Is this Armageddon for Murdoch and NewsCorp?

Why The Sun On Sunday Isn't The News Of The World

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Sophy Ridge

February 20, 2012 8:54 AM

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With the Sun under unprecedented pressure, Rupert Murdoch has come out fighting.
The
news that a Sun on Sunday will be launched in just six days time has
surprised everyone - not least the journalists working on the UK's
biggest selling paper.
But what will a Sun on Sunday look like? Will it be the News of the World in all but name?
It is already being claimed that this is a straightforward News of the World relaunch.
But in reality, it's an expansion of the Sun.
This
morning I've learned that Sun editor Dominic Mohan will also edit the
Sunday edition (contrary to rumours that the former News of the World
deputy editor Victoria Newton would take the role.)
Ms Newton is expected to take up a senior role at the new publication.
There
will also be "some sharing" of staff across the daily and Sunday
edition. A source told me it will be "a seventh day publication rather
than a new title."
Of course, there will be some former News of
the World staff returning to the Sunday title (the NotW's Political
Editor David Wooding is taking on the same role at the Sun on Sunday,
for instance.) But by no means does this mean a significant number of
ex-employees will get their jobs back.
In fact, some former News
of the World journalists in private say they are "angrier than ever".
They feel that while Rupert Murdoch allowed the News of the World to be
closed, he is sticking up for the Sun.
And some Sun journalists feel it's not all good news for them too.
One
insider said: "The Sun workers had been dreading a seven-day operation
for the last year but now it has been brought in after the threat of
them losing their jobs they are now so grateful that any threat of a
rebellion has been quashed."
And there are some significant differences between the Sun and the News of the World.
The
News of the World doesn't have a page three, it had more female readers
than the Sun (48% to 44%) and more ABC1 readers (39% to 36%).
It remains to be seen how many News of the World readers will become loyal readers of the Sun on Sunday.











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Breaking News......Murdoch has personally settled the claim by Charlotte Church, no details of how much.

The Sun on Sunday will cost 50p as opposed to the 60 pence for the NOTW

Tremendous interest in the new Paper and advertising has sold out.

There is still the question of the arrest of Sun Reporters

Apparently the sum paid to Charlotte Church is £500,000 by Murdoch personally to avoid a Court case or enquiry prior to the launching of the Sun on Sunday.

No indication so far about the reaction of the Newscorp Board regarding The Sun scandal .

The first group of arrests are not going to Court, but apparently a second group suspected of bribes has been found.

It is anticipated that Murdoch faces a fight to bring back readers but he has enough money to wait forever.

The hacking scandal is still ongoing and it's possible that the public will not rush to buy this new Sunday paper because of the way the NOTW was shut down so quickly and Murdochs seedy working practices.

Moere trouble for Newscorp......Hector Mulcaire is said to have U.S. phone numbers.

Murdoch’s Times of London is being investigated for hacking




Julie Moos

Feb. 2, 2012
7:56 am




Tom Watson | The New York Times | Reuters
The ethics scandal that closed UK tabloid News of the World
has spread not only to The Sun, another Murdoch-owned News
International paper, but to The Times of London. Tom Watson, a member of
Parliament (MP) in the Labour Party, posted a letter from London police
confirming that his inquiries into email hacking at the Sun are being
investigated. "The case apparently was related to an episode in 2009
when a reporter who has since left The Times of London exposed the
identity of a police officer who blogged under the pseudonym Nightjack,
according to British news reports," reports The New York Times.
It will take at least another year and a half for News Corp.'s
Management and Standards Committee to complete its own investigation
into unethical journalism practices. Reuters says as many as 100 lawyers
and computer experts are reviewing 300 million emails and other
documents in a soundproof area. || Related: Phone hacking victims say News Corp. has admitted coverup (Poynter)


Latest News → MediaWire

The Sun on Sunday is in trouble already. One of their Hacks-in-Chief, Toby Young, just called the Millie Dowler case "that murdered girl thing". I kid you not. HLM saved the screenshots of the Twitter timeline and they are here.

