British police will contact thousands of people whose mobile phones may have been targeted by the News of The World tabloid, an indication of the scale of the scandal at the heart of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Police have long insisted only a small number of people were believed to have been have been spied upon by the tabloid, which employed a private detective to break into the voice mail boxes of the paper's targets and eavesdrop on their private messages.

But that contention has been challenged by MPs, fellow journalists and former employees of the News of The World, who have claimed that the practice was widespread.

There have also been allegations that police were hiding the full scale of the phone hacking operation for fear of jeopardising its relationship with the politically powerful tabloid.

The police have denied those claims, but the force has long been cagey about who exactly was targeted - and how many individuals were involved.

Alleged victims of the hacking have complained that police only gave them evidence reluctantly - fuelling allegations of a cover-up.

Police said they were taking a "fresh approach" to informing people whose names appeared in documents taken from The News of The World's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.

News of the World phone hacking scandal affects thousands

from Crikey .....

News Corp phone hacking -- it just keeps getting worse

Glenn Dyer writes:

ELLE MACPHERSON, NEWS CORP, PHONE HACKING SCANDAL

No matter what tactic Rupert Murdoch's News Corp adopts to protect itself and the Murdochs from the News of The World phone-hacking scandal, it just keeps getting worse.

Overnight London papers reported that Scotland Yard had found evidence of more people whose phones had been hacked, and that this knowledge was gleaned from some of the evidence and other material they had been holding for four or five years.

And on ABC PM last night, an Australian woman in London, Mary-Ellen Field, detailed how her life and business career had been wrecked by the hacking and the poor behaviour of Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson, who she was advising.

It was a chilling interview and the News Ltd papers in Australia seem to have overlooked it in their rush to cover a flawed criticism of the NBN and the death stare on Tony Abbott. Perhaps, in the interest of reporting a good human-interest story, they will get their people in London to talk to Field, that's if she wants to talk to a News Corp hack.

The PM interview, at least the transcript on the PM website, is worth reading and listening to. Here's what PM quoted Field as saying about Macpherson after phone conversations between the two started appearing in the News of The World.

"Well she fired me on the telephone on the 9th of January 2006; wouldn't explain it and just said that I knew what I'd done. She wouldn't explain it; I went and told my CEO immediately; he was really shocked because she had told him also that I had leaked information and unfortunately, well with celebrities, companies tend to, especially someone beautiful like that, because she'd asked to have an office in my building.

"She also took her business away from my firm and so I was fired for losing the business. You know I was 57 at the time, that's not a particularly nice thing to happen when I had worked extremely hard to get where I was. None of my other clients made these accusations but sadly I was removed.

"But then odd things started to happen, which you know, were inexplicable. In the beginning of March she called me and said -- I haven't mentioned the fact that we were so concerned about the leaking of information that in October 2005 I said to her why don't we get the house checked and see if there's any bugs or anything, because you know, both of us knew as little about phone hacking as most people; and we thought it was like the movies and there'd be some sort of hidden microphone or something.

"So we got a very reputable security company to come and check and they couldn't find anything. And then in March 2006 she called me and I now know that that's when she was approached by the police and the police had told her that they believed that her voice messages had been hacked into by this detective that was employed by The News of the World.

MARK COLVIN: "Did she offer you your job back?"

MARY-ELLEN FIELD: "No. No, no, no. And she didn't tell me why she'd asked and then in August 2006 these two chaps, the detective and the reporter from the News of the World were arrested, so I immediately called her but no response, I emailed her and no response.

"I emailed my former employer but again no response and then I wrote to the police. I rang the police first; Scotland Yard and they wouldn't refer me to anyone, so I wrote to the then commissioner, commissioner Blair and no response."

Now if it had been anyone else being fired by Macpherson (without any connection to News Corp), the News Ltd tabloids (and no doubt The Australian) would have climbed all over the story with full, sanctimonious gravity. But this is home grown inside the empire, and guess what, News Ltd papers and their editors and reporters are not interested. They can't even bring themselves to trot out the new News' defence that it was a "small cabal" if bad eggs at the News of The World. I still wonder if any News Ltd hacks have tried hacking the phones of prominent people in this country.

I suppose the only way to get the Murdochs and the News Corp media outlets interested in either reporting the story, getting the scandal wrapped up, is to authorise hacking of the mobiles of the various Murdochs, the editors of the various papers here and around the world, and some of the high-profile defenders of the News Corp style of journalism. Give 'em a taste of their own medicine. But that's breaking the law and why get in the gutter with the News of the World.

Meanwhile, dad's plans to buy daughter Elizabeth's Shine TV production company and make her very wealthy with News Corp money, are getting close to fruition for the family.

The Financial Times reported more detail overnight, including the big sticking point, how to ensure Shine's independence to make sure it's not shut out of supplying programs to non-News Corp companies. Dad is reportedly paying $A1.1 billion for Shine, once this problem can be ironed out.

"But a direct link to BSkyB would not be advantageous to Shine, as it could lose its status as an independent producer, meaning public-service broadcasters such as the BBC and http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=uk:ITV CTRL + Click to follow link" href="http://redirect.cmailer.com.au/LinkRedirector.aspx?clid=6c3af051-4ec0-4558-9a03-8d8704fee8a3&rid=69d1ff55-56ad-43e0-91ce-08877a1f397f">ITV would not be able to count its programs as contributing to the quotas of "indie" shows they are required to show in return for their licences.

