Is this Armageddon for Murdoch and NewsCorp?

The concensus seems to be that Murdoch was much more at ease today than his appearance before the CCC a few months ago. He admits meeting with Margaret Thatcher and socialising with David Cameron but his relationship with Prime Ministers stretches back to Tony Blair .

The special advisor to Hunt has resigned but Hunt is considered to have acted properly in his dealings with Murdoch.

It is very unlikely that News International will be sold, they are very well run and the Management will change.

David Cameron visited Murdoch on his Yacht taking time out from his own Holiday in Italy, Today in Parliament he has come under fire from opposition
MP's but argued that all PM's at one time have been friendly with Murdoch.

Newscorp could take heart from today's hearing but the U.S. Foreigh Corrupt practices could take action.

Martin Hickman, co-Author with Tom Watson of Dial M for Murdoch says much of Murdoch's replies were "I don't know," " I can't remember" I didn't do it"

Mr Murdoch said the response to phone hacking allegations had been 'slow'
7:31am UK, Thursday April 26, 2012

Katie Stallard, media and technology correspondent

Rupert Murdoch will be questioned about the phone-hacking scandal at the News Of The World when he resumes his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.
Mr Murdoch has previously said he was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations and was "determined to put things right".

He described his appearance before MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport select committee on the subject last year as "the most humble day of my life".

The News Of The World was the first British newspaper Mr Murdoch bought, in 1969.

It was closed down last July after reports that the murdered teenager Milly Dowler’s voicemail had been hacked.

Asked on Wednesday whether "abuses" in the media go further than the issue of phone hacking, Mr Murdoch replied: "Oh, they go further."

In his witness statement to the inquiry, the News Corporation founder and chairman said he first became aware of allegations of phone hacking at the paper after the arrest of its royal editor, Clive Goodman, in 2006, but that he had been told it was confined to a single, rogue reporter.

With hindsight, he said, the company's response to the allegations had been "slow and insufficient".

:: See all the latest news from the Leveson Inquiry.

Mr Murdoch's statement said: "I became aware that the position was wrong sometime in late December 2010 or January 2011, when evidence in the Sienna Miller case revealed that more than one reporter was apparently involved in the activity.

"I believe it was Rebekah Brooks who informed me of this.

"This was a source of great concern to me because it called into question an understanding that had governed NI's response to these matters for four years.

"As my son James said, it is to our great regret that the company's statements on this issue proved to be wrong and that in hindsight our response to these allegations in 2009-2010 was slow and insufficient."

Mr Murdoch said the company was attempting to "resolve genuine voicemail interception claims by settlement wherever possible" and had so far paid out approximately £14.5m in damages and legal costs.


At times the evidence from Rupert Murdoch - who has seen numerous politicians come and go - seemed more like a history lesson.

Analysis by Sophy Ridge, Sky News political correspondent
He said that, as of April 10 this year, 72 claims have been settled, 20 issued claims are outstanding, and 23 further claims had been accepted into the compensation scheme.

He added: "NGN [News Group Newspapers] has apologised, both publicly and privately, for the voicemail interception which took place at the News of the World and for the considerable hurt and distress which this has caused to those individuals affected."

Mr Murdoch is likely to face questions about corporate governance within News International, of which his son, James Murdoch, was chairman from 2007 until February this year.

His witness statement said News Corporation has now established a Management and Standards Committee (MSC) to take charge of phone hacking and related issues at News International.

He said: "I promised the select committee that I would clean up the phone-hacking problem at the News Of The World. The MSC has more than made good on my promise."

The media tycoon is the first witness to have two days set aside for his testimony to the Leveson Inquiry.

The 81-year-old gave evidence for four hours on his first day about his relationship with prime ministers past and present, and the perceived influence of his British newspapers, but he strongly denied ever asking for favourable treatment from politicians.

"In 10 years of his power I never asked Mr Blair for anything. Nor indeed did I receive any favours," he told the inquiry.

He made similar statements about Baroness Thatcher, for whom he expressed his "great admiration".

Mr Murdoch was asked about comments he is said to have made after his initial meetings with Mr Blair, such as this in 1995: "If our flirtation is ever consummated, Tony, then I suspect we will end up making love like porcupines: very, very carefully."

"Did you say that?" Robert Jay, QC for the inquiry, asked Mr Murdoch.

To much laughter from his wife, Wendi Deng, and his son Lachlan Murdoch, sitting in the front row of the witness area, the News Corp chairman replied: "I might have."


Rupert Murdoch: Gordon Brown Declared War
But Gordon Brown has denied "declaring war" on News Corporation, as Mr Murdoch claimed on his first day, when The Sun switched its support to David Cameron in 2009.

Mr Murdoch claimed Brown had called him on 30 September 2009 and said: "Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company."

He denied that voices had been raised, and said he had responded: "I'm sorry about that, Gordon, thank you for calling, end of subject."

:: Q&A - Why have Murdochs been called to Leveson Inquiry?

He told the inquiry: "I don't think he was in a very balanced state of mind."

But Mr Brown responded that the claim was "wholly wrong" and demanded Mr Murdoch correct his account.

In a statement, the former prime minister said: "Mr Rupert Murdoch has today made a serious allegation that, in a telephone call when The Sun declared for the Conservative party, I told him I had declared war on his company.

"He is wholly wrong. As the Leveson inquiry heard, The Sun declared for the Conservatives on September 30, 2009.

"I did not phone Mr Murdoch or meet him, or write to him about his decision.

"I hope Mr Murdoch will have the good grace to correct his account."

London (CNN) -- Rupert Murdoch admitted Thursday there had been a "cover-up" of phone hacking at his flagship British tabloid newspaper and apologized for not paying more attention to a scandal that has convulsed his media empire and rocked the British political establishment.

And he said that he had shut down the best-selling News of the World out of "panic" in the face of public fury about the revelation that a murdered teenage girl had been a victim of phone hacking.

Murdoch, who owns the Sun and the Times in London, as well as controlling the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News, said his News Corp. had been a victim of the cover-up, not the perpetrator.

"Someone took charge of a cover-up, which we were victim to and I regret," he said at the Leveson Inquiry, an independent British probe prompted by charges of illegal eavesdropping by his newspaper.



Rupert Murdoch admits hacking cover-up

Hear what Rupert Murdoch told the inquiry

James Murdoch blames staff for failures He blamed "one or two very strong individuals" at the paper, but did not name them.

"I also have to say that I failed," he said of the fact that he did not pay enough attention to the problem of phone hacking. He then paused a long time before finally continuing: "And I am very sorry for it."

If he had known the depth of the problem in 2007, when a private investigator and a Murdoch journalist were sent to prison for phone hacking, he "would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today. But that's hindsight," he said.

The hacking scandal has led to dozens of arrests, two parliamentary investigations and the Leveson Inquiry, a judge-led independent probe set up by the British government.

Murdoch suggested key parts of the scandal have been overblown.

"The hacking scandal was not a great national thing until the Milly Dowler disclosure, half of which has been somewhat disowned by the police," Murdoch said.

He was referring to the revelation that people working for him had hacked into the voice mail of a missing 13-year-old who later turned out to have been murdered.

The Guardian newspaper originally reported that the hackers had also deleted some of her voice mails, leading to false hopes that she was still alive and deleting them herself. In fact, the messages may have expired automatically.

Murdoch Thursday described the atmosphere when news of the Milly Dowler hacking became public in July 2011.

"You could feel the blast coming in the window. I can say it succinctly. I panicked. And I am sorry I did," he said of his decision to close the tabloid. He later said he should have closed it years earlier.

"This whole business is a serious blot on my reputation," he said.

Murdoch was also grilled over his media empire's back-channel lobbying of the British government, and said he learned of the existence of one of the key lobbyists only "a few months ago."

Murdoch said he was "surprised" at the extent of the contact by the employee, Fred Michel, with the British government as it considered a bid by News Corp. to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting.

That bid that collapsed because of the phone-hacking scandal.

"You call it lobbying, I call it seeking of information," Murdoch told the Leveson Inquiry. "I didn't see anything wrong with his activities. I was I surprised that it had gone on so long, that there were so many e-mails, yes."

A government aide quit Wednesday over the revelation of the extent of the contacts, and there have been calls for the resignation of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is named in the correspondence.

Murdoch spent hours Wednesday downplaying his political influence, even as British Prime Minister David Cameron said politicians had been too close to Murdoch over the years and the government aide, Adam Smith, resigned over communications between the culture ministry and News Corp.

Murdoch insisted Wednesday that he had "never asked a prime minister for anything" as he chronicled his personal relationships with prime ministers going back to Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.

The media baron also denied using the power of his press for personal gain.

At the same time, Cameron was saying politicians from across the political spectrum had been too close to Murdoch.

"I think we all, on both sides of this house, did a bit too much cozying up to Mr. Murdoch," he told the House of Commons as his government was battered over testimony Murdoch's son had given to the Leveson Inquiry the day before.

