Metropolitan Police role in the news media phone hacking scandal Prosecutions Ken Macdonald to review the emails newspaper executives had used as the basis of their claim that no one at "News of the World" but Clive Goodman had been involved in phone hacking. Macdonald immediately concluded there was evidence of criminal activity, including payments to serving police officers, leading the Met to open an investigation focused on bribery and corruption within its ranks. (See discussion of Operation Elveden, below.) On 4 July 2011, "The Guardian" published an article authored by Nick Davies and Amelia Hill titled "Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World." This article
Media coverage in conjunction with the news media phone hacking scandal announced in December 2011 that there was no evidence phone hacking of Milly Dowler's phone by agents of "News of the World" had caused messages to be deleted or give her parents false hope of her being alive, the Australian, which is owned by News International carried the article published by "The Times", also a News International newspaper, strongly critical of "The Guardian" and their investigative reporter, Nick Davies who broke the story. The article raised the question, "whether the paper would still exist if The Guardian had not erroneously blamed it for the Dowlers' false hope." The article contained