Murdoch's Sky News Channel Discloses E-Mail Hacking Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press The entrance of one of the British Sky Broadcasting Group headquarter buildings in London. LONDON - The British satellite news broadcaster, Sky News, part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, acknowledged on Thursday that one of its journalists had hacked e-mail messages at least twice in search of news stories, suggesting for the first time that Britain's hacking scandal has spilled into television broadcasting. A journalist for the network was authorized "to access the e-mail of individuals suspected of criminal activity," the head of the network, John Ryley, said in a statement, referring to one incident in 2008 and another on an unspecified date within the past 10 years. We do not take such decisions lightly or frequently," he said. A wider investigation into editorial practices at the network was under way, he added. The admission, released in response to inquiries from The Guardian newspaper, came after months of overlapping police, parliamentary and judicial inquiries focusing on illicit voice mail hacking and other practices among journalists and editors at two Murdoch-owned tabloids, the now-defunct News of the World and The Sun. The development seemed to break new ground, potentially ensnaring other parts of the Murdoch family's British media outpost - indeed, its most lucrative television interest - into the web of scandal entangling its newspapers. The family's print and broadcast interests, however, are markedly different. Sky News, unlike the newspapers involved in the scandal, is not directly controlled by the Murdoch family. It is operated by the satellite broadcaster BSkyB, in which the News Corporation global media empire has 39.1 percent stake. But word that a broadcaster part-owned by Mr. Murdoch, and overseen by his son James, who stepped down as chairman of BSkyB only two days ago, was now confronting a hacking issue, will likely sharpen the focus on allegations of wrongdoing within the financially significant television operations of Mr. Murdoch's worldwide operations. Mr. Murdoch, an 81-year-old mogul, has reacted angrily, using his Twitter account, to respond to recent investigations by the BBC, PBS and the Australian Financial Review that allege a section of Mr. Murdoch's television operation hacked the encryption codes of its pay-television rivals in Britain and Australia and encouraged piracy to undermine their businesses in the late 1990"s. "Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels," he wrote last week, following vehement denials from the company. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing. It was not immediately clear if James Murdoch's resignation from BSkyB on Tuesday was connected with Sky News" disclosure two days later. A News Corporation official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose internal discussions strongly denied any link, a position corroborated by others familiar with the move. A spokeswoman for News Corporation referred any questions to BSkyB. The disclosures relating to Sky News stories concerned the so-called "canoe man," John Darwin, who disappeared from Britain in 2002 after witnesses saw him paddling into the sea on a canoe. But he secretly flew to Panama where his wife, Anne Darwin, joined him before they returned to England in 2007. Both were accused and convicted of deception. A Sky News reporter was said to have hacked into e-mail accounts that were the basis for broadcast stories about Mr. Darwin's reasons for returning to Britain. A second case involved e-mails relating to a suspected pedophile and his wife, The Guardian said. On both occasions, the managing editor of Sky News, Simon Cole, approved the maneuver. E-mail hacking is a criminal offense under laws governing the misuse of computers. In quitting BSkyB's chairmanship, James Murdoch said he wished to shield the company from the phone hacking scandal engulfing his family's British newspaper group. He did not at that time allude to the hacking revelations at Sky News that surfaced on Thursday.