Editor ‘ordered deception’ over McCann diary

The News of the World’s former head of news was told to deliberately mislead the McCanns’ spokesman about the newspaper’s plans to publish Kate McCann’s diary, he said.

Ian Edmondson told the Leveson Inquiry that former editor Colin Myler told him to have a “woolly” conversation with Clarence Mitchell about plans to publish Mrs McCann’s diary so he would not know what the newspaper was planning to do.

Mrs McCann has told the inquiry she felt “violated” and like “climbing into a hole and not coming out” when the intensely private journal appeared in the now-defunct paper on September 14, 2008.