James Murdoch testified Tuesday that before Cameron became prime minister, he had met the politician over drinks at a pub and told him the company's Sun newspaper would support his Conservative party in the next election.

The younger Murdoch insisted that he knew little about the scale of phone hacking by people working for the News of the World, as he continued his fight to limit the damage the scandal does to him and his family's media empire.

The scandal has forced News Corp. to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation to the victims of phone hacking.

James and Rupert Murdoch have been hammered over the past year about what they knew about phone hacking by people working for them.

They have always denied knowing about the scale of the practice, which police say could have affected thousands of people, ranging from celebrities and politicians to crime victims and war veterans.

CNN's Dan Rivers, Erin McLaughlin, Elaine Ly and Claudia Rebaza contributed to this report.

8:50pm UK, Thursday April 26, 2012

Rupert Murdoch has told the Leveson Inquiry that there was a cover-up at the News Of The World to hide the scale of phone hacking.
The News Corporation boss said he and other senior executives were not informed, misinformed and "shielded" from what was going on at the paper, suggesting the cover-up was instigated by "one or two people" at the now-defunct tabloid.

He did not name the individuals concerned, but the News Of The World's former legal manager Tom Crone later said an unnamed lawyer referred to by Mr Murdoch could "only" refer to him, and said the claims were untrue.

In a statement, Mr Crone said: "(Rupert Murdoch's) assertion that I 'took charge of a cover-up' in relation to phone-hacking is a shameful lie.



Tom Crone has hit back saying Rupert Murdoch's 'attack' is 'wholly wrong'

"The same applies to his assertions that I misinformed senior executives about what was going on and that I forbade people from reporting to Rebekah Brooks or to James Murdoch.

"It is perhaps no coincidence that the two people he has identified in relation to his cover-up allegations are the same two people who pointed out that his son's evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee last year was inaccurate.

"The fact that Mr Murdoch's attack on (former NOTW editor) Colin Myler and myself may have been personal as well as being wholly wrong greatly demeans him."

Mr Murdoch was appearing for his second day of evidence at the inquiry into media standards.


Rupert Murdoch: Gordon Brown Declared War
Mr Murdoch has previously said he was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations of phone hacking and was "determined to put things right".

Giving evidence on Thursday, he apologised for the failings of the Sunday tabloid and accepted the buck stopped with him.

The 81-year-old said he feels responsible for the hacking scandal at the newspaper, saying it was a "serious blot" on his reputation.

:: Q&A on Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson Inquiry

Mr Murdoch also said he wished he had stepped in earlier to shut the tabloid down.

Asked by counsel to the inquiry Robert Jay QC where the "cover-up" emanated from, Mr Murdoch replied: "I think from within the News Of The World.

"There were one or two very strong characters there who I think had been there many, many years and were friends of the journalists.

"The person I am thinking of was a friend of the journalists, drinking pal, and was a clever lawyer and forbade them... or there have been statements reporting that this person forbade people to go and report to Mrs (Rebekah) Brooks or James (Murdoch).

"That is not to excuse it on our behalf at all, I take it extremely seriously that that situation had arisen."



Mr Murdoch with a copy of the News Of The World in 1968

Mr Murdoch admitted he had not paid close enough attention to the tabloid and apologised for what happened, and to the staff who lost their jobs when he closed the newspaper.

"I have to admit that some newspapers are closer to my heart than others, but I also have to say that I failed. And I am very sorry about it."

However, he also said he wishes he had closed the NOTW "years ago" and replaced it with a Sunday edition of the Sun newspaper.

Later, he said the NOTW - which, in 1969, was the first British newspaper he bought - was "an aberration, and it's my fault".

The tabloid was closed down last July after reports that the murdered teenager Milly Dowler's voicemail had been hacked.

He said when this story surfaced, it could not be ignored, and closing the tabloid down had been a very quick decision.

"(The Dowler case) made people all over the country aware of this... You could feel the blast coming in the window almost.

"And I would say it succinctly, I panicked. But I am glad I did."


highlights of murdochs' committee evidence, July 19,2011
On Wednesday, Mr Murdoch described his relations with senior politicians - and sparked a row over whether Gordon Brown "declared war" on News International.

The former prime minister said the "serious allegation" was "wholly wrong", and called on Mr Murdoch to "correct his account" when he resumed giving evidence.

But at the start of proceedings on Thursday, Mr Murdoch told the inquiry: "As for the conversation, which he's denied, I said that very carefully under oath, and I stand by every word of it."

Away from the inquiry, the Culture, Media and Sport committee will finally publish its long-awaited report on phone hacking on May 1.

It was due many weeks ago and the delay reflects how MPs have struggled to come to an agreement.

:: See all the latest news from the Leveson Inquiry

:: Q&A - Why have Murdochs been called to Leveson Inquiry?

:: News Corp's Takeover Bid Emails Revealed


:: Below: Replay Sky News political correspondent Sophy Ridge's updates and analysis of Mr Murdoch's second day of evidence.

5:34pm UK, Saturday April 28, 2012

Peter Spencer, political correspondent

Embattled Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is running perilously short of friends, with even Downing Street now saying it may investigate his behaviour.
A statement from Number 10 reiterates its line that Mr Hunt should be allowed to appear before the Leveson Inquiry into press standards first.

"It does not make sense to cut across a judicial inquiry with a parallel process that would risk pre-empting, duplicating or contradicting it," a spokesman said.

But, tellingly, he added: "Once Jeremy Hunt's evidence is made public and he is questioned, if there is anything that suggests there has been a breach of the code the Prime Minister would of course act."

:: Read more on the Leveson Inquiry here

That reference was to the rule-book for Government members, the so-called Ministerial Code, alleged breaches of which the Leveson Inquiry says it is not prepared to investigate.


For years the Lib Dems have brandished with pride their independence from Rupert Murdoch. Not for them the cosy dinner parties and sleep overs in Downing Street with members of the famous family.

Read Sophy Ridge's blog
Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry has also declined to bring forward the culture secretary's appearance to answer allegations his handling of the Murdoch bid to buy all of BSkyB.

His task, of arbitrating whether the deal should be allowed to go ahead, was compromised by his own special adviser being too close to a member of Rupert Murdoch's team.

The adviser, Adam Smith, went. And Mr Hunt's accusers say that, guilty by association, so shoud he.

He insists that all relevant communications between him and the now departed assistant will be given to Leveson. And that that documentation, combined with the testimony he will be giving under oath, will clear his name.



Jeremy Hunt, right, and his former adviser Adam Smith

But the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, told the Commons on Wednesday it "beggars belief" that the Prime Minister should try and defend him, and that he should instead sack him.

And he returned to the attack today, saying: "The longer the Prime Minister resists this the more people will conclude he has something to hide, that he is engaged in a cover-up."

In addition, the deputy Liberal Democrat leader, a senior Conservative MP, and the Westminster sleaze watchdog have all said Mr Hunt's case should be referred to the Prime Minister's independent adviser on ministerial conduct, Sir Alex Allan.

The entire affair is awkward for David Cameron, given the questions raised over his own judgement in hiring former News of the World Editor Andy Coulson as his chief spin doctor.

Mr Coulson left Number 10 after being caught up in the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the Sunday tabloid and the setting up of the Leveson inquiry.

But there are also risks involved for Mr Miliband.

Demanding the dismissal of a minister is like throwing down the gauntlet and losing a duel can be very painful.

1:43pm UK, Sunday April 29, 2012

Ashish Joshi, Sky News correspondent

David Cameron has insisted there was no "grand deal" between himself and the Murdochs to wave through News Corporation's takeover of BSkyB.
The Prime Minister admitted that some of his contacts with Rupert Murdoch's media empire were embarrassing and that he might have done things differently.

But he maintained it was "not true" there was any agreement that in return for the Murdochs' support of the Government he would help their business interests or allow the BSkyB merger to go through.

Mr Cameron said Mr Murdoch had said the same thing under oath to the Leveson Inquiry, as had his son, James.

He said "there was no great mystery here".

Mr Cameron told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that he had courted newspaper proprietors to "get his message across" but said about the BSkyB takeover bid: "There was no grand deal.

"It would be absolutely wrong for there to be any sort of deal and there wasn't. There was no grand deal."





(L-R) PM David Cameron and News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch


Mr Cameron said the email contact between beleaguered Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's special adviser Adam Smith and News Corporation's lobbyist Frederic Michel was "wrong", "too close, too frequent and inappropriate".

But the PM also said he did not believe Mr Hunt broke the ministerial code.

Mr Cameron said: "This must be properly investigated. The ministerial code is my responsibility."

A 163-page dossier released by the Leveson Inquiry revealed scores of emails between News Corp and Mr Hunt's office at a time when the minister was in charge of a quasi-judicial process to decide if the bid for BSkyB, which runs Sky News, could go ahead.