http://newsallianceuk.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/that-murdered-girl-thing-tweet-from-sun-on-sunday-columnist-sparks-fury-on-twitter/

Rupert Murdoch's Sun on Sunday sets on his empire

At 80, News Corp's boss still has an instinct for a good story and the will to change a media narrative – but time is not on his side




Michael Wolff

guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 February 2012 20.12 GMT
Article history




News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch in London to announce launch of a Sunday version of the Sun. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images


Murdoch has crossed a certain Rubicon with the frantic launch of the Sunday Sun. He's had enough and is taking control of his British mess. It is rather like his New Year's Eve conversion to Twitter. It's a personal statement: he is still here.

Shortly after the closing of the News of the World – a bitter pill that he swallowed at the urging of his children – he proposed this new Sunday edition of the Sun, only to be met by practical resistance from his New York executives. It was the wrong signal to send, at once underhanded (closing one just to open another) and antagonistic, an aggressive rather than a humble move. What's more, the Sun itself was surely going to face closer scrutiny by investigators pursuing the hacking and police bribery allegations.

"Let's just say, he's being more emotional than realistic at this point," one of his executives told me, over the summer. The internal message: let's not bet on the Sun's future.

Curiously, he used this exact outcome – the arrests of senior Sun staffers on suspicion of bribing the British police – as the crisis that justified the new Sun. The immediate launch of the paper, just days after he arrived in London, would be a way to stabilize an impending civil war in Wapping, he insisted – even as his own investigators continued to turn over evidence to the police. It would be a way, too, to shift attention from the negative to the positive, from retreat to advance.

Say this for Murdoch, he knows his audience. The Sun faces ever-more serious allegations and an intensifying investigation – with Murdoch himself seeming to suggest that there is further incriminating evidence to come – but he has managed to move the focus, at least in the British media community, to talk of new jobs for journalists, a rebirth or at least big shot in the arm for British newspapers, a new fighting spirit at News International – and a new day for Murdoch himself. He's back and in charge. There are some things you just have to do yourself.

His newspapers have always been his own best PR strategy and his fearsome instrument for getting people's attention.

His senior-most executives, none of whom is a newspaperman (or woman), see newspapers as irrelevant to their business, and, more and more, anathema in the business community. What's more, they see a new Sunday paper, especially one with the Sun moniker, as quixotic, if not self-defeating: the Sun will only cause greater vexation for News Corp. Indeed, the US Justice Department is less likely to act against him under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act if he shuns the Sun, and more likely to do so if he embraces it.

But while the future of the Sun may be bleak, much of the near-term conversation among British media folk is about Murdoch's audaciousness, joi de guerre, and love of newspapering.

The Spectator columnist Toby Young, reaffirming all the old Murdoch shibboleths of anti-elitism, Fleet Street esprit de corps, and the great old fight at Wapping – as if no phone-hacking scandal had ever occurred; as if Murdoch, the merry troublemaker, were in his prime – once again proclaimed Murdoch the last hope for journalism, announcing also, by the bye, that he was taking a job as a Sun columnist.

Murdoch, the old soldier, is in the thick of it. Although it is slight lunacy for the CEO of a $50bn company to be personally attending to the operation of a minor project in a small division, launching a Sunday paper is a tonic for him. (I once watched him obsessively supervise the details of the redesign of the Sunday New York Post – a largely unsuccessful endeavor.)

But there is a method here, too. While his executives fear the trouble that is surely coming the Sun's way, Murdoch knows his enemies fear the trouble the Sun can cause. Murdoch, I'll wager, is hoping for a stalemate. Or at least, some more leverage to negotiate a better truce. Of note, he turns 81 in a few weeks; his is a shorter-term game than most.

And just for good measure, to show he can still throw a wrench into the works, he's become an advocate for Scottish independence – a signal to Parliament and Downing Street.

Of course, all the investigations continue, the law suits mount, the US Justice Department is at attention, and, next week, public television in the US is promising an explosive new documentary on the Murdoch scandals, which will, in a sense for the first time, bring the story in all its details to the US.

