At last, a win for the red tops

REBEKAH Brooks is relieved to have been cleared, but her career has been destroyed.

Rebekah Brooks, former News International chief executive, leaves the Central Criminal Court in London, Tuesday, June 24, 2014. Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was convicted of phone hacking Tuesday, but fellow editor Rebekah Brooks was acquitted after a monthslong trial centering on illegal activity at the heart of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire. A jury at London's Old Bailey unanimously found Coulson, the former spin doctor of British Prime Minister David Cameron, guilty of conspiring to intercept communications. Brooks was acquitted of that charge and of counts of bribing officials and obstructing police. The nearly eight-month trial was triggered by revelations that for years the News of the World used illegal eavesdropping to get stories, listening in on the voicemails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

WHEN newspaper editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie were told in May 2012 that they would face criminal charges, their anger did not merely simmer: it exploded into a fiery public statement denouncing the “weak and unjust decision” and questioning the “unprecedented posturing” of Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service after the charges were announced live on television.

This week, as both were cleared of any wrongdoing after three years of mud-slinging and an eight-month legal battle that captured international headlines, there was simply relief.

Brooks was composed and expressionless in London’s Old Bailey court as the verdicts were read, but began to shake as reality sank in. She smiled slightly on leaving the dock and left the courtroom supported by her solicitor and the court’s matron. Relief turned to tears outside before she and her husband left hand in hand, mob­bed by media.

Her relief is likely to be tempered by her spectacular career downfall, continued status as a hate figure and the belief — underlined in court by her legal team — that she was the victim of a relentless and sexist witch-hunt. She was also forced to admit mistakes in her leadership of News International, now known as News UK, and that she had not known what her journalists were up to during her editorship of the tabloids News of the World and The Sun.

The police were persistent in their pursuit of Brooks after the hacking scandal broke in the British summer of 2011 and it seemed that no resource was spared in the multi-million-pound investigation into the former News International chief executive. Despite dwindling resources, almost 200 detectives from Scotland Yard’s murder squad and other serious crime units were diverted to the Brooks case.

Brooks was placed at the centre of a six-year phone-hacking campaign when, in reality, only one story could be proved to have come from voicemail interception when she edited News of the World. That was the hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone, but Brooks was on holiday at the time and insisted her then deputy, her on-off lover Andy Coulson, did not tell her about it. The revelation of that hacking by The Guardian newspaper in 2011 led to public revulsion and disgust.

Brooks received round-the-clock security as she began to receive death threats and was berated in public; one man in Selfridge’s, the London store, pushed her up against a pillar and screamed in her face. The backlash lingers. Yet despite the intense public focus on Brooks as the face of the phone-hacking scandal, it was Coulson — Brooks’s successor as editor of News of the World, who in the end was found guilty of conspiring to illegally intercept voicemail messages.

The jury at the Old Bailey delivered the verdicts on Tuesday after eight days of deliberations and nearly eight months of detailed evidence in what had been dubbed the “trial of the century”.

The trial had heard that under Coulson’s editorship, the phone messages of actors, celebrities and politicians were intercepted on “an industrial scale”. Police identified 4000 possible victims, among them politicians, pop stars and members of the royal family.

Three former news editors at News of the World were among five men who pleaded guilty to their part in the hacking plot before the start of Coulson and Brooks’s trial.

One of those men, Glenn Mulcaire, 43, was paid £100,000 a year by the paper to arrange the hacking. Mulcaire admitted intercepting the voicemails of Milly, among a host of other victims.

Coulson faces a maximum sentence of two years for the phone hacking. The conviction has ratcheted up the political pressure on British Prime Minister David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his top media aide in 2007, and who issued a public apology in the wake of the verdict.

While Coulson’s disgrace is now legally sealed, Brooks is unlikely to easily shed her image as the face of the hacking scandal, even though she has been found innocent.

Only a few years ago, the 46-year-old was the most influential woman in British media, accustomed to rubbing shoulders with some of the country’s most powerful people.

