Report: UK tabloid's ex-editor to be arrested
(CBS/AP) A former top editor at Rupert Murdoch's doomed News of the World will be arrested on Friday for allegedly knowing about or being directly involved in the hacking of cell phones during his time at the tabloid, the Guardian reports.
Andy Coulson, who resigned from the paper after its former royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking into voicemail messages in 2007, will be formally questioned about his possible role in the scandal, the Guardian reports.
In January, as the hacking allegations widened, Coulson resigned as Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications.
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The news of Coulson's impending arrest comes as the Murdoch media empire unexpectedly killed off the muckraking tabloid after a public backlash over the illegal guerrilla tactics it used to expose the rich, the famous and the royal and become Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper.
Mushrooming allegations of criminal behavior at the paper — including bribing police officers for information and hacking into the voice mail messages of celebrities, politicians and the families of murder victims — cast a dark cloud over the News Corp.'s multibillion-pound plan to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting, an operation far more valuable than all of Murdoch's British newspapers.
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Rupert Murdoch — a global media titan with newspaper, television, movie and book publishing interests in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere — is seeking to buy full control of broadcaster BSkyB, in which he owns a 39 percent share. His British arm of News Corp. was within reach of gaining the British government's approval to make a bid for BSkyB when the scandal exploded, emboldening rivals and critics, who called on the government to block the takeover.
As the week went on, BSkyB's share price sank, reflecting market anxieties that there might be no takeover bid. On Thursday they were down 1.8 percent at 812 pence on the London Stock Exchange.
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Shares in News Corp., however, were up 1.6 percent Thursday at $18.22 on the Nasdaq index in New York, although they have fallen from above $18.50 since Tuesday.
Cameron's Conservative-led government had insisted that the News of the World scandal had nothing to do with a pure competition decision, and News Corp. had offered to spin off Sky News as an independent company to allay concerns that it would have a too-dominant position in the British news market
Rupert Murdoch refused to discuss the situation Thursday.