EGN NEWS DESK
In 2011, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, confronted a grave risk in Britain. Reporters at one among his tabloid newspapers have been uncovered for hacking the telephones of celebrities, personal residents and, in a single case, a murdered baby for data.
Other misdeeds quickly emerged, together with the revelation that for years, tabloid reporters had paid for data from cops and authorities officers.
Desperate to cease the scandal and appease prosecutors in Britain and overseas, News Corp tapped Will Lewis, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, to wash up the mess.
He did simply that. In his telling, he cooperated with the authorities, revealed wrongdoing and helped set the operation on a brand new course. Some former colleagues and hacking victims, although, lengthy believed that he helped News Corp cowl up the extent of the wrongdoing.
Those accusations — almost 15 years previous and unproven — all of the sudden have contemporary foreign money and have sophisticated Mr. Lewis’s new job as writer of The Washington Post.
Last month, whereas Mr. Lewis ready to restructure the Post newsroom, a judge in London dominated that victims of cellphone hacking may press forward with extra allegations of their wide-ranging lawsuit. Though Mr. Lewis isn’t a defendant, the lawsuit asserts that his cleanup was partly a cover-up to guard News Corp leaders.
This week, Mr. Lewis was caught off guard when The Post’s government editor stop forward of his reorganization. Then, The New York Times reported that Mr. Lewis had informed her that overlaying the authorized developments within the hacking case represented a lapse in judgment.
An NPR reporter adopted with revelations that Mr. Lewis had supplied him a scoop in trade for not pursuing an article in regards to the phone-hacking scandal.
Now his newsroom overhaul appears rather more sophisticated, together with his reporters questioning Mr. Lewis’s imaginative and prescient, his choice to rent two former underlings as prime Post editors and whether or not he shares their ethics.
The Post, in a press release, mentioned he does: “As a extremely skilled writer, and ex editor and editor in chief, William could be very clear in regards to the strains that shouldn’t be crossed and his monitor document attests to that.”
Mr. Lewis got here to The Post after serving as writer of The Wall Street Journal. But he lower his enamel in Britain, a rustic the place journalists paid for scoops, hacked into telephones and secretly taped politicians. The Telegraph’s greatest scoop beneath Mr. Lewis got here when his reporters paid greater than $150,000 for confidential data on politicians’ expense claims.
Such ways are thought-about unethical in most American newsrooms, together with The Post, the paper that modified the course of nationwide information with its protection of Watergate, C.I.A. black websites and different main tales.
Now, reporters there are questioning whether or not he’ll deliver new journalistic sensibilities, and moral requirements, to Washington.
“It seems to be that manner,” mentioned Paul Farhi, who till late final 12 months coated media for The Post. “Hiring his cronies, principally defending his personal bottom by speaking down tales that don’t make him look so good. These could be unknown issues at The Washington Post.”
A British Brouhaha
The phone-hacking scandal started with revelations that tabloid journalists in Britain had hacked into the telephones of celebrities, sports activities stars and politicians, amongst others, to get scoops.
The fallout was large, with a yearlong public inquiry and allegations in felony and civil courts. One tabloid newspaper, the News Corp-owned News of The World, folded. The prices associated to the episode now prime $1 billion, together with damages to lots of of victims.
Until 2010, Mr. Lewis had nothing to do with these points. He was the editor of The Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet exterior the Murdoch empire. Under his tenure, it broke a scandal about politicians’ utilizing authorities expense accounts to fund lavish private bills. Mr. Lewis later acknowledged that the newspaper paid about 150,000 kilos (about $190,000 right this moment) for the paperwork.
He joined News Corp in 2010 and a 12 months later was tasked with coping with the phone-hacking fallout.
“He was a sensible choice, in impact,” mentioned Mr. Farhi, who coated the scandal on the time. He mentioned Mr. Lewis was properly revered in British media circles. “His ethics weren’t in query.”
Mr. Lewis joined a small workforce known as the Management and Standards Committee that tried to ascribe blame for the issues, ferret out different wrongdoing and show that News Corp was dedicated to cleansing up its act.