Labour has called on Mr Hunt to resign amid allegations he acted as a 'cheerleader' for the bid.

Mr Hunt has insisted he acted with "scrupulous fairness" and said his actions were not influenced in any way by contact between his office and News Corp.

:: Read more on the Leveson Inquiry here.

The PM said he would take advice from his independent adviser Sir Alex Allen on any breaches of the ministerial code but this was dependant on what was said by Mr Hunt at the Leveson Inquiry when the culture secretary appears before it next month.



Jeremy Hunt has been accused of acting as a 'cheerleader' for News Corp's BSkyB bid

Asked if he would ask Sir Alex to hold a separate inquiry if the Leveson Inquiry did not get to the bottom of issues around the BSkyB takeover bid, Mr Cameron said he would.

But he added he could not think of a better way of doing that than through "a judge and evidence under oath".

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls told Sky News' Murnaghan programme: "Jeremy Hunt clearly misled Parliament on information. He was clearly a party to this bid when he should have been objective.

"The code says the prime minister will refer this - it should go to Alex Allen. It should be investigated now.

"The prime minister is trying to push it into Leveson because he is afraid of the scrutiny of that investigation, and because he knows the allegation of side deals with News International is about Jeremy Hunt and the prime minister himself."

He added: "The prime minister should take some responsibility for his Cabinet. I'm afraid Jeremy Hunt's position is untenable."

News Corp, which owns 39% of BSkyB, withdrew its bid for the broadcaster last July in the wake of revelations about phone-hacking.

Murdoch ‘Back Scratching’ Shifts Blame to U.K. Politicians

By Amy Thomson, Erik Larson and Robert Hutton - Apr 27, 2012 3:28 PM GMT+0100
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..
As regulators expand a probe into whether News Corp. (NWSA) should retain its stake in British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) Plc, Rupert Murdoch’s testimony in a media- ethics inquiry turned public attention to the amount of time U.K. lawmakers have spent with the 81-year-old mogul, including trips on private planes and a family yacht in Greece.

Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp., and his son James spent three days in front of the U.K. panel this week blaming their ignorance of corruption at company newspapers on police, lawyers and subordinates. Police investigations of News Corp. journalists have resulted in about 45 arrests in the scandal, which spurred the inquiry by Judge Brian Leveson into relationships between News Corp. employees and politicians.



















Rupert Murdoch, chief executive officer of News Corp., right, Wendi Deng, his wife, centre, and Lachlan Murdoch, a board member of News Corp., left, are driven by car from their apartment in London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
.
Evidence released by the ethics inquiry showed the Murdochs had dozens of meetings with the most powerful lawmakers in the U.K. As a result, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is facing calls from the opposition Labour party to resign after e-mails showed one of his aides offered inside information on Hunt’s views to a News Corp. lobbyist when the company was offering 7.8 billion pounds ($12.6 billion) for the 61 percent of BSkyB it didn’t already own.

“Going into an attacking mode rather than being in a defensive mode was clearly very well planned,” Ajay Bhalla, a professor at London’s Cass Business School, said of the Murdoch strategy. “The focus now has shifted more to other levels, whether it is Jeremy Hunt or David Cameron or Gordon Brown, and the public is likely to” hold News Corp. less accountable.

‘Huge Power’

Murdoch testified he has never sought political favors or asked a prime minister for anything in exchange for support in the press. Tom Watson, a member of the parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking, said he thinks all British lawmakers know Murdoch wields “huge power.”

“U.K. lawmakers are in no doubt where Rupert Murdoch’s commercial and political interests lie,” Watson said. “With control of 40 percent of Britain’s newspapers, he is the ultimate floating voter and prime ministers know this.”

Prime Minister Cameron, who called for the review of media ethics in July, met with Rupert Murdoch six times since he became U.K. leader and on 15 occasions between 2006 and January 2010, when he was leader of the then-opposition Conservatives. On the way to a holiday in Turkey before he became prime minister, Cameron flew on Rupert’s son-in-law’s plane and stopped off in Santorini, Greece, to meet with the elder Murdoch on a yacht, the executive said yesterday, though he couldn’t recall if it was his yacht or his daughter’s.

Blair, Miliband

Tony Blair met with the media mogul more than 30 times when he was prime minister, according to the evidence released yesterday. Ed Miliband, head of the Labour party, went to the company’s summer party in June, about a month before New York- based News Corp. shut down its News of the World tabloid when reporters were accused of hacking into a murdered teenager’s voice mails for stories.

“That’s all part of the democratic process,” Rupert Murdoch said April 25. “Politicians of all sides like to have their views known by the editors of newspapers or publishers, hoping that they will be put across, hoping that they will succeed in impressing people. That’s the game.”

Murdoch also said that he doesn’t promote commercial interests with his newspapers.

Parliament’s report on phone-hacking is scheduled to be published next week and may conclude the Murdochs are implausible witnesses after James Murdoch’s testimony was challenged by other company executives. Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service is also considering whether to bring the first new criminal charges in the case.

Police Bribes

News Corp. rose 1.8 percent yesterday in New York trading. They rose 2 cents to $19.63 at 10:23 a.m. today. Miranda Higham, a spokeswoman for News Corp., declined to comment.

The inquiry led byLeveson is investigating the state of media ethics after reporters were found to have paid off police and public officials and intercepted voice mails and e-mails for stories. News Corp.’s newspapers became the center of the political upheaval after the 168-year-old tabloid News of the World was closed.

James Murdoch, News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer, and his father both denied ever using political endorsements or positive coverage in the company’s titles to smooth the way for deals or gain favorable regulation. Rupert Murdoch said this week he didn’t know very many politicians.

“It’s a common thing in life, which goes way beyond journalism, to say ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’” he told the inquiry in London yesterday.

‘Scratch My Back’

However, when asked if that extended to his relationships with officials, he answered, “I don’t ask any politician to scratch my back.”

The Murdochs have said hacking was allowed to continue under their noses for years because they relied on employees, lawyers and police investigations that were faulty.

To help quell public outrage over phone hacking, Rebekah Brooks, head of the U.K. publishing unit News International, and Les Hinton, head of the Dow Jones (IYR) & Co. unit, stepped down over their involvement in the scandal. Brooks is among those arrested in the police probes. News Corp. also created the Management & Standards Committee to assist police inquiries.

Murdoch said he was “greatly distressed that people who’ve been with me 20, 30 years, fine, great journalists, friends of mine” had been arrested, before going on to say he was “glad” his company had handed over evidence about their actions to the police.

Coulson, Mulcaire

Rupert Murdoch also blamed the Metropolitan police for not informing the company that hacking was more extensive than first believed. A 2006 e-mail from the paper’s lawyer Tom Crone to its editor Andy Coulson said that Brooks was told by police there were more than 100 victims of phone hacking, and suggested that the private detective who hacked phones, Glenn Mulcaire, had “sequences of contacts” with the paper before and after his hacking attempts.

The risk for the company now may be that Leveson concludes that News Corp. has become too influential and shouldn’t be allowed to expand, according to media analyst Claire Enders. That could threaten plans to renew its takeover bid for BSkyB, which it abandoned last year, she said in a note.

“We don’t expect either Rupert or James Murdoch to come out of this process with any significant diminution in their standing,” Enders said in a note. “However, there remains a very substantial risk that one of Lord Leveson’s conclusions is that the scale of News Corp.’s operations in the U.K. should never be allowed to increase.”

Another threat may be British regulator Ofcom’s investigation of whether News Corp. is fit to hold its BSkyB stake. The regulator expanded its investigation to gather evidence about civil cases involving phone hacking.

:

London (CNN) -- Few could accuse Rupert Murdoch of losing his sense of perspective. Amid the threats posed to his global media business interests by the phone-hacking scandal, the media mogul retains an almost childlike fascination for the weather and nature.

And while the Australian-born Murdoch's newspapers stand accused of illegal activities, and a general debasement of society's moral values, the thoughts of the world's 24th most powerful person often seem to be on family: his centenarian mother, his wife, the formidable Wendi Deng, six children and the perils of stray dogs.

We know all these endearing qualities, which shed light on a man who has never previously gone out of his way to humanize his uncompromising image, thanks to a Twitter feed that makes for compelling reading. "Lucky with six great kids and wonderful, busy wife," he wrote in January for example.

Since December 31 of last year, more than 220,000 users have signed up to follow Murdoch's tweets, the forthright style -- and typing errors -- of which indicate that all 232 of them were typed by the News Corp CEO himself, rather than a PR minion.



Rupert Murdoch on inquiry hot seat

'Murdoch's operating as a shadow state'

Murdoch blames his staff for failures In his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into journalistic ethics on Wednesday, he dismissed the posts jokingly. "Don't take the tweets too seriously," he said. But what have we learned in the past four months about the octogenarian tycoon once famously described by CNN's founder Ted Turner as "the most dangerous man in the world?"


