Murdoch’s top editors had affair, trial told
Print Edition
Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, two former editors of Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World tabloid, were having an affair at the time their reporters are accused of hacking into phones, a court heard yesterday.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis said the intimacy of their relationship indicated each knew as much as the other about how their reporters were operating. Both have denied conspiring to hack into phones or making illegal payments to public officials.
“What Mr Coulson knew, Mrs Brooks knew too. What Mrs Brooks knew, Mr Coulson knew too,” Edis told the hacking trial court. “That’s the point.”
Coulson went on to become the chief media spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron while Brooks, a close confidante to Murdoch, went on to be chief executive of News International, the tycoon’s British newspaper group.
“Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson are charged with conspiracy, and when people are charged with conspiracy the first question the jury have to answer is, how well did they know each other?” Edis said. “How much did they trust each other?”
The affair went on from 1998 to 2004, Edis told the jury at London’s Central Criminal Court.
The two showed little reaction to the revelation as they sat side-by-side in the glass dock along with six other defendants, including Brooks’s husband Charlie, whom she married in 2009.
The prosecutor said the relationship was discovered after police found a document containing a 2004 letter on a computer at Brooks’s home. Brooks wrote the letter to Coulson after he tried to break off the relationship, Edis said.
“The fact is you are my very best friend, I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you, we laugh and cry together,” the letter said, according to Edis who read it out to the jury. “In fact without our relationship in my life I am not sure I will cope.”
Edis said that it was not the affair in itself that was important to the prosecution’s case. “It isn’t simply that there was an affair, it isn’t to do with whether they have sexual relations with one another, (it is to do with) how close were they and they were very close,” he said.
Revelations about phone-hacking engulfed News Corp during the summer of 2011, forcing the closure of the 168-year-old tabloid News of the World and embarrassing senior politicians and police who were shown to have very close links to press barons.
Earlier yesterday, the jury heard that Brooks and Coulson had authorised huge payments to the man behind the hacking at a time when the News of the World was drastically cutting costs.
Brooks and Coulson allowed about 100,000 pounds (US$161,000) a year to go to Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective who has admitted tapping mobile phone voicemails for their paper.
“What was so special about him?” Edis asked the jury of Mulcaire. “Well, what was so special about him was that he was doing phone-hacking.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