During a meteoric rise at News International — which is part of News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Australian — Brooks battled misogyny from older male colleagues, faced down powerful politicians and celebrities, and engaged in cut-throat battles with competitors to win the scoops for which News of the World and The Sun were renowned.

It was in a sterile courtroom, however, that she encountered her toughest battle as a humiliating array of aspects of Brooks’s professional and private life were exposed. In February she spent nearly three weeks giving evidence, which she had prepared for with early morning gym sessions and by avoiding alcohol since the new year.

Her evidence provided a compelling insight into a woman who had become a national hate figure.

Wearing a Help for Heroes bracelet, she spoke passionately about her campaigns for wounded soldiers and Sarah’s Law, the controversial News of the World drive to name and shame pedophiles. She described the “kind advice” offered by News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, who, when asked what his top priority was after the News of the World closure, had gestured to Brooks and said “this one”. She smiled wryly as she recalled how Murdoch had once warned her to stay out of the headlines.

Brooks’s private life was placed at the centre of the case after the prosecution discovered a love letter on her computer to Coulson, written when he broke off their affair in 2004.

The crown said the unsent letter, describing how “I love you, care about you, worry about you”, showed the closeness of the two editors. Brooks went on to detail how she and husband Charlie found happiness together before having a daughter, Scarlett, in 2012, conceived using a relative as a surrogate. The couple told friends that the worst thing about their court ordeal was the prospect of being parted from their daughter if they went to jail.

Brooks was at an IVF clinic in July 2011 when she found out about the Dowler hack. She clung to her job for a week after News of the World closed, although she told the court that her repeated offers to resign had been refused by Rupert and James Murdoch.

The public backlash was “understandable”, she said, while pointing out that the allegation by The Guardian, which broke the phone-hacking story, that journalists had deleted Milly’s voicemails to make room for more messages, had turned out to be incorrect. Her defence was based on lack of knowledge. She was on holiday in April 2002 when News of the World ran verbatim extracts from the missing schoolgirl’s voicemail, and she denied discussing the issue over the phone with Coulson. She said she was never told by News of the World journalists about that or any other hack, and had no knowledge of private investigator Mulcaire’s involvement in News of the World’s phone hacking, although he was on a £92,000 retainer and part of an investigations unit that she set up.

Brooks also claimed she was not aware that a public official was the recipient of £40,000 in cash payments she had approved in return for military stories.

“It’s impossible for an editor to know every source of every story, of course. It is impossible with the sheer volume of stories coming into the paper,” she said.

She also denied knowing about the activities of her husband and her former personal assistant Cheryl Carter, which led to accusations that they had hidden evidence from the police.

Brooks admitted to the court that, as chief executive, she had tried to keep a lid on the hacking scandal with a £1 million hush payment to Max Clifford, the PR agent and one of the victims. She insisted she was motivated by company loyalty as opposed to saving her own skin.

Under lengthy cross examination, she spoke politely and did not lose her cool as she denied ordering a mass deletion of emails that the prosecution claimed had hidden her criminal past.

Brooks had been known as a “super schmoozer”, with a relentless charm that enabled her to move in society’s upper circles. It was deployed at the Old Bailey, where she greeted staff on a first-name basis and chatted with ­journalists.

During the prosecution’s opening she referred to her Cheshire roots when she asked a group of reporters: “Will you all still be here when it’s my defence or will it just be the Warrington Guardian left?” One shot back: “Don’t worry, Rebekah, we’ll all be here, you’re the star of the show.”

Members of the famed Chipping Norton set dropped in to court 12, including Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter, and his wife Frances.

Brooks’s mother Deborah Weir was also a regular visitor, although she spent time at the townhouse looking after Scarlett.

However, her husband was clearly her greatest supporter, a fixture by her side. At the end of the first day of the prosecution’s opening, as they prepared to face the huge crowd of cameras outside, he stopped her at the top of the Old Bailey’s internal steps and gave her a long hug. They are now expected to spend some time in the Oxford countryside, repairing their lives.

The Times