Murdoch rejects blame for hack scandal at hearing

PAISLEY DODDS

Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON (AP) — Sum­moned by law­mak­ers to answer for a phone hack­ing and bribery scan­dal at one of his tabloids, Rupert Mur­doch said he was hum­bled and ashamed Tues­day but accepted no respon­si­bil­ity for wrong­do­ing as a widen­ing inves­ti­ga­tion threat­ened to ensnare Britain’s prime minister.

In a three-hour grilling, the 80-year-old media tycoon insisted he was at fault only for trust­ing the wrong peo­ple at the now-defunct News of the World, and noted that the paper made up a tiny por­tion of his vast media empire.

The scan­dal has rocked Murdoch’s News Corp. and embroiled Britain’s top police, many jour­nal­ists and politi­cians. Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron cut short his Africa trip to appear before a spe­cial par­lia­men­tary ques­tion ses­sion on Wednesday.

Mur­doch appeared con­fused and flus­tered in the begin­ning of Tuesday’s par­lia­men­tary hear­ing, turn­ing fre­quently to his son James for answers. But he soon regained his trade­mark cool.

He said he had known noth­ing of alle­ga­tions that staff at the News of the World tabloid hacked into cell phones and bribed police to get infor­ma­tion on celebri­ties, politi­cians and crime vic­tims, and that he never would have approved such “hor­ri­ble inva­sions” of privacy.

In the face of law­mak­ers’ sug­ges­tions that his orga­ni­za­tion encour­aged such behav­ior, he was unflap­pable — even after a pro­tester rushed at him in the mid­dle of the hearing.

He stayed seated when the man tried to throw a foam pie at him. A News Corp. attor­ney par­tially blocked the attack and Murdoch’s 42-year-old wife slapped the prankster. After the pro­tester was arrested, the bil­lion­aire sim­ply shed his splat­tered suit jacket and con­tin­ued answer­ing questions.

The scan­dal has cap­ti­vated audi­ences from Amer­ica to Murdoch’s native Aus­tralia, and there’s more to come — only a frac­tion of the nearly 4,000 peo­ple whose infor­ma­tion was hacked are known and the police inves­ti­ga­tion appears to be widen­ing. Mur­doch has already shut the News of the World, given up on buy­ing a major British satel­lite tele­vi­sion com­pany and accepted the res­ig­na­tions of two top exec­u­tives because of the scandal.

He said he had no plans to resign but expressed con­tri­tion on behalf of News Corp.’s British news­pa­per divi­sion, News International.

“This is the most hum­ble day of my career,” said Mur­doch, a man once so polit­i­cally pow­er­ful in Britain that for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair flew halfway around the world to secure his sup­port as he launched the Labour Party’s bid for power in 1995.

The scan­dal began as a blip in 2005, when the News of the World pub­lished a story about Prince William suf­fer­ing a knee injury. Royal offi­cials became sus­pi­cious about the closely held data and alerted police. An inquiry led to one of the paper’s reporters and a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor being jailed for inter­cept­ing communications.

The Guardian news­pa­per then found out that Murdoch’s papers had paid out more than $1.6 mil­lion (1 mil­lion pounds) to set­tle law­suits involv­ing alle­ga­tions of eaves­drop­ping on phone mes­sages. The scan­dal became a cri­sis for News Inter­na­tional this month with the rev­e­la­tion that the News of the World had hacked into the phone of a 13-year-old mur­der vic­tim, Milly Dowler, in hopes of get­ting mate­r­ial for news stories.

Occa­sion­ally punc­tu­at­ing remarks by slap­ping his hands down on the desk, Mur­doch said he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed” at the hack­ing of Dowler’s phone but he rejected that crim­i­nal­ity had been endemic at the tabloid. He also said he had seen no evi­dence that vic­tims of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror attack were hacked — an alle­ga­tion the FBI is look­ing into.

Mur­doch said he had not been informed that his com­pany had paid out big sums — 700,000 pounds ($1.1 mil­lion) in one case — to set­tle law­suits by phone hack­ing victims.

Mur­doch noted that News of the World rep­re­sented less than 1 per­cent of his global media empire, which also includes the Fox TV net­work, 20th Cen­tury Fox film stu­dio, The Wall Street Jour­nal, the New York Post and three major British news­pa­pers. He said he spoke to the News of the World’s edi­tor only around once a month.

Blame, he said, rested with “the peo­ple I trusted … and then, maybe, the peo­ple they trusted.”

