LONDON -- The judge presiding over an inquiry into British press standards on Monday rebuked the head of Sky News, the influential news channel of Rupert Murdoch-controlled BSkyB, for breaking the law by hacking into emails to generate a story. 

Prime Minister David Cameron ordered judge Brian Leveson to examine standards after Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid admitted hacking thousands of phones to produce ever-more salacious stories.  

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BSkyB, the highly profitable satellite broadcaster 39-percent owned by Murdoch, had previously avoided any fallout from the hacking scandal, but its admission this month that it accessed private emails for a story in 2008 on insurance fraud risked dragging the company into the frame. 

John Ryley, the head of Sky News, has defended the channel's actions and said it was acting in the public interest, but Leveson appeared annoyed as Ryley and a barrister in the inquiry discussed whether the action broke the U.K.'s broadcasting code, run by the Ofcom watchdog body. 

'Breaching the criminal law'
Ryley had just taken the oath at the high-profile media inquiry and had started to explain the 2008 email hacking when Leveson interjected. 

"What you were doing wasn't merely invading somebody's privacy, it was breaching the criminal law," Leveson said to Ryley. 

"It was," Ryley replied after a pause. 

"Well, where does the Ofcom broadcasting code give any authority to a breach of the criminal law?" Leveson asked. 

"It doesn't," Ryley replied. 

 

Ofcom said earlier on Monday it had launched its own investigation into Sky News over the email hacking admission. Sky said it passed information onto the police that helped to secure a criminal conviction. 

"Ofcom is investigating the fairness and privacy issues raised by Sky News' statement that it had accessed without prior authorization private email accounts during the course of its news investigations," an Ofcom spokesman said. "We will make the outcome known in due course." 

The story involved was the bizarre case of the so-called "canoe man," who faked his own death after paddling out to sea. Sky News said the information it found was given to police and helped to secure the conviction of the man's wife over an insurance fraud. 

Criminal charges considered over newspaper phone hacking in UK

Ofcom is already looking closely at parent company BSkyB as to whether its owners and directors are fit to own a broadcast license in light of the problems at the newspaper division. 

 Phone-hacking lawsuits to be filed in US courts

Ryley also apologized for an earlier statement made to the Leveson inquiry asserting that no Sky journalists had intercepted communications, but, at the end of the 80-minute hearing, he was given the chance to state that Sky News was entirely separate from the newspaper division of News Corp. 

"Our journalistic endeavors, our journalistic activities, our management structures are very separate," he said. 

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LONDON -- U.K. broadcaster Sky News -- part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation -- admitted Thursday that it approved the hacking of emails by a journalist, but insisted it had been done in the public interest.

The news channel said that in one case it broke into the emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, who became notorious after the latter tried to fake his own death in a canoeing accident as part of an elaborate insurance fraud.

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The news channel said in a statement Thursday that "we do not take such decisions lightly or frequently" and said the investigation had served the public interest, The Associated Press reported.

John Ryley, the head of Sky News, told The Guardian newspaper that the broadcaster had "authorized a journalist to access the emails of individuals suspected of criminal activity."

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The Guardian named the journalist involved as Gerard Tubb, the broadcaster's northern England correspondent.

It said he also accessed email accounts of a suspected child sex offender and his wife.

Darwin went missing in Britain in 2002 after going out to sea in a canoe and was presumed dead. However, he flew to Panama and his wife later joined him there. They were exposed after posing for a photograph with a realtor in Panama.

Sky News didn't identify which story was the result of hacking, but The Associated Press reported that in an article dated July 21, 2008, Tubb said the channel had uncovered documentary evidence showing that John Darwin had decided to come back to England because he was having trouble staying in Panama.

"We discovered an email," the article begins, without giving any explanation of how the message was obtained.

Sky News said the emails were later handed to police, according to The AP.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.