Updated at 10:35 a.m. ET: LONDON — Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and other British media were reckless in the pursuit of sensational stories "almost irrespective of the harm" caused, according to a major report on Britain's phone-hacking scandal.

The findings of the year-long Leveson Inquiry criticized a “failure of systems of management and compliance” at Murdoch’s News of the World (NoTW) tabloid, which was closed down as the full extent of their illegal actions became clear.

Lord Justice Leveson said if Murdoch and his son James did not know about the extent of phone-hacking at the paper, then there had been a "determined cover-up" by unidentified staff.

---

And if they had known then the Murdochs should have done something about it, he said. However, the judge added there was no evidence from which he could "safely infer" that Rupert Murdoch was aware of a wider problem.

The report is being watched by American lawmakers amid concerns that U.S. laws may have been broken.

Leveson did not recommend state regulation of the media – or censorship in the eyes of some – as some victims of press intrusion had demanded, but did propose a new self-regulatory body enshrined in law.

The inquiry was set up after it emerged that people working for the News of the World had hacked into messages on a phone belonging to Milly Dowler, 13, while she was a missing person in 2002. She had been abducted and was murdered.

A string of other examples of phone-hacking and other examples of press intrusion then emerged.

Read the full Leveson Inquiry report

Leveson said it was not just Murdoch’s newspapers that were at fault, adding that "outrageous" behavior by the press had "wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people."

“There has been a recklessness in prioritizing sensational stories almost irrespective of the harm that the stories may cause and the rights of those who would be affected (perhaps in a way that can never be remedied),” his report said.

“Too many stories in too many newspapers are the subject of complaints from too many people,” it added.

Related content:

Key US lawmaker watching as Rupert Murdoch braces for phone-hacking report

Judgment day looms for Rupert Murdoch, Piers Morgan and UK press

Former UK PM accuses Murdoch of misleading inquiry into phone-hack scandal

Rupert Murdoch not 'a fit person' to firm, UK lawmakers say 

But Leveson was scathing about the Murdoch empire and the News of the World in particular. He said there was "a general lack of respect for individual privacy and dignity” at the paper.

And the judge said there had been a “serious failure of governance” at the News of the World, News Corporation and its U.K. arm News International in dealing with the phone-hacking allegations.

“There was a failure on the part of the management at the NoTW to take appropriate steps to investigate whether there was evidence of wrongdoing,” he said.

'Determined cover-up'
Leveson said if Rupert Murdoch and his son James were kept in the dark then “one or more parts of the management at the NoTW was engaged in a determined cover-up to keep relevant information about potential criminal activity within the organisation from senior management within NI.”

“… if James Murdoch had been the victim of a cover-up, or an attempt to minimise the gravity of the position, then the accountability and governance systems at NI would have to be considered to have broken down in an extremely serious respect,” he added.

Leveson said there was “no evidence” from which he could “safely infer that Rupert Murdoch was aware of a wider problem.”

But Leveson noted Rupert Murdoch did not appear to have followed up -- or arranged for his son James to follow up -- on the instructions Murdoch said he gave to Colin Myler, editor of the News of the World from 2007 to 2011, to “find out what the hell was going on.”

“If News Corporation management, and in particular Rupert Murdoch, were aware of the allegations, it is obvious that action should have been taken to investigate them,” Leveson said.

The report noted evidence given to the inquiry that News International had been “obstructive” during an early police investigation into phone-hacking.

“The approach taken by NI is far from what might be expected of a well-run corporation … An organisational culture that is founded on integrity and honesty would require not only full co-operation with law enforcement, but also a determination to expose behaviour that failed to comply with the law,” the report said.

Leveson said that what was needed was a “genuinely independent and effective system of self-regulation.”

The current Press Complaints Commission includes members of the media industry, but Leveson said his proposed new body should have no “serving editors or members of the House of Commons or government.” He also said that the new body should be recognized in law.

He said he was “struck by the evidence of journalists who felt they might be put under pressure to do things that were unethical or against the [press standards] code.”

To address this, he said there should be a new whistleblowing hotline and the new board should “encourage” media firms to include a “conscience clause” in their employment contracts.

U.S. senator: 'Deplorable conduct'
Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate commerce committee, earlier signaled he would be paying close attention to the findings of the report.

In an emailed statement sent to NBC News before it was released, he called on investigators in the U.K. to hold media companies accountable for their “deplorable conduct.”

