SourceUnapologetic journo slams 'scum' NOTW editors
In a stunning appearance before the inquiry into press standards in Britain, a former deputy editor at the now defunct News of the World has robustly defended the practice of hacking mobile phones for stories.
Paul McMullan's extraordinary, unapologetic testimony to the Leveson inquiry was in sharp contrast to the apologies given elsewhere by News Corporation management, including chairman Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and former editor Rebekah Brooks.
The second week of the media ethics inquiry, prompted by the phone-hacking furore, heard the former tabloid journalist unapologetically lay bare the dirty tricks of his former paper.
He said the practice of phone hacking was not uncommon.
"It would just be written, you know, 'Pop star A is leaving messages on pop star B's phone at 2:00am in the morning, saying I love you, shall we meet up for a drink?'," he said.
"I mean it was that blatant and obvious. I don't think anyone realised that anyone was committing a crime at the start."
McMullan said journalists would trade celebrity details with each other.
"These journalists swapped numbers with each other. You know, you might swap... I think I swapped Sylvester Stallone's mother for David Beckham, I think, for example," he said.
And at times he visibly revelled in the work he used to do.
"I absolutely loved giving chase to celebrities, I must admit," he said.
"Before [Princess] Diana died it was such good fun."
He said he was proud that his article on paedophiles led to civil disorder in Portsmouth and reports that a misguided mob had attacked a paediatrician.
"In a bizarre way I felt slightly proud that I'd written something that had created a riot and got a paediatrician beaten up, or whatever was the case, due to the paedo aspect of what our readers latched on to," he said.
McMullan said no-one deserved privacy, calling it merely the space bad people need to do bad things in.
"Privacy is particularly good for paedophiles, and if you keep that in mind, privacy is for paedos, fundamentally, nobody else needs it.
"Privacy is evil, it brings out the worst qualities in people, it brings out hypocrisy, it allows them to do bad things."
He has also defended the hacking of the phone of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler - the case that brought the practice to Britain's attention - saying it was not a bad thing because the investigating police were useless.
McMullan, who now owns a pub, said his only regrets were over a series of articles he wrote about an actor Denholm Elliott's daughter, who later hanged herself.
Everyone else however was fair game, and he said it was a practice encouraged by the News of the World's editors.
"Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson - they're the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and all my colleagues in it," he said.
"How dare these people just throw us to the wolves and run off scot-free as they did for about a year."
Brooks and Coulson both deny knowing about hacking at the tabloid.
'Culture of bullying'
Earlier at the inquiry, The Guardian journalist who broke the hacking story, Nick Davies, said he no longer trusted the press to regulate itself.
"I say this as I love reporting. I want us to be free. You've got a huge intellectual puzzle here in front of you. How do you regulate a free press? But it obviously doesn't work. We're kidding ourselves if we think it would," he said.
Davies said he wanted to see a "public interest advisory body" established so that journalists and the wider public could seek advice on whether stories were in the public interest, as the interpretation was very wide.
He gave an example of The Guardian's handling of the US diplomatic cables on Afghanistan obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
"It became apparent that the material contained information which could get people on the ground in Afghanistan seriously hurt," he said.
"They are implicitly identified as sources of information for the coalition forces."
But Davies alleged that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told him: "They deserve to die, they are informers, they are collaborators."
Davies added: "I would love to have been able to go to a specific advisory body and say, 'Where is the public interest here?' in order to be able to show it to him, to persuade him."
Davies also spoke of a "culture of bullying in some Fleet Street news organisations."
The "fear is real" among employees of tabloids when they speak to him about practices used at their newspapers, which is why they have spoken on condition of anonymity, he said.
British prime minister David Cameron launched the media inquiry amid the furore of phone-hacking at the now shuttered News of the World.
The inquiry has heard from the parents of murdered children as well as celebrities including Hugh Grant, Sienna Miller and Charlotte Church.
Church told the inquiry yesterday she was offered press favours from the Murdoch-owned press in return for performing at Rupert Murdoch's wedding to Wendi Deng.
ABC/AFP
What is amazing is that he gets all wound up about his reporter mates getting dumped in the shit (by Brooks and Coulson) while casually ruining other peoples lives (and defending it). What an epic piece of shit.