"The status of Shine within News Corp is one of the main questions still to be resolved by negotiations, according to one person familiar with the discussions."

Ms Murdoch owns 53% of Shine, according to the FT and BSkyB owns 13%. That makes Ms Murdoch a semi-billionaire (well she is a fully-fledged one based on the shared stake in News Corp with her siblings) in her own right and ahead of Lachlan and James, who are merely wealthy.

Remember the Shine buy will be a related-party transaction, and at more than $A1 billion, an expensive one. The majority of money to pay for it will come from non-Murdoch News Corp shareholders (even if shares are involved) and 53% will be transferred to a member of his family. Because News Corp is so large, shareholder approval isn't needed.

Remember also how News Ltd papers climbed all over the Fairfax Media purchase of Rural Press because it involved members of the Fairfax family. There will be no similar scrutiny of any Shine purchase.

No cost benefit analysis will be published. Remember that next time you read The Australian clamouring for a cost benefit analysis on the NBN, and it won't be put to shareholder vote, as the NBN has been put to the vote by the ALP in two elections. News Ltd papers here won't remark on the fact that it is a related-party transaction and therefore a bit costly to non-Murdoch shareholders. It will be a case of "just report the facts, sir".

To get the deal done, dad no doubt will find a way of yet again circumventing the rules on the independence of Shine to fit his version of reality in the UK media market.

Senior Metropolitan police officers were enjoying private dinners with News of the World editors at the same time as the force was responsible for investigating the phone-hacking scandal, it has been disclosed.

A list of meetings that Scotland Yard has handed over to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), which supervises the service, discloses eight previously unpublicised private dinners and five other occasions during which senior officers met with newspaper executives.

Two of the dinners came at particularly sensitive moments and are likely to revive fears that Scotland Yard's handling of the phone-hacking affair may have been compromised by a desire to avoid alienating the UK's biggest-selling newspaper.

In September 2006, the then deputy commissioner, Paul Stephenson, accompanied by the Yard's director of public affairs, Dick Fedorcio, dined with the NoW's deputy editor, Neil Wallis. This was only a month after officers had arrested the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and at a time when detectives were still trying to investigate whether other journalists or executives were involved in the interception of voicemail messages. In theory, Wallis was a potential suspect.

Scotland Yard has since been criticised for failing to interview any NoW employee other than Goodman, even though it is now known that the Met had material that suggested named journalists may have been involved in the hacking.

Phone Hacking: Senior Met Officers Dined With News Of The World Editors

The Australian model Elle Macpherson has engaged the services of a top PR firm in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. She is seeking to minimise unfavourable press criticism, notably in Australia, over her dealings with Rupert Murdoch.

In 2006 a court found that her phone had been hacked by the News of the World, but unlike the four other proven victims, excluding the royal princes (Max Clifford, Sky Andrew, Gordon Taylor and Simon Hughes), she has taken no legal action.

Critics have long suspected that she came to an out-of-court settlement with the paper and point out that in five years since the scandal, there were around 30 mentions of Macpherson (dubbed The Body) within it, of which all were either neutral or favourable. But her lawyer, Alex-ander Carter-Silk, has always claimed she neither sought nor was offered any sort of compensation.

It is a denial endorsed by the PR company, Project Associates, whose spokesman told The Independent on Sunday yesterday: "It is categorically untrue that she or anyone associated with her did any sort of deal with News International."

Another indirect victim of the phone hacking episode was Mary-Ellen Field, the model's former branding adviser, who Macpherson sacked, suspecting her of leaking stories to the press. Ms Field always denied this, and says she assumed when evidence of the hacking of Macpherson's phone emerged that Macpherson would exonerate her. Yet Macpherson has always refused to do so, and will not answer questions on the matter.

The result has been a storm of unfavourable publicity in much of the non-Murdoch-owned media in Australia. Macpherson's unwillingness to answer questions about phone hacking and the sacking of Ms Field have been laughingly contrasted with her insistence on talking about her favourite beauty products and "the lessons she's learned from suncare".

"Far more entertaining," wrote one journalist of one of her recent appearances endorsing a brand of sunscreen, "was listening to the photographers bitching about The Body yesterday, referring to the job as 'A Nightmare on Elle Street'."

Project Associates, which specialises in reputation "protection, management and enhancement", has strong links with the Murdoch organisation: the former Sun editor Stuart Higgins is a non-executive director.

The model also remains on good terms with Murdoch's companies. She hosts Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model on the part-Murdoch-owned network BSkyB, and her new US show Fashion Star is the creation of producer Ben Silverman, a close associate of the Murdochs whose company has a deal with the Murdoch empire to distribute his programmes.

Ms Field, whose case will be explored by the Leveson phone-hacking inquiry, insists she bears no ill will to Macpherson. "If she rang me up tomorrow I'd be pleased to talk to her," she said. "I just want to know what happened. What is undeniable in this is that she is a victim as well as me."

The Body Arms Herself For PR Fightback