LONDON -- The phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World involved more than just allegations that journalists on the paper illegally listened to people’s cell phone messages. As is often the case with major scandals, there were also allegations of a cover-up. It is these claims that have caused the biggest headache for senior people at News Corporation.

Dig down into Thursday’s inquiry report and it is the possibility of a cover-up that is the focus. From page 348, the report, overseen by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, accuses Rupert Murdoch, his son James and News Corporation of either failing to address allegations of "widespread criminality within the organization” or — if they didn’t know about it — being guilty of a "significant failure in corporate governance."

These are words that will concern lawmakers in the United States, where News Corporation has many media arms, including Fox News and 20th Century Fox, and recently announced that it is buying a 49 percent stake in the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network.

The Leveson report refers to a series of e-mails and meetings in 2008 when James Murdoch signed off on a substantial payment to a phone hacking victim. He was then head of News Corporation's UK arm, News International. The question during the inquiry was this: How much was James Murdoch told about phone hacking at the News of the World when he signed that check. Those involved said they couldn’t remember.

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"If the explanation of James and Rupert Murdoch is correct," the report concludes, then "One or more parts of the management… was engaged in a determined cover-up to keep relevant information about potential criminality within the organization from senior management."

Rupert Murdoch's papers, UK media condemned in phone-hacking report

Leveson does not appear convinced that this was the way events actually unfolded, writing that managers had "no reason or motive to conceal relevant facts" from James Murdoch. He goes no further — acknowledging there is an ongoing criminal investigation of what happened at News of the World. But he says again and again, if people at News Corporation didn't know what was going on, that itself is a significant failure.

"In truth, at no stage, did anybody drill down into the facts to answer the myriad of questions that could have been asked and which could be encompassed by the all embracing question 'what the hell was going on'?" Leveson says. "On any showing, these questions were there to be asked and simple denials should not have been considered sufficient. This suggests a cover up by somebody and at more than one level."

Earlier in the report, on page 305, Leveson considers the integrity of Rupert Murdoch’s company. "An organizational culture that is founded on integrity and honesty would require not only full co-operation with law enforcement, but also a determination to expose behavior that failed to comply with the law," Leveson says.

"What happened at the (News of the World) in relation to voicemail interception in this context is particularly informative about the culture that pertained both within the corporate and editorial operation," he concludes.

News Corporation has cooperated closely with British police in the last two years, authorities have said.

None of this reveals any new information, but it does tell us what an independent and experienced British judge makes of it. The British criminal investigation is still underway and the potential trials of former senior Murdoch executives, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, may bring new details of what went on inside of Murdoch’s businesses. When those trials are over, likely sometime next year, Leveson will write another report that should provide more conclusive analysis.

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Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET: LONDON -- British authorities on Tuesday charged an ex-aide to the British prime minister, a former protege of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and six others in the ever-widening phone-hacking scandal. Prosecutors accused those charged of key roles in a lengthy campaign of illegal espionage that victimized hundreds, including top celebrities Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

The announcement was a major development in a saga that has transfixed and at times horrified Britons and one that shows no signs of ending. A senior police official told The Associated Press earlier this week that her force was investigating more than 100 claims including computer hacking and illegal access to medical records stemming from the scandal.

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Prosecutors said Tuesday that Andy Coulson, Cameron's communications director for four years until 2011, and Rebekah Brooks, who oversaw Murdoch's News International, would face charges of conspiracy to intercept communications.

The alleged offenses were committed between 2000 and 2006 when both served as editor of the News of the World, the salacious Sunday tabloid that Murdoch was forced to close a year ago amid public disgust at the phone-hacking revelations.

Among the alleged victims were two former British home secretaries, former England soccer manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, Hollywood stars Jolie and Pitt, former Beatle Paul McCartney and a minor member of the royal family, Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

Brooks and Coulson are also both accused of involvement in hacking the telephone of Milly Dowler, a missing teenage girl who was later found murdered in 2002.

