Murdoch Executive Crippling The Police Investigation Into Alleged Pay Phone Hacking

Evidence indicating that News of the World paid the police for information was not handed over to the authorities for four years. Its parent company paid hefty sums to those who threatened legal action, on the condition of silence. The tabloid continued to pay reporters and editors whose knowledge could prove embarrassing even after they were fired or arrested for hacking. A key editor's computer equipment was destroyed, and email evidence was lost. Internal advice to accept responsibility was ignored, former executives said.

John Whittingdale, a conservative member of Parliament who is the chairman of the committee that will question the Murdochs, said they need to come clean on the depth of the misdeeds, who authorized them and who knew what, when. In bribes allegedly paid to police by Murdoch executives to stifle an investigation of the phone hacking

Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, resigned Friday; he was chairman of Murdoch's British newspaper operation when some of the abuses allegedly occurred. (News Corp. properties in the United States include Fox News and the Journal.)

The scandal even involves Prime Minister David Cameron, who for a time employed former Murdoch executive Andy Coulson as his media adviser.

Harper says U.S. journalism has seen scandals before, such as with Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize and then was fired and disgraced for faking her work. "But this scandal," he says, "is going to be hard to top in my lifetime."

much bigger problem: The old walls of separation have fallen down. This is yet another instance, she says, of how blended and hard to follow are the lines separating the different spheres of power, media, government, law enforcement, and the celebrity world. We really have to reassess the fundamental ways news works.