MURDOCH: NEWS CORP EXECS HANDLED SCANDAL “EXTREMELY WELL”

Rupert Murdoch on Thursday vigorously defended the way the News of the World hacking scandal had been handled by News Corp executives, including his son James, the deputy COO of News Corp, who announced the decision to shut down the 168-year-old publication and subsequently announced that the company was withdrawing its bid to acquire complete ownership of BSkyB, Britain’s largest commercial broadcaster. Murdoch, in an exclusive interview in London with the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal, said that company executives had handled the situation “extremely well in every way possible” and that only “minor mistakes” had been made. He accused his detractors in Parliament of lying and insisted that he welcomes the opportunity to appear before a Parliamentary committee next week “to absolutely establish our integrity in the eyes of the public.” Meanwhile, in a new embarrassment to Scotland Yard, it was revealed Thursday that the latest suspect arrested in the case was working for the police during the time that they were rejecting calls for the reopening of the hacking investigation. Hours after Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of News of the World, was arrested, Britain’s Guardian newspaper said that he had been employed by the Yard as a part-time adviser on “strategic communications” from October 2009 to September 2010 but was terminated following a report in the New York Times about the hacking allegations. In a related matter, the FBI said on Thursday that it has opened an investigation into a report that appeared in the London Daily Mirror that News of the World attempted to access the voicemail of 9/11 victims.