News Corp. is under fresh attack after new written evidence submitted to a U.K. parliament committee suggested that the voice-mail interception was “widely discussed” at its News of the World tabloid.
The UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee released on Tuesday written statements from Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch, several former top executives and a law firm that was retained by the media company as it dealt with fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.
The new documents, which were reported on by The Wall Street Journal, draw the battle lines in a fight over how long top company officials knew about the scandal and whether they misled parliament in saying there was no evidence the tactics were widespread.
One claim appears in a 2007 letter submitted to the committee by onetime News Corp. law firm Harbottle & Lewis LLP. The letter was written by Clive Goodman, the former News of the World royal correspondent who had been jailed for phone-hacking.
In the letter, written as part of a wrongful-dismissal appeal against News Corp’s UK newspaper division, Goodman alleged that other employees at the tabloid engaged in or knew about similar practices.
“[O]ther members of the staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures,” Goodman wrote. “This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor.”
Wall Street Journal noted that the editor at the time was Andy Coulson, who later resigned and became British Prime Minister David Cameron’s top communications adviser, before resigning from that post as well earlier this year.
Goodman also said in the letter he was told by Coulson he could have his job back at the paper if he didn’t implicate anyone else at the tabloid when he pleaded guilty to phone hacking in 2006.
One of the recipients of this letter was none other than Les Hinton, then the executive chairman of News International. Hinton, however, has long contended he was unaware that wrongdoing at News of the World went beyond Goodman’s crimes.
Meanwhile, James Murdoch is also under fire after two former company executives said they informed him in 2008 of a crucial email which suggested that the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World likely involved more than one of the tabloid’s reporters. The company long maintained that just one journalist had been involved in phone hacking.
Murdoch told the parliamentary committee last month that he hadn’t seen that email.
In response to the latest developments, News International said in a statement Tuesday, “We recognize the seriousness of materials disclosed to the Police and Parliament and are committed to working in a constructive and open way with all the relevant authorities.”