Leveson Inquiry: News of the World in the clear over Milly Dowler’s deleted voicemails

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

The broadsheet sparked a public outcry in July when it printed allegations that News of the World reporters had deliberately accessed the murdered schoolgirl’s mobile phone 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.

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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 Guardian article, yesterday 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 4 July “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 into, not deletion, of voicemail messages and said 95 per cent of the article had been proved to be true.

Mr Davies said: “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”.

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“He thought it was true,” he added. “He was very surprised and relieved to discover a few weeks ago that – it’s an e-mail 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”.

Yesterday the Leveson Inquiry into press standards was told the messages may have been automatically removed.

Neil Garnham QC, representing the Metropolitan Police, told Lord Justice Leveson it was “unlikely” that Mr Mulcaire altered the phone’s voicemail settings.

Lord Justice Leveson said that he would consider how to “get to the bottom” of what had happened.

Mr Garnham went on: “It is conceivable that other News International journalists deleted the voicemails, but the Metropolitan Police Service have no evidence to support that.

“I can say from Metropolitan Police Service records that the Metropolitan Police did not tell the Dowlers that voicemails had been deleted, for the simple reason that they did not know of any such deletions.”