Still, Murdoch is in London, doing what he has so often done: shaking things up. "The English," he once told me, "respond very positively to a kick in the head."

• For legal reasons, this article will not be open to comments
Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree and Michael Wolff @MichaelWolffNYC





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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14846456

13 September 2011 Last updated at 13:02 Share this pageEmail Print Share this page

ShareFacebookTwitter.Phone-hacking scandal: Who's linked to who?How are three prime ministers, two top police officers, a media mogul, a clutch of journalists and a private investigator paid to eavesdrop on high-profile people connected? The story of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal has revealed a web of links between senior figures within politics, the police and the media. Click through the chapters below to find out how the key players' lives are intertwined.

Continue reading the main story
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Hacking reveals power network



The web of connections on the right shows the key people involved in the phone-hacking story and how their professional and social lives are linked.

Read how the story developed by clicking on the arrows above. As each person's professional and personal connections are revealed, the web builds up into a complex network of relationships.

Next: Murdoch buys UK papers

Note: The links shown are all those reported in BBC News stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal and appear at the time they were revealed. Other connections may exist. All those arrested as part of the police investigation into hacking are included, but not all arrests in the related investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police will appear.
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I thought the chart would paste, but it hasn't so you will have to click on the link***

Rupert Murdoch says the SUN on SUNDAY sold 3 million papers......he was anticipating 2 million.

News International , as opposed to Newscorp , paid Charlotte Church and her Parents £600,000. Maybe Newscorp have told Murdoch he has to pay
all these claims from his own money.....he can afford it, he is worth $ 7 BILLION.

Iris wrote:The Sun on Sunday is in trouble already. One of their Hacks-in-Chief, Toby Young, just called the Millie Dowler case "that murdered girl thing". I kid you not. HLM saved the screenshots of the Twitter timeline and they are here.

http://newsallianceuk.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/that-murdered-girl-thing-tweet-from-sun-on-sunday-columnist-sparks-fury-on-twitter/

God Iris, that is APPALLING!!!!

I see Charlotte Church got £600k, seriously she is not worth that!

Panda wrote:

Rupert Murdoch says the SUN on SUNDAY sold 3 million papers......he was anticipating 2 million.

News International , as opposed to Newscorp , paid Charlotte Church and her Parents £600,000. Maybe Newscorp have told Murdoch he has to pay
all these claims from his own money.....he can afford it, he is worth $ 7 BILLION.

Rupert Murdock SAYS. And we all know that he and his papers ALWAYS tell the truth. Don't we?

margaret wrote:

Iris wrote:The Sun on Sunday is in trouble already. One of their Hacks-in-Chief, Toby Young, just called the Millie Dowler case "that murdered girl thing". I kid you not. HLM saved the screenshots of the Twitter timeline and they are here.

http://newsallianceuk.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/that-murdered-girl-thing-tweet-from-sun-on-sunday-columnist-sparks-fury-on-twitter/

God Iris, that is APPALLING!!!!

I see Charlotte Church got £600k, seriously she is not worth that!

Hi margaret, I noted Charlotte's payment includes her Parents...wonder what all that is about. You never hear of her these days do you. As for the Sun on Sunday, it was meant to compensate for The Sun closing down which is bound to happen because more Staff have been arrested. Made a good start havn't they!!!

Iris wrote:

Panda wrote:

Rupert Murdoch says the SUN on SUNDAY sold 3 million papers......he was anticipating 2 million.

News International , as opposed to Newscorp , paid Charlotte Church and her Parents £600,000. Maybe Newscorp have told Murdoch he has to pay
all these claims from his own money.....he can afford it, he is worth $ 7 BILLION.

Rupert Murdock SAYS. And we all know that he and his papers ALWAYS tell the truth. Don't we?

Hi Iris, As I just said to margaret, the Sun MUST be going to close down. I notice RioRita hasn't posted for a while again, hope she is O.K. As a newsagent she would know if she had to send any papers back or sold out in two minutes.

