DID DEPUTY MAYOR OF LONDON TRY TO STYMIE HACKING PROBE?

Last April, Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London and the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority (Scotland Yard), met with the then police commissioner — equivalent to the chief of police — and purportedly urged him to downsize his investigation into alleged voicemail hacking by reporters working for News of the World, the now-defunct tabloid […]

MURDOCH: ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED

A day after News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch lifted the suspensions of ten arrested senior journalists working for his daily tabloid The Sun, he sent an email to the staff of the newspaper warning that he will not “protect people who have paid public officials.” Underlining that resolve, he said, “We will obey the law. […]

HACKERGATE ARRESTS NOW NUMBER 10

Rebekah Brooks, the recently resigned CEO of News International, the umbrella group for News Corp’s newspapers in the U.K., voluntarily turned herself in to police today (Sunday) and was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption. A spokesman for Brooks said that she was arrested “by appointment” when she “attended a London police station […]

JUDGE WANTS TO KNOW IF TOP NEWS CORP EXECS KNEW ABOUT HACKING

Did executives at the very top level of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp know about the illegal voicemail hacking that was taking place at the company’s London tabloid News of the World? Perhaps Murdoch himself? A judge hearing a number of test invasion-of-privacy cases has said that he will take evidence of possible senior-executive knowledge of […]

NEWS CORP EXEC BACKS OFF FROM EARLIER CLAIM

News International CEO Rebekah Brooks maintains that her testimony to a committee of Parliament in 2003, when she was the editor of the London Sun, that police had been paid for information was misinterpreted. In a letter to the Home Affairs committee, which had asked her to provide details about such payments, Brooks said that […]

MURDOCH NEWS GROUP ADMITS PHONE HACKING

In an extraordinary about-face, Rupert Murdoch’s News International — the umbrella group for his British news operations — has admitted that reporters for its Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, hacked into the voicemails of at least eight celebrities and politicians who are suing the paper. The admission reverses its previous stance that the […]

U.K. POLICE OFFICIAL RAPPED FOR LUNCHING WITH TABLOID EDITOR

Former U.K. Labor minister Chris Bryant, who has claimed that his voicemails were hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloid News of the World, faced down Scotland Yard’s acting deputy commissioner John Yates during a Parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, chastising Yates for lunching with the paper’s former deputy editor, Neil Wallace in February shortly after the […]

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 […]

HACKERGATE SCANDAL ESCALATES; MURDOCH FLIES TO U.K.

Stung by charges that it failed to fully investigate charges of widespread eavesdropping on the voicemail of celebrities and politicians by reporters for Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloid News of the World, Scotland Yard announced today (Thursday) that it had launched a new investigation of the charges. Reports of the new investigation came as News International, […]

NEW LAWSUITS FILED IN BRITAIN’S HACKERGATE SCANDAL

Chris Bryant, the former Foreign Office Minister for Europe in the British Labor Party government, and Brian Paddick, a former Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) senior officer, have filed a lawsuit against the Yard, claiming that other officials of the agency engaged in a strategic cover-up of widespread phone hacking by the Sunday tabloid News of […]