As a part of that effort, the committee supplied the police with detailed data on journalists who hacked into telephones or paid public officers. Some journalists complained that they have been being blamed for what had been accepted practices.
“He oversaw the throwing beneath the bus of journalists appearing beneath normal process for many years,” mentioned Dan Evans, a former News of The World reporter who was prosecuted, supplied proof to the authorities and has since known as for press reform. “It’s the best way issues have been completed.”
Mr. Lewis has seldom mentioned this era of his profession, however, when he has, he has described himself as cleansing up a multitude.
“My function was to place issues proper,” he as soon as informed the BBC. “And that’s what I did.”
“I did no matter I may to protect journalistic integrity,” he informed The Post just lately.
Accusations of a Cover-Up
In court docket paperwork, phone-hacking victims say that Mr. Lewis allowed the deletion of giant volumes of emails that would have implicated senior News Corp figures within the scandal. The lawsuit claims that, on his watch, eight submitting cupboards filled with potential proof disappeared.
The plaintiffs say that, somewhat than turning over all the things to the authorities, he ignored data that would have implicated senior executives. They assert that he was a part of a scheme to manufacture a safety risk to justify deleting emails.
He has denied wrongdoing. The lawsuit is one among many who have lengthy swirled across the hacking affair. Many plaintiffs, together with celebrities like Elton John, settled their circumstances. Others, like Prince Harry, proceed to press their case.
Soon after some allegations surfaced in 2020, Mr. Lewis was handed over to be director common of the BBC, arguably Britain’s most distinguished media job.
Mr. Lewis’s work on the Management and Standards Committee positioned him inside Mr. Murdoch’s interior circle, and he was promoted in 2014 to guide Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal.
But his work on the committee infuriated many workers members at News Corp’s British newspapers. Some believed that low-level reporters had been sacrificed, as Mr. Evans describes it, “to maintain his boss out of an orange jumpsuit.”
Though he was based mostly in London as Dow Jones chief government, Mr. Lewis not often turned up within the firm’s fundamental workplace, which shared area with The Sun, a tabloid newspaper the place some News of the World workers went to work after it was closed. Instead he labored from a constructing miles away, former staff recalled.
The Future of The Post
The phone-hacking scandal might need been previous information had it not been for a shake-up at The Post.
The newspaper’s proprietor, Jeff Bezos, appointed Mr. Lewis to be writer late final 12 months, and he started laying plans to separate the paper into three sections: core information, which would come with enterprise and politics protection; opinion; and a brand new, reader-friendly part targeted on service journalism.
The Post’s government editor, Sally Buzbee, urged him to not make such a drastic change earlier than the election in November. Mr. Lewis went forward with it and supplied Ms. Buzbee a job operating the paper’s new part, an obvious demotion.
She abruptly stop final Sunday.
Soon after, The Times revealed that Mr. Lewis had scolded Ms. Buzbee over the newspaper’s protection of the hacking lawsuit. He disapproved of plans to put in writing a few judge’s ruling — which The Post finally coated — that cleared the best way for plaintiffs to air allegations in opposition to him.
Then got here the account from David Folkenflik, a veteran media reporter for NPR, that Mr. Lewis had supplied a deal in trade for quashing an article.
“In a number of conversations, Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly — supplied to provide me an unique interview about The Post’s future, so long as I dropped the story in regards to the allegations,” Mr. Folkenflik wrote. He didn’t take the deal.
Mr. Lewis informed The Post on Thursday that his dialog with Mr. Folkenflik was off the document and had occurred earlier than he joined The Post. He labeled Mr. Folkenflik “an activist, not a journalist.”
Some politicians and press officers do supply to commerce entry for favorable protection. But accepting such a deal would violate most newsroom norms. So such a suggestion from the incoming writer of The Post is uncommon and stunned journalists out and in of the newsroom.
“He’s utilizing his place to guard his public picture,” Mr. Farhi mentioned. “It’s the factor reporters get a whiff of, and so they assume somebody’s hiding one thing.”
