There’s no doubt the public outcry over the News of the World’s illegal hacking of mobile phones and payments to police officials is serious. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t close profitable newspapers willingly. (Heck, he doesn’t even like to close massively unprofitable papers.) But is it so serious that a top News Corp. executive — perhaps even Murdoch himself — could end up being convicted on criminal charges? 
 
 Andreas Whittam Smith thinks so. He cites the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, the law used to imprison News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who teamed up to invade the voicemail accounts of various celebrities. Smith notes that the law, as worded, has remarkably broad scope: 
 
 Where an offence under any provision of this Act… is committed by a body corporate and is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly. 
 
 “If you have presided over an organisation that has conducted criminal activities, either you gave the orders, or you gave permission, or you connived, but if you did none of these things, then you were neglectful,” writes Smith. “That is the trap, that is the box in which the directors of News International will find themselves.” 
 
 I ran this reading by Jonathan P. Armstrong, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris who specializes in corporate law with a concentration in technology and compliance. “My view is that might be a stretch,” he says. That’s because the application of the “attributable to any neglect” clause isn’t quite as broad as it sounds. “That sort of clause exists because it’s lifted out of health and safety legislation,” he says. “Say you had an airplane and you never changed the tires. I don’t think, in the U.K., something like failure to have a policy preventing hacking — that wouldn’t be a big enough neglect to get by a jury.” 
 
 Where the neglect cause could conceivably apply is to Rebekah Brooks, News International’s CEO. Brooks has denied having any knowledge of the illegal hacking, but she was editor of the NotW at the time it published stories that cited voice mail messages obtained that way, and it was Brooks who first hired the private investigator who hacked the voicemail of murdered teenager Milly Dowler. In Brooks’s case, therefore, it’s possible to argue that the only way she wouldn’t have known about the hacking was by making it clear she didn’t want to know. “The quaint old English saying for that we have is ‘Nelsonian ignorance,’” says Armstrong. The phrase refers to Lord Nelson, the famed admiral who was blind in one eye. 
 
 Already, police are reportedly planning to arrest Andy Coulson, who succeeded Brooks as editor, either on similar grounds or because they have evidence that he did, in fact, condone the hacking. 
 
 But don’t expect the arrests to rise to the very top of the News Corp. food chain — to Rupert Murdoch, or even to his son, James — unless evidence tying them directly to the illegal hacks comes to light. “The reality is cases that are that much of a stretch normally don’t run in the U.K.,” says Armstrong. “We don’t have the same system you have in the U.S. of an attorney general who might see a lot of merit, politically, in seeing this go ahead. Generally speaking, prosecutions will only run where the prosecutors are convinced they’ll be able to persuade the jury beyond all reasonable doubt that the guy had his hands all over this.” ||||| LONDON — Facing the unpleasant prospect of being represented by a pair of empty chairs and a period of silence at a parliamentary committee hearing on phone hacking next week, Rupert Murdoch , the chairman of the News Corporation, and his son James reversed themselves on Thursday and said that yes, they would testify at the hearing after all. 
 
 The select committee on culture, media and sport will now have the chance to interrogate not only the two Murdochs but also Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, the company’s British newspaper subsidiary. Ms. Brooks had agreed from the outset to testify. 
 
 Word that the Murdochs had shifted course came as one of several other moves by the News Corporation on Thursday that signaled the company was adopting a more assertive strategy to deflect the condemnation being hurled its way. It brought on outside public relations help for the crisis, hired a prominent white-collar defense lawyer and was said to be planning to run full-page apology advertisements in newspapers across Britain. 
 
 The elder Mr. Murdoch made his first extended comments on the matter, phoning a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, which he owns, to defend his company’s handling of the crisis. He said the matter had been handled “extremely well in every way possible,” and rejected claims that his son James had moved too slowly to address concerns about the hacking. 
 
 He added that he was eager “to address some of the things that have been said in Parliament, some of which are total lies,” and said reports that the News Corporation was contemplating spinning off its newspapers into a separate entity were “pure rubbish.” 
 
