Newspaper review

Papers

The allegation a private investigator working for the News of the World hacked into murdered Milly Dowler’s mobile phone dominates the papers.

The Guardian says as Milly’s friends and parents left messages, “the News of the World was listening and recording their every private word”.

For the Financial Times, this may be a turning point in the hacking scandal.

The Times thinks the public will be angered that the family’s agony might have been exacerbated by journalists.

Both the Guardian and the Independent believe the claims are likely to put new pressure on the chief executive at News International, Rebekah Brooks – who was editing the NoW at the time.

“She has some explaining to do now”, the Independent’s Ian Burrell says.

He predicts a “colossal step change” in the way the authorities and the public regard the scandal.

“No longer can phone hacking be written off as merely a shortcut ruse for accruing celebrity gossip”, he says.

In other news, the review of funding of care for elderly people in England is praised by the Financial Times for coming up with “sensible answers”.

But the Daily Mail brands the ideas “grotesquely unjust”.

For the Daily Mirror, the suggestion pensioners might pay national insurance would amount to a “granny tax”.

The Daily Telegraph says it is hard to envisage any government imposing new taxes on 11m pensioners who also happen to be “the most assiduous voters”.

Finally, the Guardian’s assistant editor Michael White is underwhelmed by London’s new statue of Ronald Reagan.

He reckons it’s “too formal and stiff to be right” for a president who was “perhaps the most easygoing man ever to occupy the White House”.

And the stresses of being a BBC weatherman are told in the Telegraph.

The paper says Jay Wynne has confessed after a night shift he sometimes drives around, “waiting for the sun to come up”, to see if his forecast is correct.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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