NEWS CORP HACKING SCANDAL HITS U.S. SHORES

The telephone hacking scandal that has disrupted Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp operations in Britain is being carried to his front door in the U.S. British lawyer Mark Lewis, who represents several figures who claim that they were victims of the hacking — and whose own voicemails were hacked by a private detective and a reporter for the now-defunct News of the World — told the BBC on Wednesday that he will file lawsuits against News Corp on behalf of three U.S. celebrities, two them in the sports world, all of whom he declined to name. “This goes to the heartland of News Corporation and we’ll be looking at the involvement of the parent company in terms of claims there and that is something that will be taken more seriously by perhaps the investors and shareholders in News Corporation,” Lewis said. Britain’s Guardian newspaper commented today (Thursday) that Lewis’s planned legal action in the U.S. “constitutes a major escalation in the legal ramifications of the hacking scandal for Murdoch, who has tried desperately to keep it away from the American core of his multi-billion-dollar media holdings.” On his Twitter page, Murdoch continued to avoid any discussion of the hacking scandal. However, if Lewis is able to prove that News Corp executives sanctioned the hacking, it could trigger challenges to News Corp’s television licenses and bring about criminal charges under the foreign corrupt practices act.