Former editor Brooks 'horrified' to learn newspaper hacked phone of missing teenager

Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks said she never sanctioned phone hacking, and was horrified when she learned the British tabloid newspaper had targeted the mobile phone of a missing teenager.

Brooks answered “No” when asked by her lawyer whether she had ever approved eavesdropping on voicemails.

She said that, as editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper between 2000 and 2003, she didn’t know that phone hacking was against the law, but would have considered it a “serious breach of privacy”.

“I don’t think anybody, me included, knew it was illegal,” Brooks said during her third day on the witness stand at her trail into phone-hacking in Britain.

“No one, no desk head, no journalist, ever came to me and said, ‘We’re working on so-and-so a story, but we need to access their voicemail’, or asked my sanction to do it.”