MEDIA BOSS James Murdoch is to be recalled to give evidence to British MPs on the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee following a vote yesterday.
The move comes as a prominent group of banks and investment funds in the United States, with substantial investments in the Murdoch parent company News Corporation, issued a fresh legal complaint accusing the company of widespread corporate misconduct extending far beyond phone-hacking.
The legal action, lodged in the Delaware courts, is aimed against the News Corp board, including Rupert Murdoch himself, his sons James and Lachlan, and the media empire’s chief operating officer, Chase Carey. They are accused of allowing Rupert Murdoch use News Corp as his “own personal fiefdom”.
James Murdoch, who oversees newspaper publisher News International as deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation, is to face fresh questions, probably in November, about whether he knew that phone-hacking at the Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, went wider than one "rogue reporter".
Mr Murdoch insists he was not told about the existence of an e-mail sent by a News of the Worldreporter marked "for Neville", which is understood to have been a reference to Neville Thurlbeck, who was the paper's chief reporter. That suggested phone hacking was not the work of a single reporter, as the company claimed until recently.
Colin Myler, the former editor of the paper, and Tom Crone, its head of legal, told MPs last week that they told Mr Murdoch about the e-mail and said that is why he approved an out-of-court settlement of £700,000 including costs to Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the UK's Professional Footballers' Association. Mr Murdoch told MPs in July that he did not know about the e-mail and was not shown it or informed of its existence. – ( Guardian service)