Hacking Scandal

Following the resignation of his boss, Scotland Yard chief Paul Stephenson, a second senior British police officer quit Monday amid the phone-hacking scandal that has reached into the highest levels of public life in Britain. Assistant Commissioner John Yates was under heavy pressure for his ties with the News of the World and his decision not to reopen an investigation into hacking allegations at the now-defunct tabloid two years ago. Stephenson resigned Sunday in a shocking turn of events that came hours after the arrest of one of media baron Rupert Murdoch's most trusted deputies.

What others might call lying, Paul McMullan calls a brilliant maneuver. Looking for the goods on a philandering actor, the tabloid reporter hired a private investigator to make a phone call to the actor's hotel posing as his accountant and persuade the front desk to fax over his room bill, which included a list of all the calls he'd made. McMullan, who at the time was working for the late, lamentable News of the World, then dialed every number on the list until he got the actor's mistress on the line — and his scoop.

Rebekah Brooks, the former head of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's British operations, was arrested Sunday in connection with a spiraling phone-hacking scandal, police and media reports said. Scotland Yard confirmed that a 43-year-old woman was arrested at noon on suspicion of conspiring to intercept private voicemails and corruption allegations. British media identified the woman as Brooks. Until her resignation Friday, Brooks was the chief executive of News International, the British subsidiary of Murdoch's media giant News Corp.

A few years ago my old boss, David Laventhol, had an extended conversation with Rupert Murdoch about newspapers. It was after some sort of big-deal journalism dinner, and they talked long after the tired waiters wished they'd go. David had a storied career in newspapers. He helped invent the Style section of the Washington Post when he was a young editor there. He was editor and publisher of Newsday, publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of Times Mirror, finishing his career with me at the Columbia Journalism Review.

Rebekah Brooks, the head of Rupert Murdoch's British operations, resigned Friday after days of intensifying pressure on her because of the growing phone-hacking scandal. One of the most influential women in Britain until the scandal broke wide open last week, Brooks said in a statement that she was stepping down as chief executive of News International because she had become a "focal point" in the scandal and therefore a distraction to efforts to repair the damage. "I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt and I want to reiterate how sorry I am for what we now know to have taken place," Brooks wrote to her colleagues at News International.

It is beginning to look as if respectable British newspapers might be collateral damage in the backlash against Rupert Murdoch and his sleazy underlings at the News of the World. Prime Minister David Cameron predicted that a special panel studying the tabloid phone-hacking scandal would make recommendations for "a new, more effective way of regulating the press. " The possibility of new restrictions on the press is only one of the reactions to the scandal in which Murdoch's reporters hacked into the telephones of an array of unsuspecting people.

After initially saying no, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son James agreed Thursday to appear before lawmakers next week to answer questions about the hacking scandal that has engulfed their company's newspapers in Britain. The about-face came after top political leaders piled pressure on father and son to give evidence before a parliamentary committee, with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg urging the two men to "do the decent thing; you can't hide away from this level of public anguish and anger.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's latest effort at damage control, abruptly shelving his bid to take over Britain's biggest satellite broadcaster, shows no sign of turning back the rising tide of public anger against him and his giant News Corp. The decision to ditch the $12-billion bid, at least temporarily, was a humiliating turnaround for Murdoch, who is struggling to keep the fallout from a deepening newspaper phone-hacking scandal from contaminating the rest of his global media empire.

Good bad news Re "Phone hacking scandal widens," July 12 I could not be more pleased at the damage inflicted on Rupert Murdoch's global misinformation machine. I regret the harm done to the victims of Murdoch's stooges, but I'm pleased the perpetrators have been caught and will probably pay a heavy price. I hope the left in Britain and the United States will take advantage of Murdoch's weakened state as an opportunity to inflict even more damage on him. As an expat American, I especially hope the left in my country will exploit every opportunity to use these and any further charges that may emerge against Murdoch's stooges at Fox News.

In a startling turn in Britain's phone-hacking scandal, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday accused Rupert Murdoch's newspapers of hiring "known criminals" to ferret out information on him and his family, including his personal finances and his infant son's medical history. The former British leader told the BBC that the decision by the tabloid the Sun in 2006 to publicize his younger son Fraser's diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, not long after Brown and his wife learned of it themselves, had left the couple "in tears.