Liars need good memories*

Today sees James Murdoch face the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee (CMSC) for a second time this year, to help clarify some issues that were brought up last time and answer some further questions that have since arisen. Last time around, many people seemed stunned to discover the volume of pertinent events that both Murdoch senior and James did not recall. These ranged from reasons behind signing off large out-of-court settlements and whether they had been briefed or not on the extent of phone hacking. In what has made a remarkably good media narrative, there appears to be a single email, termed the For Neville email, that the CMSC that fundamentally contrasts with some of the assertions made about what has been going on and who knows (or doesn't know) what.

Around the time of the last committee hearing, I started making a simple database of who had worked where, who knew who, and what had happened to people as a way to determine just how close the MET and News Of The World were. I last updated it at the close of the CMSC in which Murdoch senior got a pie in the face. Things have since changed with more revelations, arrests, and resignations so this serves a handy snapshot of information that publicly existed at the time of the last CMSC meeting. Below is a graphical representation of the database, presented using the social network analysis tool *ORA. A red line between people indicates a known personal contact between people, a green line between people and organisations denotes some term of employment there. Green lines between organisations indicate some known communication or ownership (such as News International owns The Sun). Dashed lines represent a partial or historic connection.

Well that's a lot of information there. There's a lot of fun stuff to further examine between the police and News International (particularly that of Neil Wallis), but that can be saved for another day. James Murdoch is tucked comfortably away from any of the more shady characters or goings on, which are situated in the centre and lower middle of the graph. To clarify who people are, we can change the colour of each node based on their attributes known, such as their job or their employment/arrest status. Below are people's job roles.

and now people's status

So this answers the question of who the Neville is in the "For Neville" email Neville Thurlbeck was a journalist at the now defunct News Of The World who was arrested after direct contact with the private eye, Glenn Mulcaire. He also has been investigated for his relationship with police built around a high degree of information sharing. It would probably be inconvenient for James Murdoch if he was aware of what was going on at the News Of The World, particularly if any direct connection between him and some of the less savory goings on. Let's hope his memory improves this time around and we can get some clear answers.

* as upheld by the PCC, the title of an article does not have to reflect the actual content of the article itself. The title of this post is certainly not referring to anyone mentioned in the post.