During the last seven years, News Corp., its CEO Rupert Murdoch, and its subsidiary News International [86] have been increasingly engulfed in a sprawling scandal related to illegal hacking of telephone voicemails. Some of the investigations into this matter are ongoing. Following are some of the key events in this developing story.
In 2006, Clive Goodman, the royal editor at News of the World, a now-defunct newspaper owned by News Corp., pleaded guilty to intercepting phone messages regarding the British Royal Family. A private investigator hired by News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire, also pleaded guilty. [87]
On April 8th, 2011, News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. and parent company of News of the World, apologized and offered compensation to eight people whose phone voicemails were hacked, including the actress Sienna Miller and Tessa Jowell, a former U.K. cabinet minister. [88]
On July 4th, 2011 the Guardian reported that News of The World hired private investigators to hack the voicemails of Milly Dowler, a missing schoolgirl. Dowler had been murdered, but when News of the World deleted some of her voicemails, it gave her family false hope that she might be alive. The voicemail deletions interfered with the police investigation of her death. Her family called the voicemail hacking "heinous" and "despicable." [89]
On July 7th, 2011 the Daily Telegraph reported that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator working for News of the World, may have hacked the voicemails of relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. [90]
Also on July 7th, the head detective sifting through the files of Glenn Mulcaire told the Guardian that more than 4,000 people may have been targeted with phone hacking. [91]
On July 11th, the Daily Mirror reported that News of the World had asked a private investigator to "hack into the 9/11 victims' private phone data" and that " journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives." The private investigator, a former New York City police officer, declined the job because "He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look." [92]
On July 13, British Prime Minister David Cameron established the Leveson Inquiry to investigate the roles of the media and the police in the phone hacking scandal. [93]
On July 28th, the Guardian reported that "Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail." [94]
On August 16th, a British House of Commons committee released a 2007 letter by former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman alleging a cover-up of the phone hacking scandal at News of the World. The Guardian reports that
" Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed' at editorial meetings at the paper until [former News of the World editor] Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support' of other senior journalists, whom he named." [95]
On July 23, 2012, Leveson Inquiry Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers testified that, regarding victims of phone hacking, "In total it is believed that there are 4,775 such 'potential' victims, of which 1081 have some additional factor which means we consider them likely to have been victims. These factors include audio recording of voicemail messages, PIN numbers and/or calls to Unique Voicemail Numbers." [96] Akers also testified that the investigation "discovered instances where staff at NI [News International] titles appear to have been in possession of material downloaded or otherwise obtained from stolen mobile telephones." [97]
The FBI was or is conducting a preliminary investigation of whether News Corp. violated any U.S. laws in the phone hacking scandal. News Corp. is headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. According to the Associated Press, the FBI investigation includes whether News Corp. employees or contractors may have bribed police officers, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; whether News of The World hacked the phone data of relatives of 9/11 victims; and whether the actor Jude Law had his phone hacked while in the United States. [98] The Department of Justice is also investigating whether News America Marketing, a News Corp. subsidiary, "repeatedly hacked" and stole key financial information from one of its competitors, Floorgraphics, an advertising firm based in New Jersey. [99] News Corp. settled a civil lawsuit on this matter for $29.5 million, and subsequently purchased Floorgraphics. [100]
On August 16, 2013, Reuters reported that "London police are actively investigating Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper business for possible criminal violations over allegations of phone-hacking and illegal payments to public officials by its journalists-- [101]
On September 18, 2013, the Daily Telegraph reported that U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, "visited News Corp's London headquarters earlier this year, in preparation for a potential Senate investigation." According to the Daily Telegraph,
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