Read more on this story from Britain's ITV News

Rockefeller said that was "deeply concerned" that media companies "may have violated U.S. laws and injured U.S. citizens."

He said he hoped Leveson’s report and other investigations would hold the media organizations involved “accountable for their deplorable conduct.”

“While I understand that the main goal of this report is to make policy recommendations, the core of the inquiry remains the illegal and unethical practices of newspapers owned by the News Corporation,” Rockefeller said.

Former top aide to UK PM David Cameron charged in perjury case

Meanwhile, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who was later hired as U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's chief media adviser, and Rebekah Brooks, the former CEO of News International, appeared in court Thursday to face charges related to allegations of corrupt payments made to public officials, ITV News reported. They were later released on bail.

The Associated Press, Reuters and ITV News contributed to this report. ITV News is NBC News' U.K. partner.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Syrians risk lives in battle to protect nation's ancient sites
• An ocean away in UK, time is running out to claim $100 million lottery prize
• ANALYSIS: Egypt learns the art of politics amid protests
• Arafat's exhumation: Palestinians' desire for truth might be dashed again
• Chinese paper falls for Onion 'sexiest man alive' spoof
• Europe sees US debt crisis as dire as its own
• ANALYSIS: Israeli defense chief quits politics — but for how long?
• Scientists rush to save manta rays, the 'pandas of the ocean'

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Updated at 8:15 a.m. ET: LONDON — The chairman of the Senate commerce committee signaled he will be paying close attention to the findings of a U.K. report into phone-hacking and media ethics by newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch and others, amid concern U.S. laws may have been broken.

Senator Jay Rockefeller called on investigators in the U.K. to hold media companies accountable for their "deplorable conduct," ahead of the release of a report by the year-long Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press Thursday.

---

It is expected to be "excoriating" about the wrongdoing of journalists.

Numerous celebrities — including actor Hugh Grant and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — told the inquiry how they had been harassed, bullied, and traumatized by the press.

But ordinary people, such as Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002, were also subjected to invasion of privacy in the most shocking of circumstances.

It emerged that while she was missing, employees of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid hacked into her telephone. Outrage over this case prompted Murdoch to shut down the tabloid and led U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to commission the Leveson Inquiry.

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who was later hired as Cameron's chief media adviser, and Rebekah Brooks, the former CEO of News Corporation’s U.K. arm News International, appeared in court Thursday to face charges related to allegations of corrupt payments made to public officials, ITV News reported. They were later released on bail.

This probe has raised the specter of possible charges in the U.S. under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, whose anti-bribery provisions could ensnare executives if it is proved that payoffs were made to people such as British police officers.

'Deeply concerned'
Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, said in an emailed statement sent to NBC News that he feared that illegal journalistic practices may have been used on U.S. citizens.

He said he hoped Leveson’s report and other investigations would "continue to clear the air" and hold the media organizations involved “accountable for their deplorable conduct.”

"While I understand that the main goal of this report is to make policy recommendations, the core of the inquiry remains the illegal and unethical practices of newspapers owned by the News Corporation," Rockefeller said.

"I remain deeply concerned that these companies may have violated U.S. laws and injured U.S. citizens," he added.

Judgment day looms for Rupert Murdoch, Piers Morgan and UK press

The Leveson report could have implications for CNN’s Piers Morgan, who was previously editor of the News of the World and the Mirror newspapers.

In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail tabloid, Morgan said he was played a message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney on the phone of his then wife Heather Mills. Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have obtained the message honestly.

At the Leveson Inquiry, Morgan refused to reveal how he was able to listen to the message, saying this would compromise a source.

There have been calls from several victims of press intrusion for the government to regulate the media, an idea some have likened to state censorship in countries like China.

Fear for free speech
After retired teacher Christopher Jefferies, 67, of Bristol, was wrongly arrested for the murder of a young woman renting an apartment he owned, his character was picked over and savaged in the press and he later won substantial damages for defamation from eight newspapers.

He told ITV News that the government had to introduce some form of statutory regulation of the press.

UK PM's ex-aide, Murdoch protege face charges in phone-hacking scandal

"I'm sure that I and many other people will continue to feel extremely angry unless the sort of action which I have been suggesting needs to be taken, is taken," he said.

However, more than 80 politicians from all three main parties in the U.K. signed a letter published in the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers warning Cameron against state control of the media.

