In 2011, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, faced a serious threat in Britain. Reporters from one of his tabloid newspapers were exposed for hacking into the phones of celebrities, private citizens and, in one case, a murdered child to obtain information.
Other misdeeds soon emerged, including the revelation that for years tabloid journalists had paid police officers and government officials for information.
Desperate to stop the scandal and appease prosecutors in Britain and abroad, News Corp turned to Will Lewis, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, to clean up the mess.
He did just that. In his story, he cooperated with authorities, revealed irregularities and helped steer the operation in a new direction. However, some former colleagues and hacking victims long believed he helped News Corp cover up the extent of the wrongdoing.
Those allegations, which are almost 15 years old and unproven, suddenly take on new relevance and have complicated Lewis’ new job as editor of the Washington Post.
Last month, as Lewis prepared to restructure the Post newsroom, a London judge ruled that wiretapping victims could move forward with more allegations in their wide-ranging lawsuit. Although Lewis is not a defendant, the lawsuit claims his clearing was in part a cover-up to protect News Corp. leaders.
This week, Lewis was caught off guard when the Post’s executive editor resigned ahead of his reorganization. The New York Times then reported that Mr. Lewis had told him that covering legal developments in the hacking case represented an error in judgment.
An NPR reporter followed with revelations that Lewis had offered him a scoop in exchange for not publishing an article about the wiretapping scandal.
Now his newsroom overhaul appears much more complicated, with his reporters questioning Lewis’s vision, his decision to hire two former subordinates as the Post’s top editors and whether he shares his ethics.
The Post, in a statement, said yes: “As a highly experienced editor, former editor and editor-in-chief, William is very clear about the lines that should not be crossed and his track record attests to this.”
Lewis came to The Post after working as an editor at The Wall Street Journal. But he got his start in Britain, a country where journalists paid for scoops, hacked phones and secretly recorded politicians. The Telegraph’s biggest scoop under the Lewis government came when its reporters paid more than $150,000 for confidential information about politicians’ expense claims.
Such tactics are considered unethical in most American newsrooms, including The Post, the newspaper that changed the course of national news with its coverage of Watergate, the CIA black sites and other major stories.
Now, journalists wonder whether he will bring new journalistic sensibilities and ethical standards to Washington.
“It seems so,” said Paul Farhi, who until late last year covered the media for The Post. “Hiring his cronies, basically protecting his own ass by talking about stories that don’t make him look so good. These would be things unknown to The Washington Post.”
A British riot
The phone hacking scandal began with revelations that tabloid journalists in Britain had hacked into the phones of celebrities, sports stars and politicians, among others, to obtain scoops.
The consequences were tremendous, with a year-long public investigation and accusations in criminal and civil courts. A tabloid newspaper, News of The World, owned by News Corp, went bankrupt. Costs related to the episode now exceed $1 billion, including damages to hundreds of victims.
Until 2010, Lewis had nothing to do with those issues. He was the editor of The Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet outside the Murdoch empire. During his tenure, a scandal erupted over politicians’ use of government spending accounts to finance lavish personal expenses. Lewis later acknowledged that the newspaper paid about 150,000 pounds (about $190,000 today) for the documents.
He joined News Corp in 2010 and a year later was tasked with dealing with the fallout from phone hacking.
“It was indeed a good choice,” said Farhi, who covered the scandal at the time. He said Lewis was highly respected in British media circles. “His ethics were not in question.”
Lewis joined a small team called the Management and Standards Committee that attempted to assign blame for the problems, uncover other irregularities and demonstrate that News Corp was committed to cleaning up its act.
As part of that effort, the committee provided police with detailed information about journalists who hacked phones or paid public officials. Some journalists complained that they were being blamed for accepted practices.
“He oversaw for decades the harassment of journalists who were acting according to standard procedure,” said Dan Evans, a former News of The World reporter who was prosecuted, provided evidence to authorities and has since called for press reform. “That’s how things were done.”
Lewis has rarely talked about this period of his career, but when he has, he has described himself as someone who cleans up a mess.
“My role was to fix things,” he once told the BBC. “And that is what I did”.
“I did everything I could to preserve journalistic integrity,” he recently told The Post.
Cover-up accusations
In court papers, wiretapping victims say Lewis allowed the deletion of huge volumes of emails that could have implicated senior News Corp officials in the scandal. The lawsuit claims that under his watch, eight file cabinets filled with possible evidence disappeared.
The plaintiffs claim that instead of turning everything over to authorities, he ignored information that could have implicated top executives. They claim it was part of a plan to fabricate a security threat to justify deleting emails.
He has denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit is one of many that have long revolved around the hacking issue. Many plaintiffs, including celebrities such as Elton John, settled their cases. Others, like Prince Harry, continue to plead his case.
Shortly after some allegations emerged in 2020, Lewis was passed over for director general of the BBC, arguably Britain’s most high-profile media role.
Lewis’s work on the Management and Standards Committee placed him within Murdoch’s inner circle, and in 2014 he was promoted to head Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal.
But his work on the committee infuriated many staff at News Corp’s British newspapers. Some believed that low-level reporters had been sacrificed, as Evans describes it, “to keep their boss out of an orange jumpsuit.”
Although based in London as chief executive of Dow Jones, Lewis rarely appeared at the company’s main office, which shared space with The Sun, a tabloid newspaper where some News of the World staff went to work after its closure. . Instead, he worked from a building miles away, former employees recalled.
The future of mail
The wiretapping scandal might have been old news if not for a shakeup at The Post.
The newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, appointed Lewis as editor late last year, and he began laying out plans to divide the paper into three sections: core news, which would include business and political coverage; opinion; and a new easy-to-read section focused on service journalism.
Post executive editor Sally Buzbee urged him not to make such a drastic change before the November election. Lewis moved on and offered Buzbee a job running the new section of the paper, an apparent demotion.
She resigned abruptly last Sunday.
Shortly afterward, The Times revealed that Mr. Lewis had scolded Ms. Buzbee over the newspaper’s coverage of the hacking lawsuit. He disapproved of plans to write about a judge’s ruling, which The Post eventually covered, which paved the way for plaintiffs to air allegations against him.
Then came the account from David Folkenflik, a veteran NPR media reporter, that Lewis had offered a deal in exchange for quashing an article.
“In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly (and heatedly) offered to give me an exclusive interview about the future of the Post, as long as I stopped telling the story about the allegations,” Folkenflik wrote. He didn’t accept the deal.
Lewis told The Post on Thursday that his conversation with Folkenflik was off the record and occurred before he joined The Post. He called Folkenflik an “activist, not a journalist.”
Some politicians and press officials offer to trade access in exchange for favorable coverage. But agreeing to such a deal would violate most newsroom rules. So such an offer from The Post’s incoming editor is unusual and surprised journalists inside and outside the newsroom.
“He is using his position to protect his public image,” Farhi said. “It’s what journalists smell and think someone is hiding something.”