Portrait of the week | 16 July 2011

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The newspaper the News of the World was closed by Rupert Murdoch after 168 years as a response to revelations of phone hacking — breaking into telephone voicemail messages. Police were said to have 4,000 names that might have been targeted. There was public outcry after it was said that the phones of Milly Dowler, the murdered teenager; and of relatives of the Soham murder victims as well as of dead British soldiers and of those who died in the bombings on 7 July 2005, had been hacked. Police were also said to have been paid by journalists for telephone numbers of members of the royal family. Gordon Brown complained that when he was in office, the Sunday Times had used ‘known criminals’ to find out his bank details and that the Sun had improperly discovered the medical condition of his son Fraser.