New hacking allegations about private investigator and the press 'massively serious' says MacKenzie

Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie has described new allegations that the press employed the services of private investigator Jonathan Rees, who is said to have used illegal information gathering methods including hacking into bank accounts, as "massively serious".

MacKenzie, reviewing the papers for Sky News last night said "Phone hacking is one thing ...climbing into someone's financial details that's serious. When your bank details are being hacked that's beyond anything."

MacKenzie has in the past criticised the large scale of the phone hacking inquiry and claims "no-one cares" if Lord Prescott left a message saying he'd ordered a Chinese. But on Sky he said the new allegations, raised in Parliament by Labour MP Tom Watson, were "literally exploding around this guy Rees."

He predicted the phone hacking inquiry and investigation into Rees would come together.

A report by Nick Davies in the Guardian today reveals that the former prime minister Tony Blair is among the suspected victims of Rees, who was involved in the theft of confidential data, the hacking of computers and, it is alleged, burglary.

According to close associates of Rees, he also targeted: Jack Straw when he was home secretary, Peter Mandelson when he was trade secretary and Blair's media adviser Alastair Campbell. Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent, all of whom are said to have had their bank accounts penetrated, and Kate Middleton when she was Prince William's girlfriend. The former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir John Stevens, and the current assistant commissioner, John Yates, who later supervised the failed phone-hacking inquiry for 19 months. The governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose mortgage account details were obtained and sold.

Rees, who worked for the Mirror Group as well as the News of the World, is also accused of using a specialist computer hacker in July 2006 to steal information about MI6 agents who had infiltrated the Provisional IRA.

The Guardian has previously identified other suspected targets of Rees, including Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, George Michael, Linford Christie, Gary Lineker, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, and the family of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

According to the Guardian, Rees worked freelance for the Mirror Group and the News of the World from the mid 1990s. His agency was earning up to £150,000 a year from the News of the World alone.

Judges can't defeat 'Twiticus' says MacKenzie

Kelvin MacKenzie in his Sun column today pays tribute to the "tens of thousands - probably hundreds of thousands - in the online and Twitter world who are standing up against the rich and famous and their toy poodle super-injunctions."

He urges them to follow the example of the rebellious Roman slaves who refused to identify their leader and declared: "I am Sparticus".

The former Sun editor says: "I would like to see all of you simply giving a controlled V-sign to the judges and saying: 'I am Twiticus'."

He adds: "It is the first time in my memory that I have seen the High Court on one side and the Press, Parliament and the technology on the other.

"For the judges who have to face the terrible truth that they cannot defeat this troika it must come as a terrible shock for them to be challenged.

"But it is brought on by the explosion of online power where deference is destroyed, whether it's for doctors, mistresses or police officers.

"Now judges have come into the firing line. They will not win."

FT: 'Footballer wants search order on journalists'

In a new twist in the saga of privacy injunctions, a footballer has asked the High Court for an order to search e-mails and text messages of journalists at the Sun and News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers, the Financial Times reports today.

The FT says the move is an unprecedented effort to see whether the journalists breached the terms of a so-called super-injunction concerning the footballer's alleged affair with a reality TV star.

The paper says: "The application, which the court has not yet ruled on, is likely to send a chill through media organisations at a time of intense debate over privacy law and the efficacy of super-injunctions."

Hugh Tomlinson QC, acting for the footballer who allegedly had an affair with Imogen Thomas, told the High Court that his disclosure application followed comments made by Sun columnist and former editor Kelvin MacKenzie on the BBC’s Today programme.

The FT reports: "MacKenzie had told the programme he was flooded by e-mails from readers asking who had secured injunctions against the newspaper. 'Sometimes I give [the names], sometimes I don’t.' he added.' He is there telling the world that he ... breaks court orders whenever he feels like it,' Mr Tomlinson told Mr Justice Eady."

MacKenzie later told the FT that all he was passing on was gossip not based on any knowledge of super-injunction applications. “It’s a matter of relaying journalistic gossip and nothing is going to stop me doing that,” he said.

MacKenzie tells Sun readers: 'Journalists know who is protected by injunctions but you don't'

Kelin MacKenzie tells readers of the Sun today that while he and "most media folk" know the names of the public figures protected by privacy injunctions the public don't.

He says: "There is currently a dangerous two track-society.

"There are those that know and I'm one of them. And there are those that are denied knowing and that's you, dear reader."

He suggests that somebody could set up a site in America to run all the names and allegations against the people the courts are protecting and the High Court couldn't touch them.

In a blast at the judges, Mackezie says: "There is a state in America that has a phrase summing up its attitude. It says: Live free or die.

"The High Court and its silk panty-wearing judges - hiding their own sexual peculiarities - have torn up the phrase.

"I despise them."

The Sun has a full page rundown on all the privacy injunctions granted to public figures under the headline: 'Doesn't it make you gag.'

They include a famous actor, tv star, top footballers, a soccer manager, various sportsmen and a tv journalist.

The latest injunction, according to the Sun is a married entertainer who has cheated on his wife with an actress and has left the show they both appeared in.

The Sun says: "Hypocritical showbiz stars, sports idols and high-profile public figures lap up positive publicity. And they often cash in on their popularity and wholesome image with mega salaries and huge fees from companies whose products they endorse.

"But when they misbehave and things turn sour, they go for the gag in order to protect false impressions - and their massive incomes."

Exclusive: Kelvin MacKenzie at journalism college

Teacher: "Journalism is now a multi-media, cross-platform discipline."

