James Murdoch was under pressure yesterday over the extent of his knowledge of the UK’s phone-hacking scandal as accusations of tabloid wrongdoing spread beyond the felled News of the World.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, facing a rough ride over his appointment of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his media chief, said Murdoch had “questions to answer” over claims of misleading parliament on the affair.
James Murdoch, the chairman of News International, the British newspaper division of his father Rupert’s News Corp global media empire, has been challenged over evidence he gave before the UK Parliament’s media scrutiny committee on Tuesday.
A lawmaker has referred James Murdoch’s testimony to the police. He is standing by his evidence.
During a tense appearance with his father before the committee, James Murdoch said that when authorizing an out-of-court settlement to a voicemail hacking victim, he was unaware of an e-mail that could suggest knowledge of hacking at the now-shuttered News of the World went wider than one rogue reporter.
However, Colin Myler, the last editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, the former News International legal manager, broke ranks on Thursday to say James Murdoch’s recollection of events in 2008 was “mistaken.”
The scandal, which erupted earlier this month, has already engulfed News International, the police and senior politicians, including Cameron.
So far, allegations of wrongdoing have largely been restricted to News of the World.
However, a former journalist at the Daily Mirror tabloid — the main competitor to News International’s the Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper — claimed that voicemail hacking was widespread at his old paper.
James Hipwell, 45, worked for two years until 2000 on the tabloid’s business desk, which he said was next to the show business desk.
“You know what people around you are doing,” he told the Independent newspaper.
“They would call a celebrity with one phone and when it was answered they would then hang up. By that stage the other phone would be into their [the celebrity’s] voicemail and they would key in the code,” he said. “At the time it wasn’t illegal ... It was seen as a bit of a wheeze, slightly underhand, but something many of them did — what a laugh.”
“After they’d hacked into someone’s mobile they’d delete the message so another paper couldn’t get the story. There was a great hilarity about it,” he added.
Hipwell was sacked by the Mirror over the so-called “City Slickers” scandal. He was accused of buying shares before tipping them in the paper. He was convicted of market manipulation and jailed.
A spokesman for the tabloid’s publishers Trinity Mirror said: “Our journalists work within the criminal law and the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.”
Meanwhile, police are to investigate claims of phone hacking in Scotland, which has its own legal system.
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