The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly’s disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive. Police feared evidence may have been destroyed.
Even today, it’s unclear whether what The Guardian reported is actually wrong that NotW caused the deletion that gave false hope to Dowler’s family. Davies reports this:
It is understood that while News of the World reporters probably were responsible for deleting some of the missing girl’s messages, police have concluded that they were not responsible for the particular deletion which caused her family to have false hope that she was alive.
What we do know is that police can’t prove who deleted that message but think it’s unlikely that NotW did it, since Glenn Mulcaire hadn’t been hired on the story yet (although Davies reports another NotW journalist may have already had Dowler’s cell number and PIN).
Even The Guardian can’t get this aspect nailed down, writing that NotW responsibility is now believed “unlikely” in the same sentence that it writes that “this was not the case”:
In July the Guardian reported that the deletions were caused by the News of the World. But, as it emerged that this was not the case, the newspaper printed a clarification in mid-December saying that was “unlikely to have been correct” in the light of further investigation made by the Metropolitan police.
British reporting and writing is a little loosey-goosey for our tastes. That goes for language and attribution. Both are critical. In this case, we see how sloppily excluding a few words can damage a reporter’s and paper’s credibility. When you’re dealing with ultra-sensitive investigations of highly powerful people, you have to be that much more careful. Davies and The Guardian, who are still real heroes, despite the error, have opened themselves up to attack from someone like Rupert Murdoch and his minions. That’s dangerous, even if it’s too late for Murdoch to regain his former prominence in the UK.
Fortunately, almost all of Davies’ other reporting has held up to scrutiny—no small feat in one of the biggest—perhaps the biggest—media stories of all time, on which he has written more than a hundred pieces. But the fundamentals of journalism—attribution and accuracy—apply even to the best journalists and their biggest scoops.
NI chose to close down the NotW rather than contest the Guardian's claims. NI could have decided at the time to refute the Guardian but chose not to so. NI closed down the NotW because it wanted to win the rest of BSkyB it did not own. Fortunately, the Guardian's welcome and timely intervention has saved us from the Foxification of non BBC television.
Get it into your heads that NI is a vicious monster than still like the hydra have all of its evil heads cut off.
#1 Posted by Charles Norrie, CJR on Fri 23 Dec 2011 at 04:52 PM
The Milly Dowler charges were the emotional heart of the campaign against Murdoch. Without them, what you basically had was hacking into the phones of royals and celebrities. Not an unimportant matter, but also one which has been known of Murdoch's tabs, as well as others (see Morgan, Piers) for some time now. The retraction of the Dowler charges make it look as though the British establishment, alternately in bed with and threatened by Murdoch, used the charge to finally try to reign him in.
It's an old story in Britain - back in Stanley Baldwin's day, he denounced the press lords as having 'power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.' The power structure there is much more incestuous than over here. What we're left with is a power struggle of little interest to outsiders.
BTW, I'm glad Ryan finally noted the retraction of the Dowler charges, which up to now I've seen mentioned only in the conservative media ghetto - still necessary to visit for news the lamestreamers won't carry. There's been a blackout on the retraction, though I heard a lot about the original charge.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 26 Dec 2011 at 07:15 PM