MPs conclude guilt from nothing says Guardian

Rather amusing to see the Guardian's splash this morning which is titled

"MPs' verdict on News of the World phone-hacking scandal: Amnesia, obfuscation and hush money"

A more accurate headline would be

"MPs verdict on News of the World phone-hacking scandal: We found so little evidence that all we can do is extrapolate assumed conclusions"

Incidentally, the words "hush money" do not appear in the report. What these MPs have done is to note that the NotW paid some journalists money and have assumed that because of it "silence was effectively bought".

Regarding obfuscation, they actually accuse the Information Commissioner of it directly and then, casually throughout, refer to "deliberate obfuscation" but never actually say by who, presumably because they can't prove that either.

So, to summarise, the conclusion of the Select Committee report on phone hacking is that they spent weeks interviewing people, couldn't actually come up with much evidence, and so hacked together a report which draws assumed conclusion. Yay for democracy huh?

Oh yes, and they also concluded that the Press Complaint Commission should be given powers to suspend the publication of newspaper for one issue. Yay for freedom of the press too!