MetaChat - Quick question about the News of the World scandal.

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18 July 2011

Quick question about the News of the World scandal. I'm not clear about a few things...→[More:]I keep reading about how they got in trouble for hacking the victim's phone VM, but I'm not sure what specifically that means. The best I could find was "[The] hired investigators had not only hacked into the phone of 13-year-old Milly Dowler but also deleted some of the voicemails, giving her parents false hope that the girl was still alive."

Do we know what was in the voicemails, and why they might have given false hope? Were the undeleted ones of any importance? Thanks.

post by: Melismata at: 11:27 | 18 comments

I think they were from her parents and friends, wanting to know where she was.

posted by brujita 18 July | 11:35

It made it look like the girl was still alive and checking her voice mail when in fact it was the asshole reporters who were doing that.

posted by octothorpe 18 July | 11:40

(brujita) So, why would they delete them? How would they gain from that? If anything, it would just give them more quotes for their stories.

Ah, that makes sense, octothorpe, thanks.

posted by Melismata 18 July | 11:41

They were trying to make room on her voicemail for new messages. I believe the mailbox was full.

posted by amro 18 July | 11:46

Wow. What bastards. Thanks.

posted by Melismata 18 July | 12:02

If nothing else, I can imagine that people called her phone until the voicemail filled, and then they got messages that there was no more space. But suddenly there was more space, so they assumed she was alive, somewhere. More from the news:

As her friends and parents called and left messages imploring Milly to get in touch with them, the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word.

But the journalists at the News of the World then encountered a problem. Milly's voicemail box filled up and would accept no more messages. Apparently thirsty for more information from more voicemails, the paper intervened – and deleted the messages that had been left in the first few days after her disappearance. According to one source, this had a devastating effect: when her friends and family called again and discovered that her voicemail had been cleared, they concluded that this must have been done by Milly herself and, therefore, that she must still be alive. But she was not. The interference created false hope and extra agony for those who were misled by it.

Source: Guardian article (via MetaFilter)

posted by filthy light thief 18 July | 12:03

And more and more people are being arrested for their part in the matter. Good thing, that.

posted by deborah 18 July | 13:16

....and then there's this.

posted by pjern 18 July | 13:28

This might bring down the Government. Cameron was right in the middle of the bed with these people. The Metropolitan Police Force is imploding too.

posted by Senyar 18 July | 13:29

Holy shit, pjern!

posted by Senyar 18 July | 13:31

A boycott means not buying a Newscorp paper, not buying a ticket to a 20th century Fox studio movie, not buying a HarperCollins book, not subscribing to BskyB nor paying for anything else connected with Murdoch.

posted by brujita 18 July | 14:10

I know it is base of me to still hope some of this rubs off on Fox.

posted by bearwife 18 July | 14:26

Naw, I doubt FoxNews will ever drag itself up to even NotW's level.

posted by Ardiril 18 July | 14:33

Right?

posted by toastedbeagle 18 July | 15:03

My father was a reporter for the Boston Globe, so there was lots of news in my house. I remember the big brouhaha when Rupert Murdoch bought the Boston Herald back in the early 80s (then a respectable, if marginal, Republican paper, now toilet paper). Then he went ahead and bought a syndicate that supplied many mainstream comics to both the Herald and the Globe...presto, all of a sudden several of my favorite comics were no longer in the Globe.

Funny how we remember these things. Who would have thought that it would get that much worse.

posted by Melismata 18 July | 15:20

Oh god I hope the government falls for this!

posted by By the Grace of God 18 July | 16:48

Former Fox News Producer Claims The Network's "Brain Room" Led To Hacking

posted by BoringPostcards 18 July | 20:50

Scody linked to this on her FB page.

posted by brujita 19 July | 01:06

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