Murdochs,Brooks in dock over phone-hacking scandal
Dramatic showdown with British lawmakers:
UK: Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, son James and former top aide
Rebekah Brooks on Tuesday faced a dramatic showdown with British
lawmakers over the phone-hacking scandal which has enraged the nation.
The under-fire trio were to appear before a parliamentary committee
to break their silence over the escalating crisis which on Monday
claimed the scalp of a second police chief.
Earlier, Prime Minister David Cameron announced he was to cut short a
trip to Africa to deal with a scandal that threatens his own position.
In a bizarre twist, a whistleblower at the heart of the scandal was
found dead at his home on Monday but police were not treating the death
as suspicious. News International (NI), Murdoch’s British newspaper arm,
was believed to have taken down its webpages Tuesday after the Lulz
Security hacker group replaced The Sun’s online version with a fake
story pronouncing the mogul’s death. The Murdochs and former NI chief
executive Brooks faced a harrowing afternoon Tuesday in front of the
cross-party Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which was to demand the
trio “account for the behaviour” of the tainted media giant. James
Murdoch, chief executive of parent company News Corp’s Europe and Asia
operation, promised to be the focus of scrutiny over payments he is
alleged to have approved to the victims of hacking.
Cameron has also been forced to defend his own position after
Stephenson, Britain’s most senior police officer, took a swipe at the
prime minister’s decision to hire former News of the World editor Andy
Coulson as his media chief.
Stephenson quit on Sunday over the force’s hiring of Neil Wallis who
was deputy to Coulson at the tabloid and over a spa break he accepted
from a firm where Wallis was a consultant.
Tuesday, AFP
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