MacKenzie: "What you know about journalism would fit up a gnat's arse."

Journalism college offers to train MacKenzie

Kelvin MacKenzie has been offered training by a journalism college so that he can brush up his editorial skills to embrace the digital age.

The offer follows an interview MacKenzie gave to City University's X-City, which was repeated in the Independent, in which he called for all journalism courses to be closed down.

Now Professor Tim Luckhurst and Ian Reeves, from the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent, have written to the Independent stating: "Kelvin MacKenzie is right about one thing. A degree in media studies is not a preparation for a career in journalism and no student should be misled into imagining it is. Beyond that his argument is utterly misguided, deplorably out of touch with modern journalism and atypically devoid of common sense.

"There are in British universities a handful of excellent degrees in convergent multimedia journalism that combine high academic standards in traditional disciplines including history, politics and law, with superb teaching of print, broadcast and online skills. They can be identified via two key characteristics: exceptionally high admissions standards, usually including interview and written test, and professional accreditation by the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

"In the Centre for Journalism here at Kent, rigorously selected students from a diverse range of backgrounds learn to work to a professional standard. They do mandatory work experience at the KM Group. They get published in print and online and they make broadcast-quality radio and television. Some of them have had work published in The Independent.

"The world has changed a lot since print skills alone made a good journalist. Today's reporters need computer and broadcast skills Kelvin has never acquired. Perhaps he would like to learn. We'd be pleased to help."

Indy ripped off Kelvin interview from student mag

George Brock, head of journalism at City University, says in a post today that the Independent "ripped off" its Kelvin MacKenzie article, in which he called on all journalism colleges to be closed, from City's student magazine.

Brock says: "One of the many pieces of practical journalism our students complete is a 108-page magazine, X-City, which has just appeared. Kelvin developed his views about training journalists at greater length and the interviewer, Harriet Thurley, turned it into a first-person piece. This was then ripped off, without any attribution, by The Independent today (a lesson in itself on what to expect from national papers). Credits were inserted a few hours later."

His view of MacKenzie's call to shut journalism colleges is fairly succint: "Kelvin is talking bollocks."

• Bit surprised by MacKenzie writing for the Independent, after all he told the Today programme when i was launched: "What I don't like is the current Independent and, having put them side-by-side for the first time today, I can't see how the current Independent, which is long, boring and political, is going to compete very well, with this rather light, frothy, interesting and not left-wing paper..."
  

'Close all journalism colleges' says MacKenzie

Fresh from duffing up the Guardian in the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie launches another broadside at journalism colleges in the Independent today.

MacKenzie, who admits to gaining one 0-level, repeats his call for all journalism colleges to be closed down.

He claims: "There's nothing you can learn in three years studying media at university that you can't learn in just one month on a local paper. You cover a car crash, what's there to know? A golden wedding? A court case? University may be enjoyable: you make friends, drink a lot and occasionally turn up to lectures but you don't need any of those things to be a journalist. With the possible exception of the alcohol."

MacKenzie adds: "The best way to become a journalist is to go down the route I was forced to follow as not only did I not sit A-levels I only got one 0-level despite taking 15 of them over two different examination boards. Only a special kind of talent can achieve that result.

"So my advice to any 18-year-old is try and achieve three decent A-levels, go to a local paper, then to a regional, and then head out on to nationals or magazines by 21-22...Learning on the job may be a highwire act but it will be a lesson you will never forget compared with listening to "professor" Roy Greenslade explaining why Wapping was a disgrace. No amount of academic debate is going to give you news sense, even if you have a PhD. It's a knack and you've either got it or you haven't."

He also claims: "There are more than 80 schools in the UK teaching journalism. These courses are make-work projects for retired journalists who teach for six months a year and are on a salary of £34,000- £60,000. Students are piling up debts as they pay to keep their tutors in the lifestyles they're used to. I'd shut down all the journalism colleges today. If you want to be a print journalist you should go straight from school and join the local press."

• The trouble with the local press route into journalism is how are regional newspapers going to take on trainees when they are cutting staff? Look at today's news. Midland News Association, publisher of Britain's biggest selling regional, the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, is planning 90 redundancies. (see post below).
• MacKenzie first called for all "waste-of-time media colleges" to be closed in his Sun column last July.
  

Guardian will be dead in a decade says MacKenzie

The Guardian may be the Newspaper of the Year but Kelvin MacKenzie in his Sun column today predicts it won't survive the next ten years.

After sending his congratulations to Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger for taking the top accolade at this week's Press Awards, MacKenzie sticks the boot in.

He claims the Guardian's "circulation fell on Monday to an all-time low of 200,000" and adds: "Over the next month, my bet is that it will plunge even further and within a decade will have ceased publication entirely as its losses - around £40 million a year - become unsustainable."

MacKenzie describes the Guardian as "strangely left-wing" and says Rusbridger is on £500,000 a year "while all his readers are skint".

The former Sun editor has never been a fan of the Guardian, describing it as the WWN (the World's Worst Newspaper). He also says the News of the World phone hacking inquiry is a "piddly, politically motivated witch hunt".

• Interesting post from Malcolm Coles on why the Guardian's future really does look bleak - and why he wants to give it more money. He writes: "I've gone from paying £230 a year for weekday news to £4. The collapse in what I pay is because I read most of the news for the next day’s newspaper on the Guardian website on my iPad the evening before. And I read anything new on my iPhone on the way to and from work. The newspaper has nothing in that I need."