Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
WTF WOOTTON: The journalist who broke Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s “Megxit” story and caused international headlines after claiming Johnny Depp was a “wife beater” is at the center of a bizarre media scandal that has erupted across the pond. Read the full Confider story here.
EXCLUSIVE — DARK SIDE OF THE SUN: An explosive new book titled “The Scum That I’ve Become: The Inside Story of a Top Sun Reporter” promises to lift the lid on life at The Sun newspaper under former editor and current News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks, Confider has learned. The book, expected to hit shelves in October, has current and former Sun staffers guessing about the author’s identity. “I’m staying anonymous until the date of publication. Why? Because Rupert Murdoch, and his CEO enforcer Rebekah Brooks, will stop at nothing to ban this book. Their henchmen will come for me,” pre-publicity material for the book states. The author says they were betrayed by News UK in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal, causing “years of unemployment and mental illness.” “I was framed by the Met police, by the very officers who ironically I’d once championed as part of the paper’s hardline agenda,” the author says. “As journalists were arrested, and the top brass panicked, I had a ringside seat.” A spokesperson for News UK declined to comment.