MURDOCH IS GOING TO BE IN UK FOR NEXT FEW WEEKS OVERSEEING THINGS.

Badboy wrote:MURDOCH IS GOING TO BE IN UK FOR NEXT FEW WEEKS OVERSEEING THINGS.

I will lay odds he is going to close down the Sun, there have been more arrests and this is all about bribery of the Police. Murdoch could also face
charges in the U.S. under their Foreign Company Good Guidance law.

5:45pm UK, Monday February 27, 2012

Mark White, Home Affairs correspondent

A senior Metropolitan police officer has revealed detectives investigating the corruption of police and public officials uncovered evidence suggesting a "culture" of "illegal payments" at The Sun newspaper.
The potentially explosive revelation came as Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers updated the Leveson inquiry into media ethics on the latest in the ongoing criminal investigation.

Dep Asst Comm Akers said her officers had also uncovered evidence of "corrupted officials" in "all areas of public life" who had received regular payments from the newspaper.

She said payments did not amount to an "odd drink or meal" but "frequent" and "sometimes significant" amounts.

Evidence suggested that one public official was paid more than £80,000 over a period of years.

Dep Asst Comm Akers also revealed that one journalist received more than £150,000 over several years to pay "sources", some of whom were public officials.

The senior officer said a number of employees from The Sun and police officers - plus a member of the Ministry of Defence and a member of the armed forces - had been arrested so far, as part of the investigation.

She said payments appeared to have been made to a number of public officials, from Health, Defence and beyond.



The News of the World was shut down over phone hacking

Dep Asst Comm Akers added: "There also appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments and systems created to facilitate those payments."

She suggested that journalists seemed to have been "well aware that what they were doing was unlawful".

The Leveson inquiry also heard about an internal email which appeared to suggest Scotland Yard had assured Rebekah Brooks in 2006 that it was not planning to extend its phone-hacking inquiry to include News Of The World (NOTW) staff other than royal reporter Clive Goodman.

Mrs Brooks, who was editor of The Sun at that time, was apparently told detectives were confident Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were "bang to rights" but would only widen the case to include other NOTW employees if they found "direct evidence" of wrongdoing.

The press standards inquiry heard that police also told Ms Brooks they uncovered evidence of more than £1m in payments by the NOTW publisher, News International, during the phone-hacking investigation.



Mrs Brooks edited both the News of the World and The Sun

Tom Crone, the NOTW's head of legal, summarised Scotland Yard's briefing in an email headed "strictly private and confidential" to the paper's then-editor Andy Coulson on September 15, 2006.

Mr Crone began his memo: "Here is what Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by the cops."

It went on: "They suggested that they were not widening the case to include other NOTW people, but would do so if they got direct evidence, say NOTW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive)."

Mr Crone's message concluded: "They're going to contact RW (Rebekah Wade, Ms Brooks' maiden name) today to see if she wishes to take it further."

Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested on August 8, 2006. They pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages left on royal aides' phones In November that year and were jailed the following January.



Lord Prescott queried police and Crown Prosecution Service behaviour

Later in the day former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott gave evidence to the inquiry.

Lord Prescott made clear his dissatisfaction with a police investigation during 2005-6, which found no evidence of his phone or those of his aides being hacked.

He also complained of a seven-week delay in receiving a response by Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who conducted a review of the original investigation, in 2009.

Lord Prescott subsequently wrote to the director of legal services at the Met Police, asking for formal notification of any information it held concerning him in relation to Goodman or Mulcaire.

Lord Justice Leveson said the letter to the Met legal department was "pretty clear" and "you put everything in".

Lord Prescott replied: "Yes, it was because I thought a legal (officer) would not lie but the police probably would."

He also questioned what he saw as a "conspiracy of silence" between police investigators and officials at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which is responsible for pursuing criminal cases in court.

Lord Leveson said: "I'm sure you’ve heard the phrase, 'cockup and conspiracy' before." He added that he was not drawing a conclusion to Lord Prescott's claim.

Lord Prescott replied: "You sound more charitable than me. I don’t go with cockup.