1. He hates wind farms

Days before his much-anticipated appearance, he tweets: "English spring countryside as beautiful as ever if and when sun appears! About to be wrecked by uneconomic ugly bird killing windmills. Mad."

He goes on: "They DO kill birds, by the thousand. No need for coal. Develop shale gas, much cleaner and cheaper and huge reserves."

And despite his billions, sometimes it's the small things that make Murdoch happy: "Miracles do happen! Sun shining in London."

2) Murdoch loves movies -- especially his own

and art, even modern stuff. "What a great thing David Hockney donating fabulous painting to the Tate. Truly beautiful and worth a fortune alone."

"Saw Fox film Descendants. Thank God, one to be proud of. Star Geo Clooney deserves Oscar, maybe film too," he wrote on New Year's Eve.

The following day he is raving about another: "I LOVE the film "we bought a zoo", a great family movie. Very proud of fox team who made this great film."

And in April he writes: "Must see great biopic, The Lady, biopic of Aung San suu kyi, the famous Burmese activist."

A fortnight later he moves on to another related subject close to his heart. "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying."

3) Despite his Aussie hard-man image, Murdoch is interested in social welfare projects

"Just attended Harlem Village Academy's board ( HVA), inspiring schools in toughest neighbourhood. 700 kids growing to 2000."

The subject continues to crop up: "@Zindiq of course not, but best hand up is great free education. Come to Harlem and see charter schools and sub-poverty kids shining."

Lucky with six great kids and wonderful, busy wife

Rupert MurdochAnd warming to his theme of concern for the have-nots, he tweets: "Exceptalism or decline. That is the choice. Maybe too late but can we gather forces to return social cohesion? Close the divide."

4) He's turned against the UK Conservatives

Weeks later he is back onto more familiar territory: putting the boot into his enemies and rivals. Two years after backing the Conservatives in Britain, Murdoch now rails against the government that turned against him over phone-hacking.

He even seems to be flirting with the Labour opposition. "Britain strange. Month ago Cameron anti-business every chance, now equally pro-business. On the road to [opposition leader] Ed Milliband!"

And days after a scoop by one of his papers about a Conservative party adviser allegedly selling access to senior ministers, he twists the knife. "Great Sunday Times scoop. What was Cameron thinking? No-one, rightly or wrongly, will believe his story."

His feelings of being an outsider -- remarked on by many biographers over the years -- are never far away. "Enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monoplies."

He responds with thinly veiled threats: "Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing."

"Back in Britain. Govt sending IMF another ten bn to he euro. Must be mad. Not even US or China chipping in. Same time taxing hot food."

The tweets prompt former Murdoch newspaper Andrew Neil to predict "Murdoch Snr will be in 'slash and burn' mood at #Leveson"

But he added: "Bad news: Rupert Murdoch's lawyers urging him to be conciliatory before #leveson. Let's hope they don't defang him too much!"

5) He's not great at picking the Republican nominee

In Britain, Murdoch is renowned for his political acumen in consistently backing winners. But in the United States, Murdoch has failed to pick the winner of the race to be Republican presidential nominee.

On New Year's Eve, he is backing Ron Paul. "Great oped inWSJ today on Ron Paul. Huge appeal of libertarian message."

Days on he turns his attention to another candidate: "Can't resist this tweet, but all Iowans think about Rick Santorum. Only candidate with genuine big vision for country."

A few weeks later, he asks: "When will Romney get a manager to prepare him? Fancy not being ready for questions about taxes or felons! Damaging."

A month later Gingrich is in favour: "Can't blame Newt G too much. He was carpet bombed with negatives by Romney. Brilliant, visionary but just too much baggage! And erratic."

"Santorum"Romney looks like well oiled weather vane". Plenty of company, but not POTUS."

English spring countryside as beautiful as ever if and when sun appears! About to be wrecked by uneconomic ugly bird killing windmills. Mad

Rupert MurdochBut by April, as it appears that Mitt Romney has wrapped up the race, Murdoch is facing up to the inevitable. "No bias for Romney, but with friend Santorum out better be realistic. Hope he takes good vp."

6) He really, really likes nature

Which ever country Murdoch happens to wake up in, his mood is always lifted by the weather: "NY Central Park never looked so beautiful.Full spring blooms everywhere. Enjoying walks. City Hall and volunteers should be congratulated."

"Big reversal. NY weather beautiful and almost warn. Non sign of snow yet."

Days later he's in London: "Miracles do happen! Sun shining in London."

7) Champions America, down on Europe

A familiar theme for many readers of his newspapers is Europe. In his tweets Murdoch seems to revel in the problems facing the 27-nation bloc.

"American economy looking better. At least short term. Meanwhile Europe looks slow motion train wreck. Hope I'm wrong."

"Don't hate Britain, quite the reverse. But whole of Europe and US facing huge financial and social problems."

"From distance, Santorum doing great. Values really do count in America, and not sneered at as in parts of Europe. Win Michigan game over."

There seems to be in Murdoch's view, only one man up to the fight. "What did I give? Years of argument against the euro."

8) Despite all its woes, he still loves UK tabloid The Sun

Murdoch's beloved Sun is never far from his thoughts -- despite the arrests of several journalists over alleged illegal payments to police officers -- especially if stories about it are untrue. Early in the year Murdoch dismisses reports that he is planning a Sunday edition of the tabloid. "F.T. Financial Times or Fawlty Towers? Sun on Sunday story today 100 per cent wrong."

A month later, News International announces the launch of The Sun on Sunday. The news prompts almost boyish excitement from the boss. "London Sun. Great staff tired but excited for Sunday edition. Yougov poll shows 90pc awareness already. Big announcements start tomorrow."

After the launch, Murdoch boasts about sales figures: "Amazing! The Sun confirmed sale of 3.260,000 copies yesterday. Thanks all readers and advertisers. Sorry if sold out - more next time."

9) He's picky on who he follows

Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing

Rupert MurdochMurdoch may have nearly a quarter of a million Twitter users regularly reading his posts, but he is only following 21 feeds. "Achtung Angela! I'm now following you on@WSJDeutschland. Check it out at www./wsj.de. Best German website."

The list of those he is following is an eclectic mix, ranging from The Sun, The Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Post newspapers to actors Steve Martin and Jim Carrey. Innovators such as Bill Gates and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey also feature, along with CNN's own Mohammed Jamjoom.

It is unclear whom he is referring to when he rails against profanities on Twitter: "Please keep tweeting. I read all but how about cleaning up language? Incidentally most credit me with non- existent power and money."

"Why can't we have sensible tweets. You're mainly just crazy and fun to read. No loss of sleep here."

And he strikes a humble note about his own abilities: "Re complaints about my spelling! Problem is my pathetic typing. Sorry, if anyone really cares."

10) He's a real family man

At the end of a hard day, Murdoch is just a dad to his six children by his three wives. On New Year's Eve, he gives us this extraordinary vision: "Great time in sea with young daughters, uboating." He fails to elaborate on what this involves.

Days into the new year, like many a weary parent, his children are pressing him to get a pet. "Just visited ASPCA. Young daughters looking for another dog to adopt! Help!"

Two weeks later, after a business meeting, he is eager to return to the nest. "In Zurich with the big chiefs of soccer. Amazing organization with power over most of the world's football. Now back to family and work."

And perhaps in a statement to those who imagine the 81-year-old might be be considering retirement, Murdoch reminds them his centenarian mother is still going strong. "Thanks to all who sent congrats on mother's 103 rd bray. Long way to go,I hope!"

Breaking News on Hacking Report :-

Lawmakers "astonished that James Murdoch did not know what was going on.

Richard Murdoch is deemed not fit to run a major Company.

News. Intl Executives misled rhe Inquiry Lawmakers say.


WOW what will the U.S. make of this.!!!!!!!

It appears this Report is not binding and that Labour and Lib Dems agreed with it but the Conservatives, naturally , did not.

Ofcom will look into the BskyB aspect and shareholders may want their say.

Tom Watson said Murdoch had brought shame on British business, Politics and Parliament.

Much depends on the share price.

Panda wrote:
It appears this Report is not binding and that Labour and Lib Dems agreed with it but the Conservatives, naturally , did not.

Ofcom will look into the BskyB aspect and shareholders may want their say.

Tom Watson said Murdoch had brought shame on British business, Politics and Parliament.

Much depends on the share price.

I think Watson has done the report a disservice. What evidence did the Committee hear which allows a conclusion that Murdoch Snr is not a fit person to run a major international company? Ignorance of an activity in a minor part of his empire? Had it been shown that Murdoch had knowledge of what was going on it might be fair comment but in the absence of anything substantive that part of the report will end up being ridiculed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


BreakingNewsBreakingNews2:20pm UK, Tuesday May 01, 2012


Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' To Run Company
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2:20pm UK, Tuesday May 01, 2012

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch is "not fit" to run a major company, according to a report that saw members of a powerful committee of MPs split along party lines.
The Culture, Media and Sport select committeesaid, along with his son James, he should "ultimately be prepared to take responsibility" for the "wilful blindness" ofNews International andNews Corporation over the phone-hacking scandal.

