It has been called trial of the century, but for some involved in Britain’s ongoing phone hacking trial, it has felt like a century.The trial of seven defendants has been going on for more than 135 days.The jury is still deciding the fate of former senior executives in Rupert Murdoch’s stable, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.
For journalists at the trial, life will never be quite the same once the high profile case comes to an end at London’s Old Bailey.James Doleman works for the Scottish magazine The Drum.”Behind us is a building which is now nine stories tall. When this trial started it was a hole in the ground. So, the building is almost a metaphor for how long we’ve been here in many ways,” he said.
He has been in court almost every day of the hacking trial, save for one fairly major incident earlier this year.”One morning in about March I had a bout of stomach pain. And I went to see the matron – they have a matron in The Old Bailey, a nice Irish woman – and she sent me to hospital, and it turned out my appendix had burst,” Doleman said.
He joked that he was too busy following the exciting progress of the trial to have noticed.
Romance put on hold for hacking case
Lizzy Millar, a court reporter for the London Media news agency, has even weaved her love life around the hacking case. “I started covering the phone hacking trial in October, and then two months later I got engaged,” Millar said.”And then we had to decide on a date for the wedding. And I thought, ‘well, the trial was at first estimated to last five months’. And then it went on and on
“And I thought ‘well I can’t put my life on hold for the phone hacking trial’. On the other hand I have a responsibility and a commitment to cover it to the very end.”So we set a date on June 7, hoping and estimating that the case would be over by then.
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