Rupert Murdoch Questioned by MPs

News Corporation Chief Rupert Murdoch reads a copy of one his newspapers, The Times, as he leaves his London home on July 20 2011. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday warned Rupert Murdoch's Australian arm it faced some 'hard questions' as calls intensified for a media inquiry following the British hacking scandal. Gillard declined to comment on Murdoch's grilling by British MPs over the outcry that saw him close tabloid News of the World and dump his bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB, but said the Australian public was concerned. (Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images )

Rupert Murdoch appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday, July 19th. He denied responsibility for the phone hacking scandal and said that “the people that I trusted to run it, and then maybe the people they trusted” were to blame.

Appearing alongside his son James, the media tycoon gave hesitant and mostly short answers.

He appeared to want his son to do most of the talking.

He said: “Let me be clear in saying: invading people’s privacy by listening to their voicemail is wrong; paying police officers for information is wrong. They are inconsistent with our codes of conduct and neither has any place in any part of the company that I run.”

Under questioning by MP Jim Sheridan, Rupert Murdoch said that David Cameron asked him to enter 10 Downing Street through the back door when he visited him following the last general election.

He said it was “to avoid photographers at the front, I imagine”.

“I don’t know. I was asked; I just did what I was told,” he added. “That is the choice of the prime minister, or his staff, or whoever does these things.

“I was invited within days to have a cup of tea and to be thanked by Mr Cameron for the support. No other conversation took place. It lasted minutes.”

Murdoch told the committee that he used the back door when visiting Gordon Brown as well and that his family had also visited Gordon Brown at Downing Street “many times”.

He denied ever having imposed any preconditions on a party leader in the UK before giving them the support of his newspapers.

“I never guaranteed anyone the support of my newspapers,” he said.

“We had been supporting the Thatcher Government and the Conservative Government that followed. We thought it had got tired and we changed and supported the Labour Party 13 years ago, or whenever it was, with the direct loss of 200,000 circulation.”

He said, “The only conversations that I had with them [the Conservative and Labour parties] – with Mr Blair that I can remember – were arguing about the euro.”

When queried about Tony Blair’s decision to fly half way around the world to meet him before the 1997 election, Rupert Murdoch appeared to confuse David Cameron with Alistair Campbell.
“That was something that Mr Cameron arranged – Campbell,” he said.

Speaking of allegations that News International may have hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims, Murdoch said, “We have seen no evidence of that at all, and as far as we know, the FBI haven’t, either. If they do, we will treat it in exactly the same way as we treat it here. I cannot believe it happened from anyone in America. Whether someone at the News of the World or Mr Mulcaire [a UK private detective implicated in the scandal] took it on himself to do it, I don’t know.”