Coulson: 'I will fight these allegations'
It was the revelation that News of the World journalists had hacked her phone that triggered a furor that engulfed Murdoch's News International and ultimately led to the closure of the 168-year-old tabloid.

"I am extremely disappointed by the [prosecutors'] decision today. I will fight these allegations when they eventually get to court,” Coulson said in a statement quoted by Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

"I would like to say one thing today about the Milly Dowler allegation. Anyone who knows me, or who worked with me, would know that I wouldn't, and more importantly that I didn't, do anything to damage the Milly Dowler investigation," the statement said.

Brooks sounded a defiant tone.

"I am not guilty of these charges," she said in a statement. "I did not authorize, nor was I aware of, phone hacking under my editorship.

"The charge concerning Milly Dowler is particularly upsetting not only as it is untrue but also because I have spent my journalistic career campaigning for victims of crime. I will vigorously defend these allegations," her statement said.

Others being charged are senior tabloid journalists Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup and Ian Edmondson.

Also being charged is private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, whose extensive notes have been at the center of the scandal since it was first unearthed.

External link: Read the phone charges in full here

The maximum sentence for the phone-hacking charges is two years in prison or a fine -- or both.

'Astonishing development'
The development is particularly embarrassing for Cameron because Coulson was also charged with hacking the phones of David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, two former home secretaries from the now-opposition Labour Party. The home secretary is Britain’s top law enforcement official, roughly akin to an American attorney general.

"That is an astonishing development and I think that is almost inevitably going to rebound on Cameron," Steven Barnett, professor of communications at Westminster University, said. "That is going to pose some very, very awkward questions for the prime minister."

Alison Levitt, Principal Legal Adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions, said she had concluded there was sufficient evidence to charge the eight suspects with 19 offenses over the illegal accessing of voicemails on the cellphones belonging to politicians, celebrities and sports figures.

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

News International had for years denied that phone hacking was widespread after the tabloid's former royal reporter and private detective were jailed in 2007 for the crime.

Poor judgment?
Coulson resigned in the aftermath, and took up the role as director of communications of Cameron's Conservative Party, helping to shape his campaign to become prime minister.

Critics say Cameron appointed Coulson in order to secure the backing of the journalist's former boss, Murdoch, and say the appointment showed a shocking lack of judgment.

Complete UK news coverage on NBCNews.com

The involvement of Coulson and Brooks -- a close friend of Cameron’s -- turned the long-running hacking story into a national political scandal that has laid bare the collusion between senior politicians, the police and the media.

Brooks, her husband and her personal staff have already been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice over the hacking case, while Coulson has been charged in Scotland with perjury after he denied in an unrelated court case any knowledge of phone hacking.

Brooks, wooed by a string of politicians and prime ministers first in her role as editor of the News of the World and Sun tabloid, and then as the head of Murdoch's British newspaper arm News International, was one of the most powerful women in Britain, instantly recognizable by her long, curly red hair.

She was also close to Cameron, socializing with him over Christmas breaks, and both were embarrassed earlier this year when an inquiry into media ethics read out text messages sent between the two.

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

Cameron used to sign his frequent text messages to Brooks with an affectionate "LOL", which he thought stood for "lots of love."

Damaging, but not fatal, to Cameron's political fortunes
Paul Farrelly, an opposition Labour lawmaker who questioned Rupert Murdoch and his son James as part of a parliamentary committee investigation into the hacking, said Tuesday's developments were damaging, but not fatal, for Cameron.

"My view is that what happens to Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks reflects on David Cameron's judgment in both the appointment of Coulson and in being seen to be so close to a certain newspaper empire," he said.

"Because it's been going on so long, it's in no way fatal to his premiership. What is more important to the survival of his premiership and the coalition is the economy," Farrelly added.

