Phone hacking report due from UK lawmakers

Phone hacking report due from UK lawmakers

Rupert Murdoch on hacking: 'I failed'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The report could theoretically threaten Rupert Murdoch's control of BSkyB
• Murdoch says he would have torn News of the World apart if he knew more in 2007
• He denies responsibility for the cover-up of phone hacking
• Murdoch says the scandal has been "a serious blot" on his reputation

London (CNN) -- British lawmakers who have been investigating phone hacking by people working for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid are set to report Tuesday whether they think Murdoch and his son James lied to them.

The report by parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee could potentially have explosive repercussions for Murdoch's global media empire.

If lawmakers conclude that the Murdochs lied when testifying before them, regulators could theoretically force them to sell their controlling stake in British Sky Broadcasting.

British media reports on Tuesday suggested the lawmakers will not go that far. CNN has not confirmed those reports.

Testifying before a different investigation into the same scandal last week, Rupert Murdoch admitted that there had been a "cover-up" of phone hacking at his flagship British tabloid newspaper.

He apologized for not paying more attention to a scandal that has convulsed his media empire and rocked the British political establishment.

And he said that he had shut down the best-selling News of the World out of "panic" in the face of public fury about the revelation that a murdered teenage girl had been a victim of phone hacking.

Murdoch, who owns the Sun and the Times in London, as well as controlling the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News, said his News Corp. had been a victim of the cover-up, not the perpetrator.

"Someone took charge of a cover-up, which we were victim to and I regret," he said on April 26 at the Leveson Inquiry, an independent British probe prompted by charges of illegal eavesdropping by his newspaper.

He blamed "one or two very strong individuals" at the paper, but did not name them.

"I also have to say that I failed," he said of the fact that he did not pay enough attention to the problem of phone hacking. He then paused a long time before finally continuing: "And I am very sorry for it."

If he had known the depth of the problem in 2007, when a private investigator and a Murdoch journalist were sent to prison for phone hacking, he "would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today. But that's hindsight," he said.

The hacking scandal has led to dozens of arrests, two parliamentary investigations and the Leveson Inquiry, a judge-led independent probe set up by the British government.

Tuesday's report is from one of the parliamentary investigations. The Home Affairs Committee is conducting the other one.

Murdoch suggested key parts of the scandal have been overblown.

"The hacking scandal was not a great national thing until the Milly Dowler disclosure, half of which has been somewhat disowned by the police," Murdoch said.

He was referring to the revelation that people working for him had hacked into the voice mail of a missing 13-year-old who later turned out to have been murdered.

The Guardian newspaper originally reported that the hackers had also deleted some of her voice mails, leading to false hopes that she was still alive and deleting them herself. In fact, the messages may have expired automatically.

Murdoch described the atmosphere when news of the Milly Dowler hacking became public in July 2011.

"You could feel the blast coming in the window. I can say it succinctly. I panicked. And I am sorry I did," he said of his decision to close the tabloid. He later said he should have closed it years earlier.

"This whole business is a serious blot on my reputation," he said.

Murdoch was also grilled over his media empire's back-channel lobbying of the British government, and said he learned of the existence of one of the key lobbyists only "a few months ago."

Murdoch said he was "surprised" at the extent of the contact by the employee, Fred Michel, with the British government as it considered a bid by News Corp. to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting.

That bid that collapsed because of the phone-hacking scandal.

The scandal has forced News Corp. to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation to the victims of phone hacking.

James and Rupert Murdoch have been hammered over the past year about what they knew about phone hacking by people working for them.

They have always denied knowing about the scale of the practice, which police say could have affected thousands of people, ranging from celebrities and politicians to crime victims and war veterans.

CNN's Dan Rivers, Erin McLaughlin, Elaine Ly and Claudia Rebaza contributed to this report.

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