NEW LAWSUIT FILED IN U.K.’S HACKERGATE SCANDAL

According to Cornelia Crisan, a Romanian singer who went public with an account of her two-year affair with actor Ralph Fiennes, the story was stolen by the London Sunday tabloid News of the World when it illegally hacked the voice mail messages of her publicist, Nicola Philips. Today’s New York Times has published details of Crisan’s lawsuit against the tabloid as apparent efforts to keep a lid on the growing Hackergate scandal by NoW‘s owners, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, appear to be coming undone. In reporting on the lawsuit, the Times observed that it sheds “a stark and unflattering light on the newspaper’s reliance on phone hacking as a standard reporting method” and further reveals “how in Britain’s dog-eat-dog tabloid world, ethical reporters buy stories, but unethical ones steal them.” And with predictions of additional lawsuits like Crisan’s about to be filed, Labor MP Chris Bryant told the newspaper, “I think there’s a massive scandal still to unfold.”