BRITISH MP CALLS FOR MURDOCH TO TESTIFY ABOUT HACKERGATE

Simon Hughes, a member of the British parliament whose telephone was hacked by the tabloid News of the World and whose testimony led to the conviction of reporter Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire, said Thursday that other members of parliament refused to testify against the newspaper for fear of angering Rupert Murdoch and his British news group, News International. Addressing parliament on Thursday, Labor MP Tom Watson said, “The barons of the media, with their red-topped [tabloid] assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators; they are untouchable. They laugh at the law; they sneer at parliament. They have the power to hurt us, and they do, with gusto and precision, with joy and criminality. Prime ministers quail before them, and that is how they like it. That, indeed, has become how they insist upon it, and we are powerless in the face of them.” Watson called for a parliamentary committee that is looking into charges that the News of the World routinely hacked into the phones of politicians and celebrities to summon Murdoch to testify. “I doubt Rupert Murdoch knows about these incidents, but he is responsible for appointing to positions of great power people who should know about them,” he said. “For that reason, he too should explain his actions to the committee.”