Two members of Congress are calling for government inquiries in the United States into the conduct of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is enmeshed in a deepening hacking scandal in Britain.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said in a letter Wednesday that the News Corporation may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States. He said media reports indicated that reporters for a company subsidiary, News International, “paid London police officers for information, including private telephone information, about the British royal family and other individuals for use in newspaper articles.” Because News Corporation is based in the United States, even employees in other countries may be bound by the act, which forbids payments to foreign officials.
On Tuesday another senator, John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, called more generally for inquiries into the phone hacking claims. “The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals — including children — is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics,” Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement. “This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated.”
Mr. Rockefeller concluded, “I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe.”
In the letter to the heads of the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Lautenberg said the media reports have raised “serious questions about the legality of the conduct of News Corporation and its subsidiaries,” and added, “further investigation may reveal that current reports only scratch the surface of the problem at News Corporation.” He asked both agencies to examine whether formal investigations into the alleged payments were appropriate.
Both senators have been critics of subsidiaries of News Corporation in the past. Mr. Rockefeller last year singled out the company’s Fox News Channel and one other channel, MSNBC, as polarizing forces in politics. Mr. Lautenberg earlier this year accused the company’s local television station in New Jersey of failing to live up to its public service obligations.
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