Rupert Murdoch attacked at phone hacking inquiry
Posted July 19, 2011 2:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A man was arrested in London after an attack on Rupert Murdoch during a phone hacking inquiry Tuesday evening.
Hours into the hearing, around 5 p.m. local time, the protester accosted Murdoch with a white foam, which appeared to have got on the media titan’s jacket.
After a brief delay, the News Corp CEO and his son James resumed taking questions from British MPs investigating hacking and bribery centred around their News of the World tabloid.
The hearing began around noon, with lawmakers asking the executives about what led to the crisis that brought down their 168-year-old paper and resulted in high-profile arrests and resignations of top policemen in recent days.
“This is the most humble day of my life,” Murdoch, 80, said.
“We felt ashamed for what had happened….Apologising cannot take back what happened. Still, I want them (the victims) to know the depth of my regret for the horrible invasions into their lives,”
Murdoch says he’s not responsible for the phone hacking and that he shut down The News of the World because of criminal allegations. He added he has seen no evidence that 9/11 victims were targeted by his papers.
The parliamentary committee grilled newspaper head Rebekah Brooks next. She was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of hacking and bribing police, but is out on bail.
Brooks – who was editor of News of the World when murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s cellphone voicemail was hacked – denied providing payouts to police at Tuesday’s session and also offered her apologies. She said she first learned of the hacking only weeks ago.
“My instant reaction like everybody else was one of shock and disgust,”
Reporters who hacked Dowler’s voicemail deleted select messages, hindering the police investigation.
On Sunday, Scotland Yard chief Paul Stephenson quit, and anti-terror chief John Yates resigned less than 24 hours later after they were linked to former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis.
And police are investigating the unexplained death of whistleblower Sean Hoare, a former reporter at the paper who first implicated Prime Minister David Cameron’s ex-spokesman Andy Coulson in the scandal.
Coulson resigned from Downing Street in January and was arrested on July 8.
It was in January that detectives re-opened a probe into the phone hacking of celebrities and royals and learned of thousands more victims, including Dowler.
