Rupert Murdoch, Phone-hacking Scandal | featured news

Rupert Murdoch on Thursday caved in to pressure from Britain's parliament to answer questions over alleged crimes at one of his newspapers and denied that News Corp was drawing up plans to separate its newspaper holdings.

Media titan Rupert Murdoch and his son James defied the British Parliament Thursday and refused to appear next week before a committee investigating phone hacking and bribery by employees of their newspapers. The committee said it had issued summonses to the Murdochs, setting up an extraordinary confrontation between one of Britain’s most powerful men and a Parliament once seen as easily bent to his will.

Rupert Murdoch's dream of controlling a British broadcasting behemoth turned to ashes Wednesday as he withdrew his bid for BSkyB — the latest, biggest casualty of what Prime Minister David Cameron called the hacking "firestorm" sweeping through British politics, media and police.

Tom Crone, the legal manager at the Rupert Murdoch U.K. newspaper arm fighting widespread hacking allegations, has left the company, a source has told Reuters.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown charged Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers hired “known criminals” to obtain information about him, and a senior police official said he was sure his own phone was hacked, as a mounting scandal threatened to further damage Murdoch’s media empire.

Britain was looking for a way out of approving media baron Rupert Murdoch's multi-billion dollar deal to buy broadcaster BSkyB amid a phone-hacking scandal.

Closing Britain's highest-selling newspaper, the 168-year-old News of the World, with just three days' notice in the wake of its phone-hacking scandal may feel like a nuclear option. In practice, it makes perfect commercial sense for Rupert Mudoch's News Corporation.

The News of the World, the British tabloid newspaper beset with a widening phone-hacking scandal, will shut down as result of the imbroglio, a top executive of its parent company said Thursday. The News, a feisty, hugely profitable daily that has been continuously published for 168 years, will cease publishing on Sunday, said James Murdoch, the son of media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns the newspaper.