But the pair were both cleared of misleading Parliament.


The behaviour ofNews International and certain witnesses in this affair demonstrated contempt for that system in the most blatant fashion.

Culture, Media and Sport select committee report
Former NOTW editor Colin Myler, ex-legal manager Tom Crone and Les Hinton, who worked for Rupert Murdoch for more than 50 years, could, however, all be referred to the House of Commons to decide whether there has been a contempt of Parliament.

Conservative MPs were keen to point out that they had not backed the statement about Mr Murdoch's suitability to run a major corporation.

It was included in the committee's report after the five Labour members and one Liberal Democrat backed it in opposition to the four Tories.

Chris wrote:

Panda wrote:
It appears this Report is not binding and that Labour and Lib Dems agreed with it but the Conservatives, naturally , did not.

Ofcom will look into the BskyB aspect and shareholders may want their say.

Tom Watson said Murdoch had brought shame on British business, Politics and Parliament.

Much depends on the share price.

I think Watson has done the report a disservice. What evidence did the Committee hear which allows a conclusion that Murdoch Snr is not a fit person to run a major international company? Ignorance of an activity in a minor part of his empire? Had it been shown that Murdoch had knowledge of what was going on it might be fair comment but in the absence of anything substantive that part of the report will end up being ridiculed.

I think both the Murdochs knew exactly what was going on chris. If you havn't got your finger on the button then you shouldn't be in charge. The
Political implications , although probably widespread will leave Cameron biting his nails wondering what the repercussions will be for him.

Panda wrote:

Chris wrote:

Panda wrote:
It appears this Report is not binding and that Labour and Lib Dems agreed with it but the Conservatives, naturally , did not.

Ofcom will look into the BskyB aspect and shareholders may want their say.

Tom Watson said Murdoch had brought shame on British business, Politics and Parliament.

Much depends on the share price.

I think Watson has done the report a disservice. What evidence did the Committee hear which allows a conclusion that Murdoch Snr is not a fit person to run a major international company? Ignorance of an activity in a minor part of his empire? Had it been shown that Murdoch had knowledge of what was going on it might be fair comment but in the absence of anything substantive that part of the report will end up being ridiculed.

I think both the Murdochs knew exactly what was going on chris. If you havn't got your finger on the button then you shouldn't be in charge. The
Political implications , although probably widespread will leave Cameron biting his nails wondering what the repercussions will be for him.

They may have or may not have but the point is the Committee failed to find any smoking gun so the conclusion is mere hyperbole with no substance.

I think James Murdoch and the e-mail he didn't read is enough and he has paid the price , a few Directorships taken away from him, being demoted on BskyB, even Australia has felt the long arm of Murdoch contagion. No, I have no sympathy for either of them and am surprised Rebekah wasn't called
to be questioned by the Leveson Inquiry. It is rumoured Elizabeth, James' Sister will join Newscorpto replace James.

News Corp. Should Waive Law Firm Privilege, Lawmakers Say

By Erik Larson and Jonathan Browning - May 1, 2012 6:16 PM GMT+0100
.

..
U.K. lawmakers called on News Corp. (NWSA) to allow its former criminal defense firm to reveal details on a 2006 internal probe into phone-hacking at the company’s now- defunct News of the World tabloid.

News Corp.’s “legal privilege” with BCL Burton Copeland should be waived so the London-based law firm can defend claims it helped with a cover-up, the House of Commons Culture Committee said today. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch told an ethics inquiry last week that lawyers and lower-ranking executives at its News International unit are to blame for his ignorance about the extent of phone hacking until late 2010.















News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, right, Wendi Deng, his wife, center, and Lachlan Murdoch, a board member of News Corp., left, are driven by car from their apartment in London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
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Murdoch’s claim “that a cover-up has taken place at the company may mean that the investigations conducted by Burton Copeland have been used by people at News International to perpetrate a falsehood,” lawmakers said in a report about the scandal. “We believe there is a strong argument that the company has no right to restrain disclosure of the file.”

The committee, investigating the scandal for the second time in six years, said the tabloid’s former editor Colin Myler and legal manager Tom Crone misled Parliament and found Murdoch is “not a fit person” to lead a major international company. Police investigating hacking and bribery at News Corp.’s U.K. titles have made 45 arrests, while Britain’s media watchdog is probing whether the company should retain its stake in pay- television provider British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY)

Leveson Inquiry

Legal privilege prevents law firms from sharing notes, e- mails, reports and other documents related to its work without permission from the client. Judge Brian Leveson, who is overseeing the independent media-ethics inquiry triggered by the scandal, raised the issue of privilege preventing some remaining questions from being answered, such as how much information executives had about the scandal, and when they had it.

Messages left at Burton Copeland and News International seeking comment on the privilege issue weren’t returned.

While keeping the waiver in place is understandable, it would be a “fair conclusion” for the public to decide News Corp. still has something to hide, said Niri Shan, a media lawyer at Taylor Wessing LLP who isn’t involved in the matter.

“It is difficult for them to draw a line under this and say they’ve disclosed everything if they don’t waive privilege,” Shan said in a phone interview. The company may want to “take the flack that they get for not waiving privilege because the story will die down.”

Revisit Conclusions

The proposed waiver may affect the report’s conclusion that there isn’t enough evidence to determine whether Murdoch’s son, News Corp. Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch, lied about being unaware of internal e-mails that suggested phone- hacking was widespread.

“We may well revisit our conclusions in this report if more information, currently subject to criminal proceedings or subject to legal privilege which has not been waived, is disclosed,” lawmakers said in a unanimous section of the report.

Burton Copeland was hired by News International to conduct a probe after the News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was arrested more than five years ago. News Corp. claimed the firm’s investigation, where it reviewed e-mails and financial records, found no evidence of widespread phone hacking.

Burton Copeland parted ways with News Corp. last year and said in September its role was limited to providing documents to the police and that it wasn’t asked to carry out a full probe.

Harbottle & Lewis

Harbottle & Lewis LLP, another law firm that worked for News International, denied claims made by Rupert Murdoch to the committee last year that it gave the company a clean bill of health after reviewing the matter. The law firm wrote to lawmakers saying Murdoch was “confused or misled” in his testimony.

Rupert Murdoch told lawmakers last year he “rested” on findings from the two law firms, as well as from police, that phone hacking had been limited to a single “rogue” reporter. He told the ethics inquiry last week he should have taken matters into his own hands.

“I should have gone down there and thrown all the damn lawyers out of the place,” Murdoch testified, saying he should have interviewed Goodman after he was convicted of intercepting messages of members of the British Royal Family.

The suggestion that law firms helped prevent the scandal from coming to light is part of a pattern of Rupert Murdoch and other executives blaming lawyers, said David Allen Green, head of media law at Preiskel & Co. LLP.

“James and Rupert Murdoch have appeared very ready to place blame on their legal advisers,” Green said. “This approach can backfire, for if the lawyers are released from any obligation of confidentiality and privilege, their criticism can be quite powerful


*** bskyb shares rose 20%

CNN) -- Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch received a strong endorsement from the board of directors of his News Corp. on Wednesday, a day after British lawmakers investigating a phone hacking scandal said Murdoch was "not a fit person" to run a major international company.

After meeting Wednesday, the News Corp. board issued a statement announcing "its full confidence in Rupert Murdoch's fitness and support for his continuing to lead News Corporation into the future as its chairman and CEO."

"The board based its vote of confidence on Rupert Murdoch's vision and leadership in building News Corporation, his ongoing performance as chairman and CEO, and his demonstrated resolve to address the mistakes of the company identified in the" report by the Parliament panel, the statement said.

Tuesday's ruling by the Parliament committee could prompt British regulators to force Murdoch to sell his controlling stake in British Sky Broadcasting, a significant part of his media empire.




Will bad day for Murdoch hurt business? The damning report accused Murdoch and his son James of showing "willful blindness" to phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid and said the newspaper "deliberately tried to thwart the police investigation" into the illegal activity.

The now-shuttered tabloid's publisher, News Corp. subsidiary News International, "wished to buy silence in this affair and pay to make the problem go away," the Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee found.

Ofcom, the British media regulator that could force Murdoch out of BSkyB, said it was "reading with interest" the report from Parliament.

The agency noted that it "has a duty under the Broadcasting Acts of 1990 and 1996 to be satisfied that any person holding a broadcasting license is, and remains, fit and proper to do so."

News Corp., which Murdoch leads as chairman and chief executive, accepted responsibility for some failings Tuesday but pushed back against some of the more critical remarks made by lawmakers.

"Hard truths have emerged from the Select Committee Report: that there was serious wrongdoing at the News of the World; that our response to the wrongdoing was too slow and too defensive; and that some of our employees misled the Select Committee in 2009," it said in a statement.

