Murdoch: Never Read Hacking Email

In parliamentary hearings on Tuesday, James Murdoch insisted that a crucial email sent to him regarding the pervasiveness of phone hacking at News of the World went unread. But his testimony may not be so credible, as evidence shows Murdoch actually replied to the email—in which an editor confided that phone hacking at the paper had escalated beyond one reporter—within three minutes of receiving it. Murdoch blames it on his Blackberry, saying he did not read the full contents of the mail. Over the weekend, The Guardian, which had fueled the News of the World controversy with a story this summer about journalists who had deleted messages from a disappeared girl’s phone—giving her parents false hope that she was alive—ran a belated correction, noting evidence that shows News of the World was not responsible for the deleted messages.