Hack Attack: The Inside Story of how the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch - Nick Davies
About half a decade ago a reporter for one of the leading
British Newspapers, The Guardian, thought he detected a discrepancy in the
coverage of a minor crime. A London PI and a journalist for a London
tabloid had been convicted for hacking the voicemails of the Royal family.
Most Brits nodded sagely and then went on about the business of devouring
football results and slobbering over page 3 girls (not unlike we Yanks after
all, are they?) Not Nick Davies, though: Davies, the aforementioned Guardian
reporter, smelled a rat. Thus began the five-year odyssey in which a handful of
journalists and legal eagles took on the empire of one of the world’s most
powerful men and fought it to a standstill.
For a few days.
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| Rupert Murdoch [source: David Shankbone/wikimedia commons] |
Davies lays out the history, often in excruciating detail,
in his 2014 memoir Hack Attack: The Inside Story of how the Truth Caught up
with Rupert Murdoch. Davies and his editor, Alan Rusbridger, began the
laborious process of uncovering the seamy underbelly of Murdoch’s print empire
in Britain with a single story in 2009. By the end, they had stripped the
covers off not just the invasion of the privacy of just about anyone with any
celebrity but also bribery of law enforcement. All this criminality was based
on a single desire: for Murdoch’s journalism empire to become so powerful that they
could dictate policy to the British government. They damned near succeeded.
Through 400-plus pages, Davies logs the small details of
the crimes at News of the World, Murdoch’s flagship tabloid, and the
involvement of officials of the company from James Murdoch to Rebekah Brooks.
Over a period of three years, Davies and The Guardian worried at every piece of
evidence, each inconsistency, every slip of the tongue by a participant. Names
are named, including officials of the London Metropolitan Police and at
Scotland Yard; likewise a series of residents of 10 Downing Street.
