Each day brings a new body blow to global press baron Rupert Murdoch and the latest is a huge one: Rebekah Brooks, the resigned News International chief executive who most accounts paint as a virtual member of Murdoch’s family, has been arrested. The Huffington Post:
Rebekah Brooks has been arrested, the Metropolitan Police confirmed on Sunday.
The former News International chief executive went to a London police station by appointment and was arrested on suspicion of corruption and phone hacking.
Brooks is the 10th person to be arrested in connection to the new investigation into allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World.
In a statement, police said: “The MPS has this afternoon, Sunday 17 July, arrested a female in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.
“At approximately 12.00 hrs a 42-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting together with officers from Operation Elveden and is currently in custody.
“She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.
Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks was today sensationally arrested over the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
The 43-year-old was held when she arrived for a pre-arranged appointment at a central London police station – two days before she is due to give evidence to MPs.
The ex-News of the World editor, who is tenth person to be arrested in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking, resigned from her job on Friday.
“The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking.
“Operation Elveden is the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police. This investigation is being supervised by the IPCC.
“It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding these cases at this time.”
Brooks is due to appear before Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday afternoon. The Chairman of that committee, John Whittingdale, says he doesn’t know at this stage how the arrest of Mrs. Brooks will affect her planned evidence.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said police were trying to get a grip on the scandal. He told Sky News: “I think the police are trying to move pretty quickly… One of those areas of concern is the suggestion that officers at all levels may have been the subject of receiving money as Rebekah Brooks told parliament when she last appeared before them.”
Rebekah Brooks has released a statement saying she is assisting police with her inquiries, and this was a pre-arranged appointment.
British Opposition Leader Ed Miliband yesterday called for Murdoch’s UK media empire to be broken up, saying the media baron has ”too much power over British public life”.
Mr Miliband said he would push for cross-party agreement on new media ownership laws because the company’s response to the News of the World phone hacking scandal was not enough to restore trust and reassure the public.
”I think we’ve got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 per cent of the newspaper market, the Sky [cable TV] platform and Sky News,” he told The Observer newspaper. ”That amount of power in one person’s hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimise the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.”
His remarks came as it emerged that the head of the parliamentary committee that is to grill James and Rupert Murdoch and Mrs Brooks this week has ties to two senior News executives.
Conservative MP John Whittingdale admitted he was an old friend of Rupert Murdoch’s former top adviser, Les Hinton, and had links to Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth. He had also been to dinner with Mrs Brooks.
Mr Whittingdale was the only MP among Elisabeth Murdoch’s 386 ”friends” on Facebook, and he was the only MP among 93 Facebook friends of Mr Hinton, The Independent on Sunday
reported. Mr Hinton oversaw News International during much of its phone hacking period and last week resigned as head of Mr Murdoch’s Dow Jones company.
Reuters offers this fact box about Brooks.
UPDATE: The Guardian (the paper that helped unearth the hacking scandal):
An arrest by appointment on a Sunday by police is unusual.
In a statement the Met said: “The MPS [Metropolitan police service] has this afternoon, Sunday 17 July, arrested a female in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking.
“At approximately 12.00 a 43-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting [phone hacking investigation] together with officers from Operation Elveden [bribing of police officers investigation]. She is currently in custody.
“She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.
“The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking.
“Operation Elveden is the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police. This investigation is being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
“It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding these cases at this time.”
A Cross Section of Blog Reaction:
—Mixed Media:
For this to happen so soon after Brooks stepped down as CEO of News International, News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper subsidiary, raises obvious questions about what the company may have learned about her last week that it didn’t know the week before, when Murdoch initially refused to accept her resignation. And it raises similar questions about Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton, who also resigned on Friday, and who also played a large role in the phone hacking affair, having given misleading testimony to Parliament about the extent of illegal activity during his own tenure as News International CEO.
So what will today’s arrest mean for Tuesday’s Evidence Session? Well strictly speaking, it shouldn’t mean much in terms of Brooks having to appeal. Parliament could of course decide that it would be wrong to ask Brooks to appear in the circumstances, but it seems unlikely that Parliament will miss this early opportunity to quiz all three main players in the ongoing saga.
My understanding, through well placed sources is that the CMS Committee were advised legally that any attempt on the part of either of the three Witnesses to refuse to answer on the grounds of multiple inquiries would have been stonewalled by MP’s since no arrests had been made.
This has now changed, and with it, in all probability, so has the CMS Committee’s ability to insist on uncomfortable answers, at least on the part of Rebekah Brooks.
And so finally, one must look at the timing of today’s arrest. It is staggaring that police have chosen now to make today’s arrest since they will know that this could impede Parliament’s questioning power on Tuesday. A suspicious person might even think that this was the intention – of course I couldn’t possibly suggest such an unfortunate line of thinking. One might even think that the Police and Parliament felt they were on different sides here. Interesting!
—Business Insider’s The Wire sees potential problems for the Prime Minister:
The headline on a story running in today’s New York Times does not bode well for British Prime Minister David Cameron.
‘Tentacles of Phone-Hacking Scandal Grow Tighter Around Cameron’…..…..The roots of his current troubles reach back to 2007 when Cameron hired former NOTW editor Andy Coulson as his director of communications despite cautions from many about Coulson’s shadowy past at the tabloid.
With today’s arrest of Rebekah Brooks — a once-close friend of Cameron’s — the tentacles have likely grown tighter as it becomes even clearer that this scandal is not only not slowing down but apparently knows no bounds.
And while Cameron is (obviously) not accused of anything but bad judgment when it comes to his dealings with News Corp, with a scandal of this magnitude guilt by association may be all it takes to bring him down.
The key question on this side of the Atlantic becomes:
Is another shoe about to noisily drop on Murdoch in the U.S.? Or will this all be a sideshow not impacting his big holdings (The New York Post, Fox News, Wall Street Journal) here?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.