However, remarks made by some lawmakers after the report was issued Tuesday were "unjustified and highly partisan," it said.

News Corp. said it had already acted on many of the failings highlighted in the report, had brought in new internal controls and is supporting police investigations into alleged wrongdoing.

Allegations of widespread illegal eavesdropping by Murdoch journalists in search of stories have shaken the media baron's News Corp. empire and the British political establishment, up to and including Prime Minister David Cameron.

Police have arrested dozens of people as part of investigations into phone hacking, e-mail hacking and police bribery, while two parliamentary committees and an independent inquiry led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson are looking into the scandal.

Testifying last week before the Leveson inquiry, Murdoch admitted that there had been a "coverup" of phone hacking at News of the World, which ceased publication in July.

But Murdoch, who owns the Sun and the Times in London, as well as controlling The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Fox News, said his News Corp. had been a victim of the coverup, not the perpetrator.

"Someone took charge of a coverup, which we were victim to and I regret," he told the Leveson inquiry Thursday.

He apologized for not having paid more attention to the scandal, which he called "a serious blot on my reputation."

Tuesday's report by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was based in part on earlier by Rupert and James Murdoch.

John Whittingdale, the chairman of the committee, said Tuesday that, although there is "no definitive evidence to prove whether or not James Murdoch was aware of ... evidence which indicated that phone hacking was widespread, the committee was nevertheless astonished that he did not seek to see the evidence."

Tom Watson, the Labour lawmaker who has long been one of the fiercest critics of Murdoch, was blistering in a news conference announcing the parliamentary findings.

"These people corrupted our country," he said. "They have brought shame on our police force and our Parliament. They lied and cheated, blackmailed and bullied, and we should all be ashamed when we think how we cowered before them for so long."

But Louise Mensch, a Conservative member of Parliament who is on the committee with Whittingdale and Watson, said the report had gone too far.

She was one of the four Conservative MPs who dissented from the amendment to the report finding that Murdoch was not a fit person to run a company.

She called the amendment "faintly ridiculous," given Murdoch's decades in the business, and accused the Labour members of the committee of pushing through a "nakedly political" statement.

"The amendments were so far out of left field they made a mockery of the whole thing," she said.

The section declaring Murdoch "not fit" passed by a vote of 6-4, with support from Labour and Liberal Democrat lawmakers, over opposition from Conservatives. Committee chairman Whittingdale, a Conservative, did not vote.

The report did not accuse either Murdoch of misleading Parliament but said three of their underlings had done so in testimony to the committee.

Longtime Murdoch right-hand man Les Hinton was criticized, as were Colin Myler, the last editor of News of the World, and Tom Crone, who was the paper's lawyer for decades.

In a statement, Myler said he stood by the evidence that he gave the committee.

The full House of Commons will have to rule on whether the three committed contempt by misleading the committee, "and, if so, what punishment should be imposed," the report says.

In a statement Tuesday to News Corp.'s 50,000 employees, Murdoch said the report "affords us a unique opportunity to reflect upon the mistakes we have made and further the course we have already completed to correct them."

He said that it was difficult for him to read many of its findings, "but we have done the most difficult part, which has been to take a long, hard and honest look at our past mistakes."

Murdoch continued, "We certainly should have acted more quickly and aggressively to uncover wrongdoing. We deeply regret what took place and have taken our share of responsibility for not rectifying the situation sooner."

He said News Corp. officials "have gone beyond what law enforcement authorities have asked of us, to ensure not only that we are in compliance with the law, but that we adhere to the highest ethical standards."

Murdoch said last week that if he had known the depth of the problem in 2007, when a private investigator and a Murdoch journalist were sent to prison for phone hacking, he "would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today."

But he also suggested last week that key parts of the scandal have been overblown.

"The hacking scandal was not a great national thing until the Milly Dowler disclosure, half of which has been somewhat disowned by the police," Murdoch said.

He was referring to the revelation that people working for him had hacked into the voice mail of a missing 13-year-old who later turned out to have been murdered.

Murdoch was also grilled over his media empire's back-channel lobbying of the British government and said he learned of the existence of one of the key lobbyists only "a few months ago."

He said he was "surprised" by the extent of the contact by the employee, Fred Michel, with the British government as it considered a bid by News Corp. to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting.

That bid collapsed because of the phone-hacking scandal.

The scandal has also forced News Corp. to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation to the victims of phone hacking.

Rupert and James Murdoch have been hammered over the past year about what they knew about phone hacking by people working for them.

They have always denied knowing about the scale of the practice, which police say could have affected thousands of people, ranging from celebrities and politicians to crime victims and war veterans.

3:35pm UK, Thursday May 03, 2012

Former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson have been called to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics and standards next week.
Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson both edited the Sunday tabloid during the period in which the phone-hacking scandal took place.

:: Read more on the Leveson Inquiry on Sky's dedicated page

Mrs Brooks, who became a former News International chief executive after leaving the editorship, is expected to be asked about her relations with politicians and senior police officers.

Mrs Brooks, 43, who also edited The Sun, has twice been arrested by Scotland Yard detectives investigating allegations of phone hacking, corrupt payments to public officials, and an attempt to pervert the course of justice.


Leveson Inquiry Witnesses
Wednesday, May 9

:: Martin Clarke - Mail Online

:: DCI Brendan Gilmour - Met Police

:: T/ACC Russell Middleton - Devon and Cornwall Police

Thursday, May 10

:: Andy Coulson - Former NOTW editor

:: Viscount Rothermere - Mail owner

Friday, May 11

:: Rebekah Brooks - Former News Intl executive



She was bailed and has not been charged.

On Tuesday, a report by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee criticised her for presiding over a culture that led to News of the World journalists impersonating members of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's family and hacking the teenager's phone.

Mrs Brooks has been named as one of the Leveson Inquiry's "core participants", people who have a significant interest in the hearings or may face criticism.

This means she has advance access to documents and witness statements, and the right to put questions to other witnesses through her lawyers.

Mr Coulson resigned from the News of the World in 2007 after one of his journalists was convicted of phone hacking. He later became Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications.

He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of phone hacking at the Sunday tabloid.

In April, the lead counsel for the prosecution in the 2007 phone hacking case told the Leveson Inquiry that he had seen no evidence implicating Mr Coulson in any wrongdoing.

The inquiry will also receive testimony next week from Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

News Corp. (NWSA)’s board pledged its support for Chairman Rupert Murdoch as a U.S. senator sought evidence about the phone-hacking scandal that led U.K. lawmakers to say the media magnate wasn’t suited to run the company.

The board expressed “full confidence in Rupert Murdoch’s fitness” to lead the company, the directors said in a statement after meeting yesterday. Hours later, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, released a letter sent to a U.K. media-ethics inquiry seeking whether there was information indicating American citizens had their voice mail intercepted.





Enlarge image









News Corp.'s board expressed “full confidence in Rupert Murdoch’s fitness” to lead the company, the directors said in a statement after meeting yesterday. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg












The U.K. House of Commons Culture Committee in a May 1 vote said that Rupert Murdoch was “not a fit person” to lead a major international company after News Corp.’s British unit misled Parliament about the extent of phone hacking at its News of the World tabloid. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
.
The U.K. House of Commons Culture Committee in a May 1 vote said that Murdoch was “not a fit person” to lead a major international company after News Corp.’s British unit misled Parliament about the extent of phone hacking at its News of the World tabloid. Rockefeller’s letter to the media-ethics inquiry triggered by the scandal said he had been following the U.K. proceedings with “great interest.”

“The newspapers’ employees and agents not only appear to have illegally intercepted private telephone communications; there is also evidence that they improperly made large cash payments to police officers,” the senator wrote. “I would like to know whether News International or any other News Corporation business used hacking, bribing or other similar tactics when operating in the United States.”

Similar Questions

Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, raised similar questions in July as news of the scandal spread. Murdoch told the media inquiry last week that the company has cooperated with civil and criminal probes, turning over information about possible illegal activity to London police and the U.S. Department of Justice.

John Toker, a spokesman for the inquiry into press ethics, said Judge Brian Leveson had received the letter and declined to comment further.

Murdoch “turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies,” the committee said in the report that was split along political lines. “This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corp.”

News Corp.’ board, in response to U.K. lawmakers, said they backed Murdoch’s “vision and leadership” and his ongoing role at the company.

Murdoch Friends

The 81-year-old Murdoch also received support from high- profile friends including Donald Trump, Barry Diller and Jacob Rothschild, an investment banker who helped Murdoch buy the now- defunct News of the World tabloid more than 40 years ago.

“We shouldn’t forget that he made a unique contribution to media in this country,” said Rothschild, a British baron who served on the board of News Corp.’s British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY) satellite-TV business. Murdoch saved the U.K. newspaper industry and was a pioneer of pay-television in the country, said Rothschild, the co-founder and chairman of J Rothschild Capital Management.