News Inter­na­tional CEO Rebekah Brooks and Wall Street Jour­nal pub­lisher Les Hin­ton, for­mer exec­u­tive chair­man of News Inter­na­tional, have resigned, though Mur­doch said he did not blame either of them for the scan­dal. Brooks and Cameron’s for­mer com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief, Andy Coul­son — a for­mer edi­tor at News of the World — are among sev­eral peo­ple who have been arrested in the scan­dal, though no one has been charged with a crime.

James Mur­doch, 38, apol­o­gized for the scan­dal, telling British law­mak­ers that “these actions do not live up to the stan­dards our com­pany aspires to.”

The younger Mur­doch said the com­pany acted as swiftly and trans­par­ently as pos­si­ble. Rupert Mur­doch acknowl­edged, how­ever, that he did not inves­ti­gate after Brooks, for­mer edi­tor of the News of the World, told par­lia­ment years ago that the paper had paid police offi­cers for information.

The value of News Corp. added around $2 bil­lion while the Mur­dochs were being grilled, trad­ing 5.3 per­cent higher at $15.74. The stock has taken a bat­ter­ing over the past cou­ple of weeks, shed­ding around 17 per­cent of its value, or around $8 billion.

Brooks tes­ti­fied after the Mur­dochs. All three agreed to pro­vide evi­dence only after they were summoned.

Brooks described alle­ga­tions of voice­mail inter­cepts of crime vic­tims as “pretty hor­rific and abhor­rent.” She said had been told by News of the World employ­ees that alle­ga­tions of phone hack­ing by News of the World jour­nal­ists were untrue, and that she real­ized the grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion only when she saw doc­u­ments lodged in a civil dam­ages case by actress Sienna Miller last year.

Brooks also said she had never know­ingly sanc­tioned a pay­off to a police officer.

Asked whether she had been lied to by senior employ­ees at the news­pa­per, Brooks said she could not answer because of the crim­i­nal investigation.

Politi­cians also pushed Tues­day for details about the Mur­dochs’ ties to Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron and other mem­bers of the British polit­i­cal establishment.

Cameron, who is expected to return from Africa late Tues­day, has been crit­i­cized for employ­ing Coul­son as his com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief when he was aware of phone hack­ing allegations.

Law­mak­ers want to know why Cameron insisted on hir­ing Coul­son despite warn­ings, how much the prime min­is­ter knew about the phone hack­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, whether Coul­son had any role in per­suad­ing the police to ini­tially drop the hack­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, and how many times Cameron met with Mur­doch or top asso­ciates at News International.

Before the Mur­dochs’ tes­ti­mony, law­mak­ers ques­tioned Lon­don police about reports that offi­cers took bribes from jour­nal­ists to pro­vide inside infor­ma­tion for scoops, and to ask why the force decided to shut down an ear­lier phone hack­ing probe after charg­ing only two people.

Detec­tives reopened the case ear­lier this year and are look­ing at a poten­tial 3,700 vic­tims. Police have only noti­fied some 200 of the people.

The erupt­ing scan­dal has revealed a cozy rela­tion­ship between British police and the press. Paul Stephen­son, who resigned as London’s police com­mis­sioner Sun­day, told law­mak­ers Tues­day that 10 of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police’s 45 press offi­cers used to work for News International.

Stephen­son denied wrong­do­ing, or know­ing the News of the World was engaged in phone hack­ing, but acknowl­edged that he was embar­rassed that the force had hired Neil Wal­lis, an arrested for­mer exec­u­tive of the paper, as a PR con­sul­tant. Stephen­son said he stepped down because alle­ga­tions about his con­tacts with News Inter­na­tional were a dis­trac­tion to the force.

He was fol­lowed out the door by assis­tant com­mis­sioner John Yates, who also tes­ti­fied Tues­day. Yates has denied wrong­do­ing and said that, with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, he would have reopened an inquiry into elec­tronic eaves­drop­ping of voice­mail messages.

After the hear­ing, Rupert Mur­doch sent News Inter­na­tional staff an email say­ing that the com­pany has taken respon­si­bil­ity, and that the alle­ga­tions “directly con­tra­vene our codes of con­duct and do not reflect the actions and beliefs of our many employees.”

He said the com­pany will coop­er­ate fully with author­i­ties and added, “Those who have betrayed our trust must be held account­able under the law.”

Mur­doch is eager to stop the cri­sis from spread­ing to the United States.

In New York, News Corp. appointed com­mer­cial lawyer Anthony Gra­biner to run its Man­age­ment and Stan­dards Com­mit­tee, which will deal with the scandal.

News Corp. board mem­ber Thomas Perkins told The Asso­ci­ated Press that Mur­doch has the full sup­port of the company’s board of direc­tors, and it was not con­sid­er­ing ele­vat­ing Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Chase Carey to replace Mur­doch as CEO of News Corp.

Posted by AP News on Jul 20 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.