 Meanwhile, the company’s woes increased on Thursday when yet another former senior editor of its tabloid The News of the World, now defunct, Neil Wallis, became the ninth person since January to be arrested in the phone-hacking scandal. Mr. Wallis also appears to have unusually close ties to top officers at the Metropolitan Police Service, and worked for them as a public relations consultant last year. 
 
 Next Tuesday’s meeting will be the first time the Murdochs and Ms. Brooks will have to publicly answer questions about the affair. With evidence mounting by the day of criminality and dubious journalistic practices at The News of the World and other News Corporation newspapers here, the company not only has summarily closed the paper, but also has withdrawn its $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting. 
 
 In response to earlier letters from the culture committee, Rupert Murdoch at first announced he was “not available” to attend the hearing, while James Murdoch said that next week would not work for him, either, but that he would be available sometime in August, if that was convenient for everyone else. 
 
 Not convenient, the angry committee retorted. Using only rarely invoked powers, the committee’s chairman, John Whittingdale, responded by ordering that the Murdochs be presented with formal summonses to appear. 
 
 Mr. Whittingdale, a Conservative member of Parliament, also declared that he was fully prepared to “empty-chair” the Murdochs by holding their portion of the hearing without them, using two chairs as stand-ins. After waiting a while for them to turn up, he said, he then planned to ask that they be declared in contempt of Parliament. 
 
 Rupert Murdoch’s hasty U-turn reflects the company’s confusion in handling the crisis and a sense that its chairman has been unable to properly judge the public mood. By cooperating with the committee, people close to Mr. Murdoch believe, he can demonstrate that he is taking the scandal seriously. 
 
 The public relations firm Edelman confirmed on Thursday that it had been hired here by News International to provide “communications and public affairs support and counsel,” another sign that the company was trying to develop a better strategy to help it navigate the crisis. News International also flew staff members from Rubenstein Associates, the powerful New York public relations firm that already advises Mr. Murdoch, to London to help out. 
 
 The criminal lawyer they hired, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. of Williams & Connolly in Washington, has defended Richard A. Grasso, the former chief of the New York Stock Exchange, and Oliver North. 
 
 Mr. Wallis’s arrest, while bad news for the company, is also doubly worrying for the Metropolitan Police Service. The police are already under attack for failing to adequately pursue the phone-hacking inquiry in 2006, and again for failing to reopen the investigation in light of new evidence in 2009. While Mr. Wallis is not the most important figure yet to be arrested — that would be Andy Coulson, a former editor of The News of the World who until January was Prime Minister David Cameron’s chief spokesman — he is close to Scotland Yard. 
 
 After leaving The News of the World in 2009, Mr. Wallis became a media consultant, whereupon he was immediately hired to “provide strategic communication advice” to Scotland Yard officials from October 2009 to September 2010, according to a police spokesman. His firm offered the lowest rate, the spokesman said, explaining how he got the job. 
 
 But his ties to the police went back longer. In September 2006, one month after The News of the World’s royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and the paper Mr. Wallis worked for was supposedly under investigation, Mr. Wallis had dinner with Sir Paul Stephenson, then Scotland Yard’s deputy commissioner, and Dick Fedorcio, its chief spokesman. 
 
 Sir Paul, now the police commissioner, said on Thursday that he was “very satisfied with my own integrity.” 
 
 More recently, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, another top police official, told a parliamentary committee in March that he could not remember exactly when he last had lunch with Mr. Wallis, but that it “may well” have been in February. 
 
 A police spokesman said he did not know the precise date of this engagement. But if it was indeed in February, that meant that it took place after the police had already opened Operation Weeting, the investigation into phone hacking under which Mr. Wallis has now been arrested. 
 
 Late Thursday, London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, summoned Sir Paul to City Hall for a stern lecture about his decision to hire Mr. Wallis in 2009, local news outlets reported, and Mr. Johnson said he would press for a full investigation. 
 
 Meanwhile, the House of Commons’ culture committee is gearing up for its confrontation with the Murdochs and Ms. Brooks at next week’s hearing. Judging from the outraged remarks lawmakers have been making about the News Corporation and its officers in raucous, angry sessions in Parliament the last few days, it is not likely to be a friendly discussion. 
 
