SCANDAL HITS BRITISH SCANDAL SHEET

Revelations that Andy Coulson, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s chief spokesman, was allegedly aware of widespread illegal wiretapping being conducted by Britain’s News of the World when he edited the tabloid and that London police failed to investigate the wiretapping thoroughly in order to protect their relationship with the paper have begun to shake Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire. The revelations, appearing in the New York Times and Britain’s Guardian newspaper over the weekend, were “emphatically denied” by Coulson, a spokesperson said, but London police disclosed that they were studying them, particularly those of a former News of the World reporter, Sean Hoare, who claimed that Coulson had asked him to listen in on wiretapped conversations with celebrities and politicians. On Sunday, the News of the World claimed that the New York Times’s account was “motivated by commercial rivalry.” With calls for an official investigation growing louder in Parliament, questions were being raised about the extent of knowledge about the wiretapping within the News Corp empire: If it is determined that Coulson was in fact aware of it, did he inform higher-ups, and did they, in turn, inform Murdoch?