The U.K. parliamentary report may increase the likelihood that media regulator Ofcom concludes News Corp. is unfit to hold a broadcasting license and asks the company to reduce its 39 percent stake in BSkyB. The phone-hacking scandal prompted News Corp. to abandon a 7.8 billion-pound ($12.6 billion) bid for the rest of BSkyB, the U.K.’s biggest pay-television provider, last year.

Credit Ratings

Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said yesterday that News Corp.’s ratings wouldn’t be affected by the parliamentary panel’s report. The company’s “significant cash balance and strong free cash flow generation mitigates the uncertainty of additional financial fallout from the phone hacking scandal,” the credit-rating company said in a statement. News Corp. had $9.4 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of last year.

Since BSkyB isn’t consolidated into News Corp.’s financial results, a potential sale wouldn’t affect the company’s profile, Moody’s said.

“However, we view the asset as a core operation and an important source of financial flexibility for News Corp.,” the firm said. “We believe the company will have the ability to maintain such flexibility whether it is forced to become a passive investor by giving up its seats on BSkyB’s board or to sell its investment altogether, in which case it would receive significant after-tax cash proceeds.”

News Corp. shares climbed less than 1 percent to $19.89 yesterday in New York. The stock is up 11 percent this year.

Got a story? Email : talkback@the-sun.co.uk





Nerves ... PM David Cameron


Leveson nerves have got to PM

Inquiry plea as ex-aide gives evidence


By TOM NEWTON DUNN, Political Editor


Published: Today at 00:17


DAVID Cameron has revealed deep nerves about what ex-aide Andy Coulson and former friend Rebekah Brooks will reveal about him at the Leveson Inquiry.

In an unusual move, the Government slapped in a late request for “core participant status” in the ongoing probe into press standards.






Anger ... Lord Justice Leveson
BBC

It means Downing Street lawyers will be allowed an advance look at all the pair’s written evidence ahead of them giving their testimony next week.

The request was granted by Lord Justice Leveson yesterday afternoon to the Prime Minister and seven other named Cabinet ministers.


They are Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Ken Clarke, Theresa May and George Osborne.

The judge also revealed his fury at Labour shadow minister Chris Bryant for leaking inquiry information last week.

He slammed the MP for having shown a “total disregard” for the strict rules. In the Commons Mr Bryant quoted from an unreleased document as he listed the number of meetings between Mr Cameron and News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch.






Request ... Jeremy Hunt


Lord Justice Leveson went on to say the MP’s numbers proved to be “wrong” — and revealed Mr Bryant had written to him to apologise.

Ex-No10 communications chief Mr Coulson is up in front of the inquiry on Thursday.


Mrs Brooks — who is former chief executive of News International, which owns The Sun — is due to appear on Friday.

Their highly combustive appearances threaten to derail the Coalition’s attempt at a week-long relaunch after its “omni-shambles” six weeks,


=======================

You see why there is one Law for the rich etc......why should these Ministers and the PM be allowed to look at the information before Brooks and Coulson give their testimony? Cameron must be a very worried Man, he and Nick Clegg fared badly in the Council Votes and who knows what information
Brooks and Coulson will reveal.

May 5, 8:21 AM EDT


Murdoch scandal follows classic media baron script

By RAPHAEL SATTER
Associated Press




LONDON (AP) -- If the phone hacking scandal gripping Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire has a familiar ring, it might be because you've heard the story before. Scrappy outsider turns modest newspaper business into international media conglomerate. Ambition turns to hubris. Mogul dramatically falls from grace.

From William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdoch, many media barons' stories follow a familiar arc.

"He's one of a series," said James Curran, a professor of communications at Goldsmiths University in London. "He seems to me to be in the same press baron tradition."

Before Murdoch came Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black, both of whose careers at the top of the British media establishment ended in disgrace. Before those two came Lord Beaverbrook, the Daily Express owner whose excesses were lampooned by Evelyn Waugh in his 1938 novel "Scoop."

Earlier still was the New York Journal's William Randolph Hearst, who has become linked to the swashbuckling maverick at the center of Orson Wells' 1941 classic "Citizen Kane."

There are huge differences: Unlike Black and Maxwell, Hearst, Murdoch, and Beaverbrook stayed successful. The Hearst Corp. is 125 years old; News Corp. is worth $60 billion; there's still a statue to Beaverbrook in his Canadian hometown of Fredericton.

But there are important parallels, too.

Britain's media tycoons came from abroad - Australia, Canada, or Eastern Europe - and rapidly became establishment figures, winning wealth, titles, and friends in high places.

Then, eventually, came the fall.

Beaverbrook's attempt to create his own political party was knocked back in the 1930s, and he found himself cast adrift following the defeat of close ally Winston Churchill in 1945.

Black's and Maxwell's careers were blighted by criminality. Maxwell, having raided his newspaper's pension fund, drowned under murky circumstances in 1991; Black was only released Friday from a U.S. prison following a 2007 conviction for cheating his shareholders.

Once one of the most powerful forces in British politics, courted by Labour and Conservative leaders alike, Murdoch also has seen his clout wither amid the scandal over illegal eavesdropping at his News of the World tabloid.

Revelations of widespread illegality there have led to the arrests of dozens of journalists and media executives, the resignations of high-flying political operatives and police leaders, and hundreds of millions of dollars in legal costs.

The narrative of the hacking scandal may echo earlier stories of overreach, but Murdoch's story has little to do with those of Black or Maxwell, said Tom Bower, who has written biographies of the latter.

"There is a sharp difference," said Bower, explaining that Murdoch built "a huge and successful business" based on hard work and sharp elbows, while his competitors failed because they had created "flimsy businesses based on fraud."

Murdoch's story bears a stronger resemblance to Beaverbrook, a turn-of-the-century entrepreneur who would help revolutionize London's Fleet Street newspapers, according to Jacques Poitras, the author of "Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy."

Born William Aitken in the small maritime province of New Brunswick, Beaverbrook had a modest start selling insurance and magazines door to door before moving on to bond promotion and striking it rich.

He moved to England, where he was knighted, invested in the populist Daily Express, and - with the help of innovations such as crossword puzzles, gossip columns and society pages - turned it into the biggest-selling paper in the English-speaking world. That title was later claimed by Murdoch's News of the World.

"Both men published fabulously successful newspapers, and they were good at it," Poitras said. "They knew what people wanted (and) they delivered it."

Beaverbrook became fantastically influential, serving as a powerful Cabinet minister and Churchill adviser.

"His power in the 30s and 40s in London was unmatched," said Poitras. "I don't know if you could have someone of that clout now. ... Murdoch is the only one who seems to have made waves in the same way."

Compared to Beaverbrook and Murdoch, Maxwell and Black are a "second division of press baron," said Curran, the professor of communications.

Black, a member of the Canadian elite, eventually came to own The Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, and a string of U.S. and Canadian newspapers before his embezzlement plunged his empire into crisis.

Maxwell's rags-to-riches-to-ruin story is in some respects more compelling.

Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the destitute Carpathian mountain region of what was then known as Czechoslovakia, Maxwell narrowly escaped a Nazi concentration camp to move to London. He set up a successful publishing company and moved into politics, throwing his support behind the left-wing Labour Party.

As early as 1969, there were signs of trouble. Britain's trade department investigated Maxwell in the wake of a botched takeover deal, branding him unfit "to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company" - nearly the same language used by Labour lawmakers to condemn Murdoch in a critical report on phone hacking published last week.

Maxwell survived the trade investigation, spending the next two decades expanding his empire and racking up an enormous pile of debt. By the time his body was recovered from the waters off the Canary Islands - no one knows precisely how he died - his company was more than 2 billion pounds in the red.

Murdoch, who outmaneuvered Maxwell and Black to stay at the top of the British newspaper scene, has so far avoided falling into the same abyss that swallowed his competitors. Even his most strident critics don't accuse him of anything worse than "willful blindness." He remains at the head of a fabulously successful media company, responsible for record-smashing films like "Avatar" or TV hits such as "The Simpsons," and News Corp.'s share price is riding high.

His influence in Britain, however, has undeniably suffered. Politicians who once scrambled to kiss his hand are now lining up to boast about how independent they were. Prime Minister David Cameron, who in 2008 flew out to the tycoon's yacht to seek his blessing, acknowledged last week that "we all did too much cozying up to Rupert Murdoch."

In that respect, Murdoch's isolation - in Britain at least - seems redolent of the last scene of Citizen Kane: Successful, wealthy, but unloved.

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OOOPS.......Andrew Marr interrogating George Osbourne about Cameron employing Coulson . Osbourne said with hindsight it was not a good idea but
at the time there was nothing wrong , Marr says "What...even when Andy Coulson kept his News International shares at No.10?????"

Cameron Can See Evidence at News Corp. Media-Ethics Probe

By Erik Larson - May 4, 2012 4:36 PM GMT+0100
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U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and top ministers won formal legal status at an inquiry triggered by News Corp.’s phone-hacking scandal after evidence disclosed at the probe led to calls for one Cabinet member to resign.

