In 2011, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corp, faced a major threat in the UK when it was revealed that reporters at his tabloid newspapers had hacked into the phones of celebrities, ordinary citizens and, in one case, a murdered child.
Other wrongdoings soon emerged, including the revelation that tabloid reporters had been receiving paid information from police officers and government officials for years.
In an effort to thwart the scandal and appease prosecutors in the UK and abroad, News Corp appointed former Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis to clean up the mess.
He did just that. By his own account, he cooperated with authorities, exposed the wrongdoing, and helped steer the operation in a new direction. But some former colleagues and hacking victims have long believed he helped News Corp cover up its wrongdoing.
Those unproven accusations, dating back nearly 15 years, have suddenly attracted new attention and are complicating Lewis’ new job as publisher of The Washington Post.
Last month, as Mr. Lewis prepared to restructure his editorial department, a judge in London ruled that victims of phone-tapping could move forward with further claims in a wide-ranging lawsuit. Mr. Lewis is not a defendant in the suit, but the lawsuit alleges that the purge of Mr. Lewis was part of a cover-up to protect News Corp executives.
Lewis was surprised this week when The Washington Post’s editor-in-chief resigned ahead of a reorganization, after The New York Times reported that Lewis had told him it was a mistake to cover legal developments in the hacking case.
An NPR reporter later revealed that Lewis had offered him the scoop on the phone-tapping scandal in exchange for not writing a story about it.
Now, Mr. Lewis’s newsroom shake-up appears far more complicated, with reporters questioning his vision, his decision to hire two of his former subordinates as editors at The Washington Post and whether he shares their ethics.
“As an experienced publisher and former editor and editor-in-chief, William knows very clearly the lines that must not be crossed, and his track record proves that,” he said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Mr. Lewis joined The Washington Post after serving as publisher of The Wall Street Journal, but he cut his teeth in Britain, a country where journalists pay for scoops, hack phones and secretly record politicians. The biggest scoop the Telegraph got during Mr. Lewis’ tenure came when his reporters paid more than $150,000 for confidential information about politicians’ expense claims.
Such tactics are considered unethical by most American news organizations, including the Washington Post, which changed the course of national news with its stories on Watergate, secret CIA facilities, and other major news stories.
Now reporters there are wondering whether he will bring new journalistic sensibilities and ethical standards to Washington.
“That’s what it looks like,” said Paul Farhi, who covered media at The Washington Post until late last year. “He’s basically saving his own ass by hiring his own cronies and denying stories that make him look bad. That’s not what the Post is known for.”
British mayhem
The phone-tapping scandal began with the revelation that British tabloid reporters had been hacking the phones of celebrities, athletes and politicians to get scoops.
The fallout from the case was huge, leading to a year of public investigations and charges in criminal and civil courts, and the closure of News Corp.’s tabloid newspaper, the News of the World. Costs associated with the case, including damages to hundreds of victims, now exceed $1 billion.
Until 2010, Lewis had nothing to do with these issues. He was editor of The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper outside the Murdoch empire. During his tenure, the paper broke a scandal involving politicians using government expense accounts to fund their own finances. Later recognized The newspaper reportedly paid about 150,000 pounds (about $190,000 today) for the documents.
He joined News Corp in 2010 and was put in charge of the phone-tapping scandal a year later.
“He was actually a good choice,” Farhi said. Reported the scandal At the time, Lewis was highly respected in British media circles. “His ethics were never in question,” he said.
Lewis was part of a small team called the Business Standards Committee that sought to pin blame, uncover other wrongdoings and prove News Corp intended to fix them.
As part of the effort, the committee provided police with detailed information about journalists who had hacked phones or bribed public officials, with some journalists complaining that they were being accused of behavior that had previously been tolerated.
“For decades he oversaw the victimization of journalists operating within standard procedure,” said Dan Evans, a former News of the World reporter who was indicted, gave evidence to authorities and has since called for press reform. “That was the way it was done.”
Lewis has spoken little about this period of his career, but when he does, it’s about him cleaning up the mess.
“My role was to make things right,” he said. he once told the BBC. “And I did.”
“I did everything I could to maintain my journalistic integrity,” he said. He told the Post recently.
Suspicion of a cover-up
In court documents, victims of the phone-tapping scheme say Mr. Lewis authorized the deletion of huge volumes of e-mails that may have implicated News Corp executives in the scandal. The lawsuit alleges that eight filing cabinets full of potential evidence disappeared under Mr. Lewis’s watch.
The plaintiffs allege that instead of providing everything to authorities, he ignored information that could have implicated senior executives, and that he was complicit in a plot to fabricate a security threat to justify the deletion of emails.
He denies any wrongdoing. The lawsuit is one of many that have long swirled around the hacking scandal. Many plaintiffs, including celebrities like Elton John, have filed suit against him. Their settlement Others, like Prince Harry, continue to make their case.
Lewis lost out on the role of director general of the BBC, arguably Britain’s most prestigious media job, shortly after several allegations emerged in 2020.
Lewis’ work on the Business Standards Board has made him a close ally of Murdoch, and he was promoted to head Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, in 2014.
But his work on the committee infuriated many staff at News Corp’s British newspapers, who believed that junior reporters were being sacrificed, in Evans’ words, “to stop their bosses from wearing orange jumpsuits”.
Although Mr. Lewis was frequently in London as Dow Jones’s chief executive, he was rarely seen at the company’s headquarters, which shares space with The Sun tabloid. Some News of the World staff came to work at The Sun after the paper closed. Mr. Lewis worked in a building several miles away, former employees recalled.
The Future of Posts
The phone-tapping scandal might have become old news if not for some personnel changes at The Washington Post.
The Paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, appointed Lewis as publisher late last year, and Lewis began laying out plans to split the paper into three sections: core news, including business and political coverage, opinion and a new reader-friendly section focused on service journalism.
The Post’s editor-in-chief, Sally Buzbee, urged Mr. Lewis not to make such dramatic changes before the November election, and Mr. Lewis did so, giving Mr. Buzbee a role in running a new division of the paper in what was clearly a demotion.
She suddenly quit last Sunday.
Soon after, The Times reported that Mr. Lewis had scolded Mr. Buzbee for the paper’s coverage of the hacking lawsuit, and that Mr. Lewis had opposed plans to write a story about the judge’s decision, which the Post ultimately reported. Covered This paved the way for the plaintiffs to state their allegations against him.
Veteran NPR reporter David Folkenflik later said Lewis offered him a deal in exchange for retracting the story.
“During several conversations, Mr. Lewis repeatedly and enthusiastically offered to give me an exclusive interview about my future at The Washington Post if I would retract the allegations,” Mr. Folkenflik wrote. He did not accept the offer.
Mr. Lewis He told the Post The reporter said Thursday that his conversation with Folkenflik was private and took place before he joined The Washington Post. He described Folkenflik as “an activist, not a journalist.”
Some politicians and press secretaries have offered to give up coverage in exchange for favorable coverage, but accepting such deals would go against most newsroom norms, making the offer from The Post’s new publisher unusual and surprising journalists both inside and outside the newsroom.
“He’s using his position to protect his public image,” Farhi said. “Reporters sense that and think he’s hiding something.”