"These are highly paid, highly intelligent people. I think there is more a conspiracy of silence to hide the facts.

"And frankly, I am stronger of that view in the last few months."

:: Read more about the Leveson Inquiry on our dedicated channel

7:21pm UK, Monday February 27, 2012

Mark White, Home Affairs correspondent

A senior police officer has said The Sun newspaper has been paying "corrupted officials" in "all areas of public life".
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers updated the Leveson inquiry into media ethics on the latest in the on-going criminal investigation.

She said evidence uncovered by her officers suggested a "culture" of "illegal payments" at the red-top newspaper.



The News of the World was shut down over phone hacking

Dep Asst Comm Akers said payments did not amount to an "odd drink or meal" but "frequent" and "sometimes significant" amounts.

One public official was paid more than £80,000 over a period of years, she said.

Dep Asst Comm Akers also revealed that one journalist received more than £150,000 over several years to pay "sources", some of whom were public officials.



Mrs Brooks edited both the News of the World and The Sun

The senior officer said a number of employees from The Sun and police officers - plus a member of the Ministry of Defence and a member of the Armed Forces - had been arrested so far, as part of the investigation.

She said payments appeared to have been made to a number of public officials, from Health to Defence and beyond.

Earlier in the day, singer Charlotte Church tore into the publishers of The Sun over hacking of her phone, destruction of incriminating documents and the "industrial scale of their illegal activity".

Dep Asst Comm Akers added: "There also appears to have been a culture at The Sun of illegal payments and systems created to facilitate those payments."



Charlotte Church leaves the High Court after the legal action

She suggested that journalists seemed to have been "well aware that what they were doing was unlawful".

The Leveson inquiry also heard about an internal email which appeared to suggest Scotland Yard had assured Rebekah Brooks in 2006 that it was not planning to extend its phone-hacking inquiry to include News Of The World (NOTW) staff other than royal reporter Clive Goodman.

Mrs Brooks, who was editor of The Sun at that time, was apparently told detectives were confident Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were "bang to rights" but would only widen the case to include other NOTW employees if they found "direct evidence" of wrongdoing.

The press standards inquiry heard that police also told Ms Brooks they uncovered evidence of more than £1m in payments by the NOTW publisher, News International, during the phone-hacking investigation.



A dark cloud continues to hang over Mr Murdoch's UK print empire

Tom Crone, the NOTW's head of legal, summarised Scotland Yard's briefing in an email headed "strictly private and confidential" to the paper's then-editor Andy Coulson on September 15, 2006.

Mr Crone began his memo: "Here is what Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by the cops."

It went on: "They suggested that they were not widening the case to include other NOTW people, but would do so if they got direct evidence, say NOTW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive)."

Mr Crone's message concluded: "They're going to contact RW (Rebekah Wade, Ms Brooks' maiden name) today to see if she wishes to take it further."

Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested on August 8, 2006. They pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages left on royal aides' phones in November that year and were jailed the following January.



Clive Goodman (l) and Glenn Mulcaire were both convicted over hacking

After Dep Asst Comm Akers gave evidence The Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, released a statement.

He said: "As I've made very clear, we have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future.

"The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson Inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at The Sun."

Later in the day former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott gave evidence to the inquiry.

Lord Prescott made clear his dissatisfaction with a police investigation during 2005-6, which found no evidence of his phone or those of his aides being hacked.



The Sun's owner, Rupert Murdoch, insists practices have now improved

He also complained of a seven-week delay in receiving a response by Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who conducted a review of the original investigation, in 2009.

Lord Prescott subsequently wrote to the director of legal services at the Met Police, asking for formal notification of any information it held concerning him in relation to Goodman or Mulcaire.

Lord Justice Leveson said the letter to the Met legal department was "pretty clear" and "you put everything in".

Lord Prescott replied: "Yes, it was because I thought a legal (officer) would not lie but the police probably would."

He also questioned what he saw as a "conspiracy of silence" between police investigators and officials at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which is responsible for pursuing criminal cases in court.



