Rebekah Brooks giving evidence at Leveson Inquiry

Former executive of News International and editor of News of the World and The Sun is giving evidence.
Rebekah Brooks is currently giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. Robert Jay QC began by asking about communications between herself and government figures.
It has been been revealed that there were ‘indirect commiserations’ sent front Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne at the time of her resignation following the phone-hacking scandal. She noted that there weren’t many Labour politicians who sent commiserations.
Brooks also spoke about the difference of opinions on certain issues between herself and Rupert Murdoch. “We disagreed about quite a few things”,adding that he liked more political stories, while she would push for more celebrity orientated stories.

“Although i met Rupert Murdoch on a few occasions when i was Features Editor of News of the World, I only had direct contact with him when i became Deputy Editor in 1995. Rupert Murdoch would sometimes ring the newspaper on a Saturday evening and either the editor or I would take the call” – via Brooks witness statement

The main questioning so far has concerned her time at The Sun and how she became editor at the biggest selling newspaper in the UK. “Your power is your readership – it’s not an individual power”, she said after speaking about how the newspaper ‘reflects’ what the public is thinking.
When The Sun published a hand-written letter from Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the family of a dead soldier, Brooks said Brown called her personally after the article was heavily critical of the letter due to spelling mistakes made by the PM.  He is said to have been ‘very angry’ over the story.
With the relation between herself and current Prime Minister David Cameron she says that they do text, but not on the scale that some have claimed. Brooks said that she and Cameron discussed phone-hacking allegations, but were ‘general discussions’.
Gordon Brown Story
Rebekah Brooks has been asked about the story The Sun published in 2006 that Gordon Brown’s son had cystic fibrosis. It was revealed last year that the story was obtained through a man who had a son with the same condition, but refused to reveal more information about ‘the man’.
Brooks said that Brown came to the wrong assumption last year when it was alleged that the info had came from medical records. It’s not established if Gordon, or wife Sarah gave ‘explicit’ permission to run the story although Brooks says that if they asked her not to run the story she would not have done.
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