James Murdoch turned on his former News of the World colleagues on Thursday as he fought to survive a second grilling over phone-hacking by British lawmakers and keep his place in his father's media empire. Murdoch blamed Colin Myler, the last editor of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid, for giving him incomplete information, and accused the newspaper's ex-legal chief, Tom Crone, of misleading the committee of MPs investigating the hacking.
"This was the job of the new editor who had come in to clean things up, to make me aware of those things," said Murdoch, appearing confident under interrogation by lawmakers even when compared by MP Tom Watson to a Mafia boss. He also said Crone had ordered the surveillance of public figures by the News of the World - revelations of which have further damaged the company this week.
The News Corp-owned News of the World was revealed this year to have run an industrial-scale operation to hack into the phones of murder victims including schoolgirl Milly Dowler as well as celebrities and politicians. Previously, News Corp had maintained the hacking was the work of a lone, "rogue" royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and private detective Glenn Mulcaire. Both went to jail for the offence in 2007.
In 2008, James Murdoch approved a payoff of about 750,000 pounds ($1.2 million) to hacking victim and soccer boss Gordon Taylor, who had in his possession an email of hacking transcripts appearing to show the hacking went beyond Goodman. He reiterated to MPs on Thursday that he had approved the unusually large payoff only because he was following legal advice, and not because he knew the so-called "for Neville" email could implicate other journalists.