NBC News correspondent Duncan Golestani, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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LONDON -- Lawsuits over alleged phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are to be filed in United States courts for the first time.

Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has been at the forefront of efforts to expose phone hacking at newspapers opened by News Corporation's British subsidiary, expects to file civil lawsuits on behalf of three alleged victims.

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One is believed to be connected to the late Diana, Princess of Wales and the Royal household while a second is linked to the England soccer team. The third is described as a "Hollywood case" because the individual was in contact with a celebrity. All three claim that the offenses took place while they were on American soil.

 

The threat of legal action in the U.S. is likely to expose News Corp to further embarrassing claims and bring the scandal closer to its headquarters in New York.

Timeline: News Corp and the phone hacking scandal

Lewis was flying to San Francisco Thursday, from where he will travel next week to New York in order to meet with U.S. lawyers to discuss the cases.

In an email to msnbc.com Lewis confirmed reports that he expects to bring three lawsuits on behalf of clients and a fourth alleging wrongdoing at News Corp. He told the Daily Beast on Wednesday that the fourth lawsuit would center on "perhaps the dirty tricks that might have been used in order to further the commercial aims for News Corporation."

At least one of the cases involves allegations that the phone of a U.S. citizen was hacked, and Lewis said more U.S. victims of phone hacking were likely to emerge.

He told the Daily Beast: "This is getting wider. It's not just the people who were A-list or celebrities, but people who were in their circles — people who might call them or work with them."

Meanwhile, police regulators in Britain on Thursday said senior detectives showed poor judgment in their close relationship with executives at Murdoch's News Of The World tabloid.

A former executive at the newspaper, which was shut down in July 2011 amid public outrage at phone hacking revelations, was appointed as an adviser to London's Metropolitan Police, and his daughter also secured a job with the force.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said professional boundaries at the police force "became blurred," the BBC reported. 

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LONDON -- Former News Corp chief executive and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie Brooks, a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, were arrested Tuesday in a wide-ranging investigation into phone hacking in the British media, NBC News reported.

A total of six people were arrested in the early morning on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, British police said in a statement. The charge is an indication that investigators may be focusing on a possible attempted coverup of the scope of phone hacking.

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The Metropolitan Police said five men and a woman were arrested in various locations in London and surrounding countryside in a series of raids conducted between 5 a.m. (1 a.m. ET) and 7 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) Tuesday. Police said searches of the premises are ongoing.

 

The investigation stems from widespread wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World tabloid. The victims have ranged from celebrities and major politicians to the families of crime victims.

Tabloid editor got free horse from UK police

Police, who did not release any names, said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at her home in Oxfordshire and she was being questioned by police there. Also arrested were a 49-year-old man in Oxfordshire, a 39-year-old man in Hampshire, a 46-year-old man in West London, a 38-year-old man in Hertforshire and a 48-year-old man in East London.

It emerged recently that Rebekah Brooks got a free horse from the U.K. police, and that this horse was subsequently ridden by Cameron. Police are also investigating allegations of illegal payments made by some British newspapers to police officers.

Rebekah Brooks was previously arrested in July 2011 at her apartment block in an exclusive area of Chelsea, West London, on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption.

Her husband Charlie, a former race horse trainer, reportedly tried to reclaim a computer, paperwork and a phone from a trash can outside the apartment block, saying they were his. But detectives removed the items for investigation, NBC reported.

According to a count by the BBC, the total number of arrests made in the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry is 45.

Cash settlements
A judge-led inquiry into media ethics has heard extensive testimony about wrongdoing by tabloid journalists, and Murdoch's company has reached cash settlements with a number of victims.

There is also a simultaneous investigation into corrupt relations between the police and the press which has yielded a number of arrests in recent weeks.

James Murdoch insists he didn't mislead British lawmakers

An inquiry panel appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to determine why an initial police investigation into phone hacking in 2006 failed to reveal the scope of the problem.

