ITV to air drama about Guardian’s role in breaking phone-hacking scandal
ITV to air drama about Guardian’s role in breaking phone-hacking scandal
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Seven-part series The Hack will spotlight work of journalist Nick Davies and how it led to closure of News of the World. An ITV drama about the Guardian’s role in breaking the phone-hacking scandal that closed the News of the World will be aired later this year starring Toby Jones from Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
The seven-part series will follow both the work of the Guardian journalist Nick Davies, played by Doctor Who’s David Tennant, and the police investigation into the unsolved murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan. Jones, whose performance last year portraying the campaigner Alan Bates helped trigger a national outcry over the treatment of victims of the Post Office scandal, will play the part of the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger.
Davies was responsible for uncovering the widespread use of phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, including the revelations of unlawful access of the mobile phone voicemail of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. The News of the World closed in July 2011 and the Sunday tabloid’s former editor Andy Coulson was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2014 but the hacking scandal continues to dog Murdoch’s media empire.
Last week the the Duke of Sussex and the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson accepted a costs and damages settlement of more than £10m from Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which owns the Sun. Harry also received “a full and unequivocal apology” over “the phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators instructed by them” at the News of the World.
