Scandal, News Of The World | featured news

Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief and Rupert Murdoch's former UK newspaper boss are to be charged with phone-hacking offences in the most significant development in a scandal that has rocked Britain's establishment.

Murdoch was smiling at the end of the day Thursday after News Corp. announced a profit increase that dwarfed their scandal-related expenses.

James Murdoch, the son of media titan Rupert Murdoch, testified Tuesday that he had no idea phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World tabloid and that he would have insisted the company "get to the bottom of what was going on" had he known.

A former reporter on the News of the World newspaper, the defunct News Corp British paper at the heart of phone-hacking and corruption allegations, said he lost his job as crime correspondent because he refused to bribe police officers.

Rebekah Brooks, a former top executive with Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was among six people arrested Tuesday in one of the largest police sweeps yet in the long-running phone-hacking scandal, British news media reported.

James Murdoch, the executive at the epicenter of the phone hacking scandal at his father's British newspapers, is stepping down as executive chairman of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper arm, the company announced Wednesday.

A British lawmaker said Thursday that he and 17 others have been awarded payouts over phone hacking by the News of the World newspaper.

Seven public figures have settled their claims against News of the World publisher News Group over phone hacking, News International says. They include former Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten, TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson and celebrities Abi Titmuss and Calum Best. The others were theatrical agent Michelle Milburn, Paul Dadge, who helped survivors of the 7/7 bombings, and former Army officer James Hewitt.

Horror stories of car chases, intense paranoia, spitting paparazzi, and most of all an ineffective regulatory system peppered today’s inquiry into News Corp’s News Of The World phone hacking scandal by a British government-backed inquiry into UK press ethics and practices. Notably appearing in London Thursday were actress Sienna Miller and Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

The defense offered by James Murdoch in a Thursday appearance before the committee of Parliament tasked with getting to the bottom of the phone hacking scandal can be summed up in three parts: I didn't know about it. Blame the people who should've told me about it. The people who say they did tell me about it are wrong.