Guardian defends hacking coverage

The Guardian defended its coverage of the phone-hacking scandal today after admitting that News of the World operatives did not delete key voicemail messages from Milly Dowler’s mobile phone.

The broadsheet sparked a public outcry in July with allegations that reporters had deliberately accessed the murdered schoolgirl’s mobile and erased messages to make room for more.

The action was said to have given the Dowler family “false hope” that the teenager may still be alive.

Three days after the Guardian published the story James Murdoch announced that week’s edition of the Sunday tabloid would be its last.

Nick Davies, the journalist who wrote the article, today dismissed critics who said the claims about the deletion of voicemails were a key factor in the demise of the newspaper as “delusional”.

The Guardian insisted that the story it carried on July 4 ``accurately'' reported the facts that were known at the time.

It said it is “uncontested” that Metropolitan Police detectives told Mrs Dowler in April the News of the World was responsible for hacking and deleting voicemail messages on her daughter’s phone.

Mr Davies insisted the main point of his story had been about the hacking, not deletion, of voicemail messages and said 95% of the article had been proved to be true.

He told Sky News: “The deletion was a powerful factor but it was not the main point of the story.

“It is delusional to try to pretend that the new evidence on this one element of the story would have changed the outcome,” he added.

Mr Davies went on: “To claim that it is the deletion element of that story which made all the difference is a grotesque distortion.

“There was always the risk that if we came out with the new evidence that mischief makers would get hold of it and try to make more of it than should be made.”

Mr Davies said Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was accused of being behind the hacking, ``didn't dispute the News of the World had been involved in deletions''.

“He thought it was true,” he added. “He was very surprised and relieved to discover a few weeks ago that – it’s an email probably – suggests he can’t have been involved. That was news to him. That’s how extraordinary this new evidence is.

“He was in tears when he heard that, he couldn’t believe it.”

Mr Davies defended the Guardian’s decision not to feature the story containing the fresh information more prominently amid accusations it had been “buried”.

He said it would have been “weird” to have put the new evidence on the front page, adding that the story published over the weekend had been “fiddled with” by Guardian executives and lawyers.

A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said: “Our story on July 4 accurately reported the facts about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone known at the time. It is uncontested that in April 2011, Metropolitan Police detectives told Sally Dowler that the News of the World had been responsible for hacking Milly’s phone and deleting messages on it.

“Subsequent investigation by Operation Weeting has confirmed the key details reported by the Guardian: that the News of the World commissioned Glenn Mulcaire to hack into Milly’s phone; that he succeeded; that journalists listened to some deeply personal messages; and that Surrey police knew this at the time and took no action.

“Although the investigation has found that the News of the World was not responsible for the particular deletion of voicemails which caused Milly’s parents to have false hope that she was alive, the new evidence also suggests that it is likely the paper’s staff were inadvertently responsible for deleting later messages.

“The central and most serious allegation of the Milly Dowler hacking story was that the paper had hacked the phone of a teenage murder victim, behaviour David Cameron described as ’absolutely disgusting’. Only six weeks ago Rupert Murdoch himself, with four months to consider the evidence, described the News of the World’s conduct in the Dowler case as ’abhorrent and awful’.”