“I think I was trying to talk about the way in which the News of the World and some of those other tabloids in England have turned some of the most sensitive elements of human life...into a commodity to be kind of extracted, mined, and sold”-Nick Davies, author of Hack Attack: How the Truth Finally Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch

On July 10th 2011 the News of the World closed up shop after 168 years in print. This was a result of the boycott spurred on by revelations that the paper had engaged in illegal phone hacking. These same revelations led to numerous convictions, the launching of investigations into police corruption, and the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry which reviewed the culture and ethics in British journalism.

Much of the pressure to launch the initial investigations into possible phone hacking by the News of the World came from The Guardian and freelance reporter Nick Davies. After royal editor for News of the World Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were convicted for intercepting phone messages in 2007, Davies wasn’t convinced that this was an isolated incident.

This continued pressure eventually saw the full range of phone hacking in British newspapers exposed and in 2011, as the Leveson Inquiry was getting underway, Davies began to write his account of the scandal - Hack Attack.

Published in 2014 this book goes beyond the News International phone hacking scandal and looks at the state of media today and the power that it can hold in the world. As Nick puts it himself “this isn’t really a story about journalists behaving badly...you can see in real fine detail, the way in which Rupert Murdoch and his senior journalists were manipulating and bullying an elected government into adopting policies which were not those which its voters were expecting them to adopt”.

Meeting up in the West Cork Literary Festival Susan spoke with Nick about the tough world of the British newspaper industry, the phone hacking scandal, and Hack Attack. You can listen back to the discussion here.

Tonight's music to read to

Andrei Machado provides the music for the first part of the show with 'Sobre a Brevidada da Vida' opening the show and 'Somos Poeira de Estrelas' bringing part one to a close. Julianna Barwick's 'Forever' closes out the show.