Lord Prescott claimed there was a conspiracy of silence over hacking

Lord Leveson said: "I'm sure you've heard the phrase, 'cockup and conspiracy' before." He added that he was not drawing a conclusion to Lord Prescott's claim.

Lord Prescott replied: "You sound more charitable than me. I don't go with cockup.

"These are highly paid, highly intelligent people. I think there is more a conspiracy of silence to hide the facts.

"And frankly, I am stronger of that view in the last few months."

:: Read more about the Leveson Inquiry on our dedicated channel

Martin Brunt
February 27, 2012 5:15 PM

Recommend post (4)

Whenever I call my friends at Scotland Yard's Press Bureau and ask for an update on a current investigation they tell me: "We are not going to give you a running commentary."

What's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers doing then, in another appearance at the Leveson inquiry?

Surely not justifying an investigation that is coming under increasing fire for the way it is using increasing numbers of detectives to raid journalists at dawn and turn over their homes (even removing the loft insulation in one case).

Those that have been arrested are released on bail with a warning not to discuss the matter with anyone if they don't want to be re-arrested for perverting the course of justice.

Yet, here goes the Dep Ass Comm again discussing the evidence in public, talking of her progress and even suggesting reporters knew they were guilty.

She told Leveson that one public official had been paid £80,000 in bungs and that one arrested journalist had received £150,000 in cash to pay sources.

In both cases she's revealing evidence and implying the suspects are guilty, something their lawyers might like to take a close look at.

And she's clearly suggesting there will be more arrests if she has her way.

Sue_Akers Scotland_Yard
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This is one of the comments on the above Article.....relates to the Madeleiene review.

Posted by: Smith Sighting on February 27, 2012 8:56 PM"We are not going to give you a running commentary."

rofl

Sarcastic f@@@@@s !!

With a phrase like that I suppose there are no prizes for guessing which investigation that is. ;)

It stinks Martin.

You know it.

We know it.

A Detective Chief Inspector, 3 Detective Inspectors, 5 Detective Sergeants, 19 Detective Constables and 3 officers from the murder review group.

Nine months on.

£1.5m later.

What exactly have they achieved?

Well we know what they haven't yet achieved..

A crime scene reconstruction.

Oh, and..

The abductor.

http://tiny.cc/jrp6s

It's no wonder they won't be giving any running commentary.Recommend (3)Report this commentPermalinkAdd your comments

Sue Akers's evidence to Leveson was designed to rebut criticism of her investigation by Sun veterans Link to this video
Rupert Murdoch's flagship tabloid, the Sun, established a "network of corrupted officials" and created a "culture of illegal payments", the police officer leading the investigation into bribery and hacking at News International has alleged.

On a day of dramatic developments surrounding the investigations into the tycoon's newspapers, Sue Akers, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, told the Leveson inquiry into press standards there had been "multiple payments" by the Sun to public officials of thousands of pounds, and one individual received £80,000 in alleged corrupt payments over a number of years. One Sun journalist drew more than £150,000 over the years to pay sources.

Akers's intervention – a day after the Sun launched a Sunday edition – was designed to rebut criticism of her investigation by Sun veterans, unhappy that 10 reporters and executives from the tabloid had been arrested since last November.

She said Sun reporters largely published "salacious gossip" on the back of the information received. The cases her team were investigating were not ones involving the "odd drink or meal" with public officials, but regular payments using an internal system designed to hide the identity of those allegedly receiving money illegally.

In other developments:

• The Leveson inquiry was also told of an internal News International email that showed how much Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks were told about News of the World phone hacking in 2006, which contrasted with public statements of ignorance made by both former editors of the Sunday tabloid subsequently.

• Charlotte Church, the singer, agreed a £600,000 settlement from News International for phone hacking, including £300,000 in costs.

• It emerged that more than 200 further alleged victims of phone hacking, ranging from former boxer Chris Eubank to the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, are making claims against News International.

