PAGE A9 Hussein Photographs in Tabloids Prompt Inquiry by U.S. The publication of photographs of Saddam Hussein wearing only underwear in his cell in Iraq led the Bush administration to open an investigation into how they made their way into newspapers in London and New York, apparently supplied by someone in the American military.
The incident is indicative of the rising tensions between journalists and the authorities in Britain in the aftermath of an inquiry into tabloid newspaper excesses and abuses.
Claims that NoW journalists had hacked the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler led to the closure of the Sunday tabloid, and later an inquiry into press standards by Lord Justice Leveson.
Jerry Lawton, a reporter with the Daily Star, a British tabloid, told the Leveson Inquiry in March 2012 that the leaks had come directly from the Portuguese police.
Last year, Mr. Murdoch was the target of a foam-pie-tossing protester at a parliamentary inquiry into the tabloid scandal.
He added, however, that he was concerned that following the Leveson inquiry, the Sunday tabloid press was " not the beast it once was".
Perhaps Leveson is enjoying some of this season's bestselling books with his mince pies – they would make a change from the kinds of tabloid journalism that prompted his inquiry.
Parliament will "urgently" want to know, he said, whether the police, who hold Mr. Mulcaire's notes, told MI5 that there was a potential breach in its security — and if so, whether MI5 acted to inform a judicial inquiry into the tabloid's wrongdoing.
He also appointed a judge-led inquiry into the tabloid abuses, and into the ethics and practices of British newspapers, and said he would never have hired Mr. Coulson if he had not had assurances from the former editor that he played no part in the News of the World phone hacking.
Kavanagh, now a Sun columnist and still one of the most trusted senior journalists at the Rupert Murdoch-owned title, mounted an impassioned defence of tabloid journalism at a Leveson inquiry seminar on Tuesday, which was attended by a number of current and former national newspaper editors.
