Colin Myler was editor of the News of the World from 2007 until it closed in July last year. Photograph: Tom Stoddart Archive/Getty Images
Colin Myler's editorship of the New York Daily News, one of the most prominent newspapers in America, has come under renewed scrutiny following allegations that he attempted to intimidate members of the UK parliament investigating phone hacking at the News of the World at the time he led the now-defunct tabloid.
Media monitoring groups and experts in journalistic ethics in America have described the allegations raised against Myler as "horrifying" and "abhorrent". New York magazine has also published a 5,000-word profile of Myler in its current issue, putting a spotlight onto Myler within the US media that he has assiduously tried to avoid – until now with relative success.
Myler was the final editor of the News of the World from 2007 until it closed last July. In January he was appointed editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News, a job that puts him on the high table of American journalists.
Media monitors in the US have reacted to claims that Myler attempted to bully British MPs investigating the News of the World as anathema to journalistic standards in the US. Eric Boehlert, senior fellow of the progressive watchdog Media Matters, said that the allegation "would put any American newspaper editor in a very uncomfortable position. Anything like it would be seen as completely horrifying and beyond the realm of responsible journalism".
Edward Wasserman, Knight Foundation professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, said that if the allegations were correct, it was "such a transparent breach of ethics in that it's hard to imagine the very idea even being discussed in a US newsroom. Even the most politically zealous journalist would find it abhorrent."
In his position as editor of the News of the World, Myler is alleged to have instructed a team of six reporters to dig for dirt on every member of the Commons culture select committee that at a time was investigating phone hacking at the British tabloid. Reporters were asked to find out if any of the members had had illicit affairs or were gay.
The allegations were made last week by Tom Watson, a Labour MP who has been at the forefront of the exposure of phone hacking and other illegal activities within Rupert Murdoch's UK newspapers. At the launch of his new co-authored book, Dial M for Murdoch, Watson said he had been told of Myler's attempted intimidation of MPs by Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter at the News of the World.
Thurlbeck later confirmed that reporters had been asked to monitor committee members, but added that he had "no evidence" that it had come from the editor's office.
Colin Myler declined to comment on the accusations. Mort Zuckerman, the business tycoon who owns the New York Daily News and and who brought Myler across the Atlantic to lead it, also declined to comment on whether the new allegations cast doubt on the wisdom of the appointment.
In the New York magazine profile of Myler, Zuckerman tells writer Steve Fishman that he had no qualms about Myler's role in the phone-hacking scandal. "He's not involved," Zuckerman said.
Watson's new book may not be the last time that Myler faces serious allegations arising from his tenure as News of the World editor. Discrepancies in his evidence to parliament over phone hacking could feature in the final report of the culture select committee that MPs are currently completing.
In July 2009, when he was still News of the World editor, Myler appeared before the culture select committee and told MPs that he had personally supervised a trawl through thousands of emails and had found no evidence that phone hacking went beyond a single "rogue" reporter at the newspaper.
Yet it has since been revealed that more than a year previously, in May 2008, Myler had engaged in internal correspondence with the News of the World's lawyer Tom Crone, in which Crone made clear that other reporters had also been involved in hacking and that illegal activities were far more widespread.
MPs will also need to consider apparent contradictions in evidence given to the committee by Myler and Crone, on the one hand, and James Murdoch, former chairman of the UK newspaper group News International, on the other. Last November, James Murdoch openly disputed the testimony that Myler and Crone had given the committee.
Murdoch told MPs that contrary to what Myler and Crone had told parliament, the pair had failed to inform him of wider illegality at the paper. "I believe their testimony was misleading and I dispute it," he said.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's project for excellence in journalism, said it was not clear how the new allegations surrounding Myler would affect his New York position. Rosenstiel said he was struck by how the phone-hacking scandal had "remained a British scandal despite the size of News Corp operations over here."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/23/colin-myler-news-of-the-world-scrutiny
No comments:
Post a Comment