At the time, Murdoch's executives claimed the wrongdoing was limited to one scurrilous reporter and an unprincipled private detective, both of whom were jailed.

Journalist: CNN star Piers Morgan must have known about tabloid phone hacking

The dormant police investigation was reopened last year after reporters were found to have hacked into the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl who was later found to have been murdered.

That investigation led to the resignation of Cameron's top media adviser, Andy Coulson, who had been the editor of the News of the World. Like Rebekah Brooks, Coulson has denied wrongdoing.

Murdoch's company has reached cash settlements with various hacking victims, including actress Sienna Miller and singer Charlotte Church, but many new cases are being brought against News International, the U.K. newspaper branch of Murdoch's global media empire.

The scandal also scuttled Murdoch's plans to purchase full control of the British broadcaster BSkyB.

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NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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.

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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."

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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."

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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.

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LONDON – The scandal that has shaken Rupert Murdoch's media empire in Britain has taken a new twist, with police saying that messages missing from a murdered girl’s cell phone could have been deleted automatically rather than being erased by journalists trying to create more space for new calls.

Outrage over allegations that News of the World staffers had deleted the messages while police were searching for 13-year-old Milly Dowler – revealed earlier this year in an article in The Guardian newspaper – contributed to the closure of the tabloid, Murdoch's largest-circulation publication, in July 2011. Apart from the demise of the paper, the public outcry caused by the revelations resulted in the setting up of a public inquiry looking into the behavior of the press.

Dowler had been missing for a few days when activity on the phone’s message system gave her family false hope that the girl was alive and checking her voicemail. Her body was found about six months after she went missing, in March 2002.

However, Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective at the center of the scandal who was employed by the News of the World to help journalists hack phones, has always denied he was responsible for deleting the messages, which was alleged to have been done in order to free up space in Dowler’s mailbox.

And on Monday police backed his statement. Police officers told the Levenson Inquiry into media ethics and standards that they do not have evidence that Mulcaire or the paper’s journalists did the deleting.

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One explanation is that the voicemail messages were deleted by the mobile phone provider as their time expired. 

"It is conceivable that News International journalists deleted the voicemails, but the Metropolitan Police Service have no evidence to support that,” Neil Garnham of the Metropolitan Police testified in a statement to the inquiry Monday. He added that the “most likely explanation” was that the messages were automatically removed after 72 hours since that was "a standard automatic function of that voicemail box system at the time.”   

‘The Fake Sheikh’
Also featured at the inquiry Monday was testimony by two of the News of the World's most well-known former reporters. (Previous witnesses include actor Hugh Grant, “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling and the actress Sienna Miller).

The first, Mazher Mahmood, known as the “the Fake Sheikh” for famously disguising himself as a Middle-Eastern businessman and recording conversations with corrupt individuals, claimed his investigations had led to the imprisonment of more than 260 criminals. But his success, he said, had also resulted in multiple death-threats. For this reason his identity was protected at the hearing: journalists were not allowed to attend and the usual video feed from the hearing was shut down (only his voice could be heard).

Mahmood defended practices at the newspaper, saying that the “ends justified the means” when a criminal was arrested as result of their reporting. But he admitted processes to ensure a story was both in the public interest and the source was credible were not as developed at the News of the World as they are at the newspaper where he now works, The Sunday Times (also part of the Murdoch empire). And, though he acknowledged using several covert practices, he denied any knowledge of phone hacking at his former paper.

The second ex-News of the World journalist to appear, Neville Thurlbeck, did not face any questions on phone hacking because he had been arrested in connection with the case and could have been in danger of self-incrimination.

Like Mahmood, he defended practices at the paper, including the kiss-and-tell reports of an affair involving soccer star David Beckham. He said the methods involved in getting the story were justified since the soccer player was trading on his image as a devoted family man to cash-in on huge sponsorships and advertising deals. He confirmed that the woman involved had received a six-figure sum for her story.