• Lord Justice Leveson took aim at Michael Gove, the education secretary and former Times journalist, who had said that the inquiry, launched by David Cameron last summer, was having a "chilling effect" on Fleet Street. The judge said that he believed in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but added that journalism must obey the rule of law and act in the public interest.

Murdoch himself is understood to have studied Akers's incendiary testimony, and issued a short statement a couple of hours afterwards. He said: "As I've made very clear, we have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future. That process is well underway. The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at the Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company." News International insiders also said the Sun had tightened up its system for cash payments last summer, with any such payments now having to be signed off by the title's editor, Dominic Mohan.

Murdoch was otherwise in a buoyant mood, tweeting about the Sun on Sunday's debut sales. "Amazing! The Sun confirmed sale of 3,260,000 copies yesterday," he wrote, as buyers ignored the corruption allegations to pick up the newspaper that immediately became the market leader on Sunday. Sales of rival red top titles slumped by between 15% and 30%, with the nearest challenger, the Sunday Mirror, down to 1.3m from a January average of 1.75m.

Akers was the first witness in the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which aims to examine the relationship between the press and the police. Earlier in the morning, Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, read out an email dated September 2006 – five weeks after the Sunday tabloid's royal editor Clive Goodman and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, had been arrested on hacking charges – which detailed how much Brooks and Coulson were told about phone hacking. Brooks was then editor of the Sun and she had been editor of the News of the World. Coulson was editor of the News of the World at that time and was later David Cameron's director of communications in No 10.

The note was written by Tom Crone, the former chief lawyer at the Sun and the News of the World, and was sent to Coulson, based on information received from the police by Brooks. Crone warned Coulson that the police had Goodman and Mulcaire "bang to rights" on illegally intercepting voicemails of Buckingham Palace staff – and that the police had discovered a list of "100-110 victims" on the basis of evidence seized from Mulcaire's home.

Coulson was also told police had found records of payments to Mulcaire from News International worth over £1m.

Goodman and Mulcaire pleaded guilty in November 2006 and were jailed in January 2007, at which time Coulson resigned his editorship, four months after the Crone email. At that time Coulson said that while he knew nothing of hacking he took "ultimate responsibility" for what had happened. He used a similar formula in 2009 when he was working for the Conservatives, telling a parliamentary committee: "I have never condoned the use of phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place ... I took full responsibility at the time for what happened but without my knowledge and resigned."

Brooks also repeatedly denied that she, or anybody within News International, knew about the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World in the years after the Goodman and Mulcaire convictions.

Responding to the first reports by the Guardian in July 2009 that hacking was more widespread than the activities of a single "rogue reporter", she wrote to the Commons culture committee to say: "The Guardian coverage has, we believe, substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public."

THERE HAS VBEEN TESTIMONY THAT NOTW ATTEMPTED TO PERVERT THE COURSE OF JUSTICE IN A MURDER ENQUIRY CONCERNING A PI HIRED BY NOTW.

Hi Badboy, Iv'e just been watching the News and briefly, from what I can gather , The NOTW is accused of perverting the course of Justice. Ex DEt.
Jackie Haynes and her husband David Cook (they have since divorced) in 2002 who was leading the investigation of a murder suspect Daniel Morgan. were under suspicion of trying to disrupt the investigation . Jackie Haynes gave evidence and said Private Investigators hired by the NOTW were trying
to find out information about them and she said it was a dreadful time. I was writing as Peter Snow was reporting so I might have got some bits wrong.

Rebekah Wade was lent Horses by SY to go riding!!!

Tom Watson Labour MP says there were 5 Police Investigations and nothing was found so he is taking the matter to Parliament and it will be discussed
tomorrow . This is the most serious charge perverting the course of justice in a murder enquiry so expect heads to roll in the Police Force and Murdoch to be forced now to resign from Newscorp and give up his Directorship of other American assets.

Breaking News.......James Murdoch has resigned from News International.

Panda wrote:Breaking News.......James Murdoch has resigned from News International.

I SAW THIS 3.15 PM? AT MY DAY CENTRE,SURPRISE,SURPRISE.
WHO WILL TAKE OVER,I WONDER.