Tom Crone is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 barrister

Barrister

A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...

, last working for News International

News International

News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....

 as Legal Affiars manager, before he resigned

Resignation

A resignation is the formal act of giving up or quitting one's office or position. It can also refer to the act of admitting defeat in a game like chess, indicated by the resigning player declaring "I resign", turning his king on its side, extending his hand, or stopping the chess clock...

 during the News International phone hacking scandal.

Career

Crone qualified as a barrister, and after five years of private practise joined Mirror Group Newspapers. In 1985, he joined News International, appointed as Legal Affairs manager. During his time at the group, acting for The Sun and the News of the World

News of the World

The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...

, he won plaudits from both colleagues and rivals for his unerring journalistic instinct: "He is a unique lawyer in that he has great journalistic instincts. He is sort of 10% journalist and is incredibly streetwise." Crone was one of the first media managers to use libel defence specialist John Kelsey-Fry. He also hit out at then Attorney General for England and Wales

Attorney General for England and Wales

Her Majesty's Attorney General for England and Wales, usually known simply as the Attorney General, is one of the Law Officers of the Crown. Along with the subordinate Solicitor General for England and Wales, the Attorney General serves as the chief legal adviser of the Crown and its government in...

 Lord Goldsmith

Peter Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith

Peter Henry Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith, PC, QC , is a former Attorney General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland. On 22 June 2007, Goldsmith announced his resignation which took effect on 27 June 2007, the same day that prime minister, Tony Blair, stepped down. Goldsmith was the longest...

 for clamping down on media coverage of high-profile cases, such as the allegations of rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

 made against a group of Premier League footballers, before they go to trial.

Resignation

As part of his role at News International, Crone gave evidence before parliamentary committees in 2009, stating that he had uncovered no evidence of phone hacking beyond the criminal offences committed by the royal editor Clive Goodman

Clive Goodman

Clive Goodman is a former royal editor and reporter for the News of the World. He was arrested in August 2006 and jailed in January 2007 for intercepting mobile phone messages involving members of the Royal Household.Goodman initially worked as a journalist on Nigel Dempster's gossip column in the...

.

In 2011, within 10 days of the revelation of the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, he resigned from his position at News International. He maintains that he did not see an internal report suggesting that phone hacking at the paper reached more widely than Goodman.