I'm not sure how closely people here are following events across the pond here in the UK regarding the News Of The World phone hacking scandal which began in 2006 and lead to the arrest of Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, alleging that they had intercepted voicemail messages left for members of the royal household. The two men were jailed in 2007.
The ongoing scandal also lead to the resignation in January this year of David Cameron's Communications Director Andy Coulson who rose from the tabloid's showbiz gossip reporter (think Perez hilton but with a lot less charisma) all the way to News Editor and who was ultimately responsible for what had been happening under his stewardship although he claimed to not know what was going on (he resigned as editor of the paper when Goodman and Mulclaire were jailed in 2007).
Things got a little easier for Murdoch when the police dropped the case (the assistant commissioner and the officer responsible for overseeing Scotland Yard inquiry Andy Hayman, had left the police to work for News International as a columnist) but larger evidence has lead to the reopening of it after the tabloid admitted liability in April and paid off several people including a member of parliament, a sports agent and a former soccer player who actually worked for them who's phones were hacked in a cynical attempt to minimize the story and aviod further scrutiny.
Murdoch has been personally involved in this for one reason and one reason only. He wants total control of News International and this ongoing scandal shows him in a bad light and will make people reluctant to sell their shares to him giving him complete automony. He also needs the UK government's Monopolies Commission to approve the deal, something that won't easily happen as more and more comes to light about what is going on, so the new revelations have now made things a lot worse for him.
The Guardian are reporting today that pressure is building on the Metropolitan police to expand their phone-hacking inquiry to include tabloid private investigator Jonathan Rees who is claimed to have hacked into a large group of people's computers and stolen confidential data including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Kate Middleton among others.
Rees has also been accused by the Guardian of using surrogates to decieve Inland Revenue, the DVLA, banks and phone companies and trick them into handing over private data to be sold to Fleet Street and bragged about receiving £150,000 a year from Murdoch's tabloid for the information.
More questions need to be asked, expecially of the police who dropped the original investigation citing lack of evidence, about what has been going on. The nature of Murdoch's news empire is built on scandal, titilation, fake outrage and in a lot of cases outright falsehoods. The chances that this wa a lone rogue reporter were slim when this first came to light and as things are looked into deeper with the dismissals and arrests of former employees it's obvious that this type of activity wasn't the exception but the rule. Murdoch also has a nasty little tabloid in the US so it may be time to shine a spotlight on that to see what cockroaches crawl out.