Hack Attack

Starred review from August 18, 2014
The reporter who broke Britain's phone-hacking scandal probes the media industry's corrupt nexus of power and propaganda in this searing exposé. Guardian journalist Davies (Flat Earth News) recounts his investigation of the Rupert Murdoch tabloid News of the World and the illegal "dark arts"âincluding hacking into the voice mail of celebrities, politicians, and ordinary crime victims and bribing police officers for informationâthat it used to unearth salacious scandal stories. His narrative, studded with new revelations about Fleet Street's spying techniques, flows like a breathless thriller. Helped by secret sources with codenames like "Lola" and "Jingle," he struggles to tease out information, and is obstructed by the stonewalling News, by Scotland Yard officials with chummy relationships with the News who withheld explosive evidence of its misconduct, and by other media organizations that dismissed and attacked his reporting. Daviese paints a lurid, gossipy picture of Fleet Street, especially Murdoch's newspapers, whose rabid pursuit of sex and dirt, he argues, serves not just to sell papers but also to smear opponents and sway politics in favor of Murdoch's business interests. Davies's vision of an Orwellian media tyranny goes over the topâhe likens the Murdoch regime to Animal Farm's pigs-turned-oppressorsâbut this is investigative journalism at its most riveting and provocative. Photos.

Starred review from September 15, 2014
The inside-deeply inside-account by the investigative writer who broke the British phone-hacking scandal wide open.Davies (Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media, 2009, etc.) is known for his tenacious grip on his targets and his cutting, vivid writing style. Writing for the Guardian, he came across an enigmatic tip that journalists for Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspaper News of the World were routinely hacking into the voice mails of celebrities, famous athletes, regular citizens and royals and then grabbing photos and quotes from their victims to lay a false trail and publish a damning article. The phone hacking-perpetrated usually by private detectives hired by editors at the publication-eventually ensnared 6,349 victims and caused the News to shutter. At the end of the day, noted one prosecutor, it was nothing more than "at the highest level, a criminal enterprise." If this book were merely about unethical Murdoch media outlets, it would serve as an educational read for journalism students. Because Scotland Yard continually refused to warn the victims and stonewalled Davies' questions and because former News editor Andy Coulson became Prime Minister David Cameron's media adviser, this is a darker, more engrossing tale about the web of unspoken, ultimately "passive" power Murdoch and his editors held over the power elite of the U.K. as they tsk-tsked them into embarrassing revelations. Davies has crafted nothing less than a primer on how to patiently, doggedly investigate a story, replete with a host of quirky characters-e.g., a bulldog of a lawyer with multiple sclerosis who had a sideline as a stand-up comedian and a reporter who specialized in dressing up as a "fake sheikh" to deceive sources into shedding their secrets. No one does scandal quite like the British; this one is a real doozy that deserves Davies' entertaining, no-stone-unturned eagle eyes.

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November 1, 2014

The role of the press as a protector of democratic freedom was seriously undermined with the revelations of the systematic hacking of voicemails engineered by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. (The London-based newspaper ceased publication in 2011 after the scandal was revealed.) Investigative reporter Davies (special correspondent, The Guardian) collaborated with lawyers and investigators to relentlessly detail this shocking story of corruption. His account reveals the reach of the Murdoch media empire into high levels of British government and he argues that the newspaper's manipulation of politicians and the police raises questions about the concentration of the control of the press in large corporate enterprises. Hacking victims included politicians, celebrities, sports figures, the British royal family, and even deceased soldiers. One of the most startling incidents involved the hacking of the phone of Milly Dowling, a young woman who had been abducted and murdered. Even with the demise of the News of the World, Davies concludes that nothing has been done that changes the power of the elite. VERDICT While the focus on British personalities and politics might be a stumbling block for some American readers, this account reads like a detective novel and will be of great interest to both journalists and students of media studies.--Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

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