 But it is unclear how much the trio will say, in the end. In a letter to Mr. Whittingdale in which she agreed to testify, Ms. Brooks declared that it “might not be appropriate” to answer questions about the police investigation for fear of prejudicing it. 
 
 “As a result this may prevent me from discussing these matters in detail,” she said. 
 
 Mr. Whittingdale said in response: “We’ll see.” ||||| News Corp. (NWSA)’s Rupert Murdoch, who’s been asked to testify in front of U.K. lawmakers, is facing at least six investigations stemming from a phone-hacking scandal and his bid to buy all of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc. (BSY) 
 
 Murdoch may be in the spotlight on July 19 as he’s called to answer questions from the Parliament’s committee on Culture, Media and Sport about prior evidence that News Corp.’s British newspaper unit, News International, had paid police to get stories. The News Corp. Chief Executive Officer’s son, James, and the unit’s CEO Rebekah Brooks were also summoned to testify. News International said they will cooperate. 
 
 John Whittingdale, the committee’s chairman, told Sky News yesterday News International needs to answer questions about who knew of the crimes and when. 
 
 “The police inquiry is the most important thing and will lead to criminal charges against some people,” Whittingdale said. “Part of the problem with this saga is that everyday has brought a new revelation. I’ve given up being surprised.” 
 
 Rupert Murdoch arrived in London on July 10 to deal with a flurry of allegations that reporters at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid hacked into hundreds of mobile-phone voice mails, including those of murder and terror victims, and bribed police for confidential information. The scandal prompted Murdoch to close the 168-year old tabloid. 
 
 “They have misled parliament egregiously over time, they have misled the country, they’ve misled their readers and it’s incumbent,” on parliament to get the facts, Tom Watson, a member of the committee, told BBC Radio 4 yesterday. “We will be sitting next Tuesday and we expect them to be there.” 
 
 Police, Cameron 
 
 London’s Metropolitan Police are investigating, and Prime Minister David Cameron called for two other inquiries into why an initial police phone-hacking probe failed, how widespread the hacking was, and whether it also occurred at other newspapers. 
 
 The current police probe was opened in January after new information surfaced as the result of civil lawsuits filed by celebrities including actress Sienna Miller against the tabloid. Police opened a second investigation last week into police bribes. Meanwhile, communications regulator Ofcom and the U.K. Competition Commission are reviewing the proposed BSkyB deal. 
 
 Two watchdog groups, Media Matters for America and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics have called for U.S. lawmakers to investigate if journalists working for News Corp. hacked the voice mails of Americans. 
 
 Photographer: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Rebekah Brooks, chief executive officer of News International Ltd. Close Rebekah Brooks, chief executive officer of News International Ltd. Close Open Photographer: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Rebekah Brooks, chief executive officer of News International Ltd. 
 
 9/11 Victims 
 
 Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, called for U.S. agencies to investigate whether alleged phone hacking at News Corp.’s U.K. newspapers targeted American victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 
 
 “I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans,” Rockefeller, said yesterday in a statement posted on the website of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which he chairs. “If they did, the consequences will be severe.” 
 
 News International is assisting the Metropolitan Police in their investigation, Brooks said in a July 8 memo to staff. Joel Klein, who heads News Corp.’s education unit, is leading and directing the company’s overall handling of the matter, Brooks said. Klein, the former chancellor of New York City schools, was also the head of the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division. 
 
 Brooks said in the memo that News Corp. isn’t conducting its own investigation. 
 
 Damage Limitation 
 
 “One of the real challenges for the company will be dealing with all of these inquiries running in parallel with overlapping goals,” Nick Benwell, the head of the crime, fraud and investigations group at Simmons & Simmons in London, said in an interview yesterday. “They’ll be very keen to limit the damage and keep it to a News of the World issue.” 
 
 Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News Corp.'s chairman for Europe and Asia James Murdoch arrives at the offices of News International in London. Close News Corp.'s chairman for Europe and Asia James Murdoch arrives at the offices of News... Read More Close Open Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News Corp.'s chairman for Europe and Asia James Murdoch arrives at the offices of News International in London. 
 