"We believe in free speech and are opposed to the imposition of any form of statutory control," they wrote.

Former UK PM accuses Murdoch of misleading inquiry into phone-hack scandal

Former News of the World journalist Tom Latham told ITV News that newspapers were already not running stories in the public interest in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry.

"If you cede anything to the government it's a slippery slope and then you start to lose control of the freedom of the press,” he said.

But, given the paper’s history, Leveson may be more sympathetic to the complaints of people like Hugh Grant.

He has revealed that details of hospital visits he made were leaked to the press, his garbage was rifled through, his ex-girlfriend and his infant daughter harassed.

Grant said articles in The Sun and the Daily Express about his visit to a hospital emergency room was a gross intrusion of privacy.

"I think no one would expect their medical records to be made public or to be appropriated by newspapers for commercial profit," the actor said. "That is fundamental to our British sense of decency."

Reuters, The Associated Press and ITV News contributed to this report. ITV News is NBC's U.K. partner.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Tobacco industry uses trade pacts to try to snuff out anti-smoking laws
• ANALYSIS: Judgment day looms for Rupert Murdoch
• Syrians risk lives in battle to protect nation's ancient sites
• An ocean away in UK, time is running out to claim $100 million lottery prize
• ANALYSIS: Egypt learns the art of politics amid protests
• Arafat's exhumation: Palestinians' desire for truth might be dashed again
• Chinese paper falls for Onion 'sexiest man alive' spoof
• Europe sees US debt crisis as dire as its own
• ANALYSIS: Israeli defense chief quits politics — but for how long?
• Scientists rush to save manta rays, the 'pandas of the ocean'

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

LONDON -- Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused media tycoon Rupert Murdoch on Monday of misleading a government-sponsored inquiry into press ethics with incorrect testimony alleging Brown had threatened war against Murdoch's company.

"This conversation never took place. I am shocked and surprised that it should be suggested," Brown told the Leveson inquiry. "This call did not happen. The threat was not made."

"I find it shocking," Brown said. "This did not happen. There is no evidence that it happened other than Mr Murdoch's, but it didn't happen."

---

Murdoch had told the inquiry under oath that Brown phoned him in September 2009 after the Sun newspaper started supporting the Conservative Party. Brown vowed to wage war on Murdoch's company in revenge, he testified.

"We were talking more quietly than you or I are now -- he said, 'Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company,'" Murdoch told the inquiry in April.

When pressed on how a serving prime minister could make such a threat, Murdoch told the inquiry: "I don't think he was in a very balanced state of mind."

Former top aide to UK PM David Cameron charged in perjury case

Brown, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, said that Murdoch was wrong about both the date and the contents of the phone call. A spokeswoman for News Corp declined immediate comment.

Statements submitted to a media watchdog by five of Brown's advisers, and seen by Reuters, show none of the five heard Brown threaten Murdoch on the call.

Aides to Brown, including his special adviser, director of strategy and deputy chief of staff, said in statements submitted to the Press Complaints Commission last year that Brown made no such threat on the call, which took place in November not September as Murdoch had said.

"I listened to the phone call between Mr Brown and Mr. Murdoch in November 2009," Stewart Wood, special adviser to the prime minister's office, said in a statement dated October 2011 that Reuters has seen.

"At no point in the conversation was threatening language of any sort used by either Mr Brown or Mr Murdoch," Wood said.

In one of the other corroborating statement, lawmaker Michael Dugher, wrote: "At no time did Mr Brown threaten the position of News International. Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Murdoch were entirely courteous and calm."

A former British leader accusing Murdoch of misleading the inquiry under oath will further tarnish the reputation of the world's most powerful media tycoon in a country which is home to some of his biggest newspaper and broadcasting interests.

A British parliamentary committee which investigated allegations of illegal phone-hacking by Murdoch publications has already deemed the Australian-born tycoon unfit to manage a major global company.

The cross-party parliamentary committee said in May that Murdoch was ultimately responsible for the illegal phone-hacking that has corroded his global media empire and convulsed Britain's political elite.

The scandal erupted after revelations that reporters at Murdoch's News of the World tabloid routinely hacked voicemails. It has since spread to involve a range of other offenses and ensnared dozens of journalists, politicians, police officials and other public figures. 