Cameron should receive advance access to prepared statements by witnesses including former News Corp. executives Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who are scheduled to testify next week, Judge Brian Leveson ruled today in London after an emergency hearing.

The decision on the “core participant” status comes about a week after evidence at the inquiry led to demands for Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to step down. E-mails, which the government didn’t see until they were released to the public, showed one of Hunt’s aides offered inside information to a News Corp. (NWSA) lobbyist when the minister was reviewing the company’s proposed takeover of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY)

“Newspapers had obviously been alert to the evidence that would be given,” said Leveson, referring to the government’s claim that advance notice of such evidence would be fairer. “Articles quoting parts of the e-mails and passing comment on them appeared very quickly after becoming public.”

Cameron called for the inquiry in July in response to public outrage over phone hacking at News Corp.’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid. The judicial probe is reviewing all aspects of the U.K. media, including its ties to politicians, after hacking victims said News Corp.’s close relationship with government helped cover up the scandal.

‘Level Playing Field’

The government’s new status in the inquiry is “reasonable” given that most of the U.K.’s biggest newspaper publishers are also core participants, said Niri Shan, a media lawyer with Taylor Wessing LLP in London.

“All this is doing is putting them on a level playing field with the media,” Shan, who isn’t involved in the matter, said in a phone interview.

Hunt’s adviser, Adam Smith, resigned April 25, after the e- mails were revealed to Leveson, who is overseeing the inquiry. Smith said he had “gone too far” in his contacts with News Corp.

Other politicians who won the status include Hunt, Business Secretary Vince Cable, who was initially involved in the BSkyB approval process, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. All eight ministers in the group will submit their own evidence by the end of the day, Leveson said. Some will testify.

Coulson, Brooks

Brooks, who has had close ties to Cameron, resigned as chief executive officer of News Corp.’s U.K. unit in July, two days before being arrested in probes into phone hacking and bribery of public officials by journalists.

Coulson was arrested the same month. He had resigned in January 2011 as Cameron’s press chief -- a role he took on after stepping down as editor of the News of the World in 2007.

Evidence released by the inquiry showed News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son James had dozens of meetings with U.K. lawmakers, including Cameron. Both Murdochs testified before Leveson last month, saying they didn’t discuss the BSkyB bid in detail during the meetings.

News Corp. closed the News of the World in July to help contain the scandal and abandoned the company’s 7.8 billion pound ($12.6 billion) bid for the 61 percent of BSkyB it didn’t already own.

Police investigations have led to at least 46 arrests, while the scandal has expanded to include bribery and computer hacking by journalists.

U.K. lawmakers called on News Corp. (NWSA) to allow its former criminal defense firm to reveal details on a 2006 internal probe into phone-hacking at the company’s now- defunct News of the World tabloid.

News Corp.’s “legal privilege” with BCL Burton Copeland should be waived so the London-based law firm can defend claims it helped with a cover-up, the House of Commons Culture Committee said today. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch told an ethics inquiry last week that lawyers and lower-ranking executives at its News International unit are to blame for his ignorance about the extent of phone hacking until late 2010.










News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, right, Wendi Deng, his wife, center, and Lachlan Murdoch, a board member of News Corp., left, are driven by car from their apartment in London. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
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Murdoch’s claim “that a cover-up has taken place at the company may mean that the investigations conducted by Burton Copeland have been used by people at News International to perpetrate a falsehood,” lawmakers said in a report about the scandal. “We believe there is a strong argument that the company has no right to restrain disclosure of the file.”

The committee, investigating the scandal for the second time in six years, said the tabloid’s former editor Colin Myler and legal manager Tom Crone misled Parliament and found Murdoch is “not a fit person” to lead a major international company. Police investigating hacking and bribery at News Corp.’s U.K. titles have made 45 arrests, while Britain’s media watchdog is probing whether the company should retain its stake in pay- television provider British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY)

Leveson Inquiry

Legal privilege prevents law firms from sharing notes, e- mails, reports and other documents related to its work without permission from the client. Judge Brian Leveson, who is overseeing the independent media-ethics inquiry triggered by the scandal, raised the issue of privilege preventing some remaining questions from being answered, such as how much information executives had about the scandal, and when they had it.

Messages left at Burton Copeland and News International seeking comment on the privilege issue weren’t returned.

While keeping the waiver in place is understandable, it would be a “fair conclusion” for the public to decide News Corp. still has something to hide, said Niri Shan, a media lawyer at Taylor Wessing LLP who isn’t involved in the matter.

“It is difficult for them to draw a line under this and say they’ve disclosed everything if they don’t waive privilege,” Shan said in a phone interview. The company may want to “take the flack that they get for not waiving privilege because the story will die down.”

Revisit Conclusions

The proposed waiver may affect the report’s conclusion that there isn’t enough evidence to determine whether Murdoch’s son, News Corp. Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch, lied about being unaware of internal e-mails that suggested phone- hacking was widespread.

“We may well revisit our conclusions in this report if more information, currently subject to criminal proceedings or subject to legal privilege which has not been waived, is disclosed,” lawmakers said in a unanimous section of the report.

Burton Copeland was hired by News International to conduct a probe after the News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was arrested more than five years ago. News Corp. claimed the firm’s investigation, where it reviewed e-mails and financial records, found no evidence of widespread phone hacking.

Burton Copeland parted ways with News Corp. last year and said in September its role was limited to providing documents to the police and that it wasn’t asked to carry out a full probe.

Harbottle & Lewis

Harbottle & Lewis LLP, another law firm that worked for News International, denied claims made by Rupert Murdoch to the committee last year that it gave the company a clean bill of health after reviewing the matter. The law firm wrote to lawmakers saying Murdoch was “confused or misled” in his testimony.

Rupert Murdoch told lawmakers last year he “rested” on findings from the two law firms, as well as from police, that phone hacking had been limited to a single “rogue” reporter. He told the ethics inquiry last week he should have taken matters into his own hands.

“I should have gone down there and thrown all the damn lawyers out of the place,” Murdoch testified, saying he should have interviewed Goodman after he was convicted of intercepting messages of members of the British Royal Family.

The suggestion that law firms helped prevent the scandal from coming to light is part of a pattern of Rupert Murdoch and other executives blaming lawyers, said David Allen Green, head of media law at Preiskel & Co. LLP.

“James and Rupert Murdoch have appeared very ready to place blame on their legal advisers,” Green said. “This approach can backfire, for if the lawyers are released from any obligation of confidentiality and privilege, their criticism can be quite powerful.”

7:38am UK, Thursday May 10, 2012

David Bowden, senior news correspondent

The Prime Minister's former spin doctor, Andy Coulson, will give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics today.
Mr Coulson resigned from his job as David Cameron's director of communications last year after the phone hacking scandal overshadowed his role in Downing Street.


It is also rumoured that some of the text messages from Mr Cameron to Mrs Brooks are signed 'Love David'!

Sky News political correspondent Glen Oglaza
He was editor of the News Of The World (NOTW) when its former royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for phone hacking, though Mr Coulson has always denied he knew it was going on at his paper.

The Government has admitted that, "given what we now know about the extent of phone hacking at the NOTW", Mr Coulson should not have been hired by Mr Cameron in the first place.

But what will the man who ran the biggest selling newspaper in the country, and then worked at the heart of Government, have to say to the inquiry about the relationship between the press and politicians?

And how will that chime with the evidence tomorrow from Rebekah Brooks, one-time editor of the NOTW and latterly chief executive of News International?




She is one of the biggest media players in Britain and good friend of prime ministers past and present - Lord Justice Leveson has already heard she hosted a Christmas dinner at her country home where Mr Cameron discussed the takeover of BSkyB with James Murdoch.

A new book claims that until recently Mrs Brooks and Mr Cameron regularly exchanged text messages, and some political commentators believe the next couple of days at the Leveson inquiry could be very damaging for the Prime Minister.

Political columnist Peter Oborne said: "If there was a suggestion that Downing Street was doing a commercial favour for News International or News Corp then the future of David Cameron inside Number 10 would come into question."



Mr Cameron took Mr Coulson into the heart of Government

Mr Cameron and other senior ministers are clearly concerned about what Mr Coulson and Mrs Brooks might tell the inquiry and just last week the politicians applied for and were granted "core participant " status which means they will have already seen the written evidence to the inquiry submitted by the duo.

What the Prime Minister and his colleagues cannot know until Mr Coulson and then Mrs Brooks appear before Lord Justice Leveson in person, is what they will say under oath.

The inquiry's questioning lawyer will want to know the extent of the contact between the two former tabloid editors, their bosses, the Murdochs and senior politicians from all parties.

Mr Cameron and other senior political figures will give their own evidence to the inquiry in due course, but there is no doubt they will be paying very close attention to what is said at the Royal Courts of Justice this week.