 Miranda Higham, a spokeswoman for New York-based News Corp., declined to comment on the scope and expense of the probes or any distraction they may cause management. Murdoch, his son and Brooks aren’t required to appear at the parliamentary hearing. 
 
 “They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” said Niri Shan, the head of media law at Taylor Wessing LLP. “If they don’t appear it looks like they have got something to hide. If they do, whatever they say is going to lead to growing scrutiny of the issue.” 
 
 ‘Lack of Cooperation’ 
 
 Murdoch avoided an in-depth probe into the tactics of reporters at the paper for years after its former royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007 for tapping phones of members of the royal family. The police closed an investigation in December, citing a lack of evidence. 
 
 News International blocked an earlier police inquiry into phone hacking by its “complete lack of cooperation” and “lies,” Peter Clarke, former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told lawmakers on Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee yesterday. 
 
 “This is a global organization with access to the best legal advice in my view deliberately trying to thwart a criminal investigation,” Clarke said as he tried to explain why police between 2006 and 2010 refused to extend their investigation into illegal activities by journalists at the News of the World. “I was certain as could be that they had something to hide.” 
 
 Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday accused Murdoch’s newspapers of using criminals to get stories about him while he was in office and said he was reduced to tears when the Sun tabloid phoned him to say its reporters obtained his son’s medical records showing he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. 
 
 BSkyB Bid 
 
 News Corp. said it didn’t access the medical records of Brown’s son nor did it commission anyone to do so. The story came from a member of the public whose family also experienced cystic fibrosis, the company said in an e-mailed statement. 
 
 The phone hacking revelations have overwhelmed the company’s BSkyB bid. News Corp. on July 11 rescinded its offer to spin off Sky News as part of the BSkyB buyout, pushing U.K. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to refer the bid to the Competition Commission for a review. 
 
 BSkyB shares declined 1.8 percent to 679.5 pence in London trading as of 11:37 a.m., less than the 700 pence a share offered by News Corp. for the 61 percent it doesn’t already own. 
 
 Hunt said the latest review, which follows investigations by Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading, will focus on media plurality, whether the deal would reduce the number of voices. Ofcom, which has the power to revoke BSkyB’s license, can still hold up the deal as it considers whether News Corp. should own BSkyB and said it’s monitoring the police probe. 
 
 BSkyB Vote 
 
 The regulator is likely to wait until the investigation concludes before deciding whether News Corp. is “fit and proper” to own a U.K. broadcaster, said Chris Watson, a telecommunications lawyer at CMS Cameron McKenna in London. 
 
 “In merger control issues, they ought to be quite reluctant for approving the deal,” Watson said. The finality of a decision “requires you to be very hesitant.” 
 
 Cameron joined other politicians pushing for News Corp. to drop the BSkyB bid as the scandal widened and said he would support the opposition Labour Party in a non-binding vote on the issue today. On July 8, he called for a judge-led inquiry and a second review that can begin this summer to “look at how our newspapers are regulated and make recommendations for the future.” 
 
 Chris Goodall, a media analyst at London-based Enders Analysis, said the volume of activity will be difficult for News Corp. to manage. 
 
 “The people who would usually be running the business end up spending a large fraction of their time working on the regulatory and political stuff,” Goodall said. “It’s continuous requests for data.” 
 
 To contact the reporter for this story: Lindsay Fortado in London at lfortado@bloomberg.net; Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net.
– Rupert Murdoch, who yesterday shut down the 168-year-old News of the World, faces the worst PR crisis of his six-decade career, reports the Washington Post. So far, the scandal is threatening to derail Murdoch's $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting. It could even force Murdoch to testify before the British Parliament under oath. But as bad as things are, could Murdoch himself end up in jail? One analyst, writing in the Independent, thinks so. Andreas Whittam Smith explains that phone hackers were convicted under Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and he points readers to Section 79 of the act, which states that when a corporate body commits "an offense under any provision of this act ... with the consent or connivance of ... a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer, he (as well as the body corporate) shall be guilty of that offense and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly." Perhaps Murdoch is a stretch, but observers think Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International and former editor at News of the World, could be in danger of criminal charges. Just like this former editor.