goal there are accusations flying on both sides recently prince
01:00:46harry was asked to explain how some of his own messages were apparently destroyed a judge ordering
01:00:51him to search for deleted online exchanges with his biographer but some will say there have been
01:00:58multiple criminal uh investigations there have been convictions millions of pounds have been
01:01:03paid out in compensation some will wonder why are you still fighting uh because that evidence needs to
01:01:10come to to the surface um and then after that the police can then make their mind up because this
01:01:16country and the british public deserve better prince harry's mission stands in stark contrast to his
01:01:23brother's approach in 2020 prince william reportedly settled out of court with newsgroup newspapers for
01:01:31what's been described as a very large sum of money to what extent do you think that your determination
01:01:37to fight the tabloids destroyed the relationship with your family i think there's yeah that's that's
01:01:44a certainly a central piece to it um but you know they it's that's a hard question to answer because
01:01:52anything i say about my family results in a torrent of abuse from the press i've made it very clear
01:02:00that this is something that needs to be done it would be nice if we you know did it as a family i believe
01:02:06that again from a service standpoint and when you're in a public role that these are the things that
01:02:11we should be doing um for the greater good but you know i'm i'm doing this i'm doing this for my reasons
01:02:18what do you think of their decision not to fight in the way that you have i i think everything that's
01:02:23played out has has has shown people um what the truth of the matter is for me the mission continues
01:02:32but it has it has yes it it's caused as you say part of a rift you said in court documents that
01:02:39the queen your granny as you call her supported your claim what do you think she would think of
01:02:45what you're doing now i always had many conversations before she passed um this is very much something
01:02:51that she supported she knew how much this meant to me um i think she would very she's very much up there
01:02:58going see this through to the end without question and this is far from over for the prince on the
01:03:06horizon is another civil claim against the publisher of the daily mail and the mail on sunday accused of
01:03:13hiring private investigators to bug properties tap landlines and blag private medical and bank records
01:03:21it's the first time the news group has been taken to court in this scandal the looming case being
01:03:28brought by prince harry and others is potentially the most serious of all the daily mail group have
01:03:35strenuously denied wrongdoing and none of their journalists have ever been prosecuted so if and
01:03:42and yet it's a very big if that one went wrong for the mail it would be hugely hugely embarrassing
01:03:52alongside prince harry are six other claimants including baroness doreen lawrence whose son
01:03:59stephen was murdered in a racist attack in the 90s she praised the daily mail for supporting her
01:04:07struggle for justice with this famous campaigning front page the mail presented themselves as the
01:04:14champions of the lawrence family and if the court finds that there is persuasive evidence that doreen
01:04:20lawrence was targeted by unlawful means by the daily mail that would be an act of such grotesque
01:04:27dishonesty and hypocrisy that it would produce i think national revulsion good afternoon harry
01:04:34what do you hope to change through this court battle the repercussions of all this are a long way
01:04:41from subsiding for prince harry and others the fight continues when people are damaged they don't just
01:04:52shut up shop and go away people are damaged and they feel they have the possibility of getting some
01:04:59kind of satisfaction and particularly if they have the resources to do so they will go on and they will
01:05:05go on until they get satisfaction
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