Rupert Murdoch not 'a fit person' to run major company, UK lawmakers say

Brown also challenged a version of events given by Murdoch's lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, about a Sun report that Brown's four-month-old son Fraser had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Brooks, a close Murdoch confidante who was charged last month with interfering with a police investigation into the phone-hacking scandal, told the inquiry the Browns had given their backing to the story.

"I have never sought to bring my children into the public domain," Brown said. He denied his consent had been given to publish the story.

"I find it sad that even now in 2012 members of the News International staff are coming to this inquiry and maintaining this fiction."

Medical records hacked?
The former prime minister has questioned whether the paper had hacked into his son's medical records to get the story. Brooks has denied this and Murdoch has said the story was broken when a father of another child tipped off the newspaper.

"A father from the hospital in a similar position had called us, told us," Murdoch said in his testimony.

'War criminal': UK ex-PM Tony Blair heckled during inquiry into Murdoch scandal

But Brown told the inquiry that the National Health Service in Fife had apologized to his family because information about his son came from NHS staff.

"There were only a few medical people who knew that our son had this condition," Brown said.

He said the NHS in Fife "now believe it highly likely that there was unauthorized information given by a medical or working member of the NHS staff that allowed the Sun through this middle man to publish this story," Brown said.

The Sun ran a story in July 2011 under the headline "Brown Wrong" which said the source of the story was a "shattered dad" who had a son with the genetic disorder and that Brown's wife, Sarah, had given the newspaper consent to run the story.

Brooks said on May 11 at the inquiry that a donation was made to the cystic fibrosis charity at the request of the man.

Reports: UK PM David Cameron leaves 8-year-old daughter in pub

But Reuters has seen a copy of a letter from the chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, Ed Owen, saying the Trust found no record of any donation by The Sun or News International at the time of the story.

The Sun newspaper also reported that its readers had helped Cystic Fibrosis Trust double its donations in the wake of their story about Fraser. But the letter from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust showed they had seen no significant increase in donations.

Regardless of who the source was, the subject of a front-page story detailing the serious illness of a four-month baby is likely to prove unedifying and garner sympathy for Brown, who has rarely appeared in public since he left office in 2010.

'Pyjama party'
Murdoch described a relationship with Brown - whose political career effectively ended when he lost an election to incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 - that included meals which their wives attended and conversations on topics ranging from charity to the war in Afghanistan.

Brooks told the Leveson inquiry she formed a friendship with Sarah Brown and that they had had a "pyjama party" at the prime minister's official country residence, Chequers, with Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, and his wife, Wendi.

But Murdoch said their relationship worsened after his media companies opposed Brown ahead of the 2010 election.

Brown told parliament in 2011 that News International was part of a "criminal-media-nexus" that had broken the law on an industrial scale.

Cameron is due to give evidence in a day-long session on Thursday.

Charlie Beckett, director of the POLIS media institute at the London School of Economics, said Cameron's judgment is likely to come under scrutiny, but warned those who expect the leader to be humbled are likely to be disappointed.

"It's difficult to see what the killer questions are. As the politicians have given evidence the inquiry's tone hasn't had that same feel of a trial, as it did when journalists were being questioned," he said.

The inquiry, which opened in September, has seen reporters and editors intensely grilled on media practices.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• NBC News: Egypt's ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak slips into coma
• Reports: UK PM David Cameron leaves 8-year-old daughter in pub
• UN: Smell of death at scene of massacre in Syrian village
• Women brave attack to protest Egypt harassment

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

Published at 12:15 p.m. ET: LONDON -- CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan refused Tuesday to disclose details about the most damning link between himself and Britain's phone hacking scandal: His acknowledgment that he once listened to a phone message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney for his then-wife Heather Mills.

In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail tabloid, Morgan said he was played a phone message left by the former Beatle on Mills' answering machine, describing it in detail and noting that McCartney "even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone." Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have obtained the message honestly.

---

On Tuesday, Morgan stubbornly refused to answer almost any questions about how he came to hear the message, saying that doing so would compromise a source. "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source," he said.

Asked by inquiry chief Lord Justice Brian Leveson whether he could supply any information to back the assertion that he had heard the recording legally, Morgan said he couldn't.

Updated at 12:10 a.m. ET: Morgan denies that during his editorship the Daily Mirror newspaper "suppressed" information that cell phones could be hacked in 1998 so that they could use it to spy on celebrities. "Absolute nonsense," he says. 

Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET: Morgan denies any knowledge of paying police officers for information. "I've never been aware of any evidence of that, no," he says.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET: "It doesn't necessarily follow that someone listening to someone else is unethical," Morgan says. "It depends on the circumstances in which you are listening to it."

Updated at 11:28 a.m. ET: When asked to discuss the source of a voice mail message of former Beatle Paul McCartney to his then-wife Heather Mills, Piers Morgan refuses.

He also defends the newspaper when it is asserted that the Daily Mirror was among the top offenders of the practice of phone hacking, saying,"You also well know that not a single person has made a formal complaint against a Daily Mirror journalist, so why would you say that?"

Updated at 11:06 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan says the Press Complaints Commission code of practice was displayed prominently in the newsroom at the Daily Mirror, where he was former editor, and says it "informed every editorial decision I made."

When asked whether an editor should have responsibility for his journalists, Morgan says, "The average editor is probably aware of about 5 percent of what journalists are up to at any given time."

Updated at 10:42 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan begins testifying at Britain's Leveson Inquiry into media ethics via videolink from the United States.

• For more details visit breakingnews.com

LONDON -- Former News of the World editor and CNN interviewer Piers Morgan will appear by videolink from the United States on Tuesday at a judge-led investigation into the ethics and practices of Britain's scandal-tarred press.

He is expected to be grilled about comments he has made about widespread phone hacking at tabloid newspapers.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp shut down the News of the World in July after a public outcry over the phone-hacking practices by British journalists at the newspaper.

Morgan's appearance, along with a number of other witnesses Tuesday, has been widely anticipated and critics have been picking through old interviews and Morgan's autobiography "The Insider," in which the 46-year-old Morgan makes clear he knew of phone hacking as long ago as 2001.

• Story: Messages deleted by tabloid journalists? Not so fast...

In an interview for GQ magazine before the public scandal over the practice, Morgan said he couldn't get too upset over hacking because "loads of newspaper journalists were doing it."

And, in an earlier interview for BBC radio unearthed by one of his critics, Morgan appeared to go further, saying it was difficult to condemn private eyes hired to hack into people's phones "because obviously you were running the results of their work."

Morgan maintains that he has never participated in phone hacking or knowingly run a story based on an illegally intercepted message.

"I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone," he said in a statement in August.

• Official website of the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics

Actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and singer Charlotte Church are among those who have given evidence about press abuse, while executives and lawyers for Murdoch's News Corp have defended the newspaper.

From newspaper man to TV star
Morgan shot to national prominence when he was picked by Murdoch to run the News of the World at age 28. Under his tenure, the tabloid exposed Grant's liaison with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown and Princess Diana's late-night phone calls to married art dealer Oliver Hoare.

It wasn't all down to good reporting: Morgan has acknowledged that bribes were paid to informants on rival titles.

• Story: Tabloid paid moles at rival papers for scoops?

In 1995, Morgan left the News of the World for the Daily Mirror. His time there was marked by scoops and controversy, including an insider trading scandal.

Among the newspapers to report it was The Independent, which said he allegedly bought 20,000 pounds ($31,000) worth of shares in a technology company the day before it was tipped in the newspaper's investment column. While two other journalists at the Daily Mirror were jailed, Morgan was not charged and kept his job.

However, his editorship at the Daily Mirror ended in 2004 when he ran a faked photograph purporting to show a British soldier urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

Morgan won a second life as a TV personality, eventually signing on as a judge of "America's Got Talent" and taking Larry King's old spot at CNN. So far, he's prospered. Ratings for "Piers Morgan Tonight" have been up 9 percent on last year's figures — good if not spectacular — and he appears to be reaching a younger audience.

CNN spokeswoman Barbara Levin said the network was "extremely pleased" with how Morgan's program was performing and the company has so far stood by its star even as the phone-hacking scandal threatens to draw him in.

'Despicable human being'
"So heartwarming that everyone in U.K.'s missing me so much they want me to come home," Morgan joked earlier this year amid demands he return to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.

Morgan's denial that he has had nothing to do with phone hacking is hard to square with a 2006 article in which he said he'd been played a phone message that former Beatle Paul McCartney left for his now ex-wife Heather Mills in the wake of one of their fights.

• Story: Emails warned James Murdoch of phone hacking by tabloid

"It was heartbreaking," Morgan wrote of the tape, saying that McCartney "sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."

How did Morgan come to hear the tape? He's refused to say, but Mills told the BBC in August that "there was absolutely no honest way" he could have obtained the recording. McCartney echoed her sentiment, saying he'd apparently been hacked.

Morgan's autobiography also abounds with tantalizing references to questionably obtained material: There's "a dodgy transcript of a phone conversation" and a celebrity's stolen laptop.

And when actress Kate Winslet demanded to know how Morgan got her cell phone number, which she had only just changed, Morgan shrugged it off.

"Look, Kate," he joked, "You don't get to be the editor of the Mirror without being a fairly despicable human being."

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Will younger Kim's aunt and uncle be North Korea puppet masters?
• Mourning in North Korea, worries in South after Kim Jong Il's death
• Who's in charge? Mixed signals from Egypt's rulers
• Troops move out of Iraq ... then next stop is home
• Manning and WikiLeaks: New push for whistleblower protections

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

LONDON - A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday published a sequence of emails which raised questions about the story News Corp's James Murdoch told to legislators about what he knew about phone hacking allegations involving the now-defunct News of the World and when he knew it.

In the email sequence, dated Saturday, June 7, 2008, James Murdoch was advised by Colin Myler, then News of the World editor, that the paper's legal position regarding a legal threat from professional soccer union executive Gordon Taylor was "as bad as we feared."

---

Attached to this message was an email exchange between Myler and Tom Crone, the News of the World's principal in-house lawyer, in which Crone mentioned a "nightmare scenario."

The Independent newspaper on Wednesday published the email exchange between James Murdoch and Colin Myler, as well as the email exchange between Tom Crone and Colin Myler.

Crone explained that this scenario related to the fact that "several voicemails" on an email addressed to News of the World reporter Ross Hindley were "taken from" a phone used by Joanne Armstrong, a lawyer for the Professional Footballers Association union, which Taylor led.

The Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that James Murdoch had written to British members of parliament, saying he had received the email chain over a weekend which was partly why he "did not review the full email chain at the time or afterwards."

The email sent to Hindley, which, in a reference to the News of the World's chief reporter, was headed "For Neville", is regarded by investigators and lawyers as one of the first pieces of evidence to reach the public domain demonstrating that phone hacking was a practice which extended beyond a single "rogue" journalist.

'Slipshod manager'
Executives of News International, the British newspaper publisher headed by James Murdoch at the time of the email exchange, initially claimed in public statements and testimony to parliament that phone hacking was limited to Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist who was jailed in 2007 for hacking into the voice mails of aides to members of Britain's Royal Family.

In parliamentary testimony earlier this year, James Murdoch maintained that while he was aware of the existence of some kind of email, he was not informed in 2008 that it constituted possible evidence of widespread phone hacking by News of the World journalists other than Goodman.

• Story: James Murdoch steps down from newspaper boards

James Murdoch's handling of the phone hacking crisis has raised questions about his status as presumptive heir to his father, News Corp founder and chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Chris Bryant, a member of parliament for Britain's Labour Party who was a target of phone hacking, told Reuters on Tuesday that at a minimum, the email sequence newly published by the committee "says to me that James Murdoch is a remarkably slipshod manager .... He's been slipshod and News International have been slippery."

In a letter also made public by the parliamentary committee on Tuesday, James Murdoch told the panel "I was not aware of evidence that either pointed to widespread wrongdoing or indicated that further investigation was necessary." Nonetheless, he said he wished to "apologize" that this material had "only now come to light" in a late stage of the Parliamentary inquiry.

Tom Watson, another Labour Party member of parliament and a leading member of the Media Select Committee, was skeptical, the Independent reported, saying, "How can the company have just found this important email trail?"

• Official site of the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics

The Culture, Media and Sport committee is scheduled to publish a report on its phone hacking investigation sometime in the next few months.

A spokesperson for News International said the company had no comment beyond the statements made by James Murdoch in his latest letter to the Parliamentary committee.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Read more content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Fifth victim found as police profile Belgium killer
• Iraqis unable to defend their borders as US exits
• Hunt for terrorists shifts to 'dangerous' North Africa, Panetta says
• US halts $700 million in Pakistan aid, demands action on Taliban
• Chinese artist depicts portraits of corruption
• NJ basketball tycoon launches Russia presidency bid