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News Corp.'s board is set to decide Wednesday whether to proceed with a split of the media conglomerate into two companies, carving the bigger and more profitable entertainment businesses from the newspapers. If the board approves the split, News Corp. is expected to announce the restructuring Thursday morning, said a person familiar with the situation. News Corp. stock jumped 8.3% Tuesday to its highest level since 2007 after the company confirmed it was contemplating a split, without giving any details. News Corp. is mulling splitting its 20th Century Fox film studio, Fox broadcast network and Fox News channel from its...

Tony Blair's decision to openly court Rupert Murdoch to win power and ensure favorable coverage during his decade-long tenure as British prime minister will come under scrutiny when he faces a media inquiry on Monday. The inquiry, ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron after Murdoch's now defunct News of the World tabloid admitted hacking phones, has tarnished Britain's elite by laying bare the collusion between politicians, the police and the media. Blair kicks off an important week at the Leveson inquiry by answering questions about his often obsessive media management which included courting Murdoch. The inquiry has so far focused...

Governments worldwide have borrowed 100 trillion last ten years. Defaults inevitable sometime soon. Means crash, hurting rich and poor. — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) May 01, 2012 The business mogul and Newscorp head gave a dire outlook for the world’s economic future. With the world’s debt crisis coming to a head will we see a massive crash? This billionaire sure seems to think so.

Julian Pike said he had been aware in 2008 that the practice of people hacking into phones to secure stories had been more widespread than the company acknowledged. But he told the Commons Culture Committee he had "not done very much" to dispute the firm's claims that only one rogue reporter was involved. He also told the committee he thought James Murdoch had made mistakes in his recollection of what he knew and when regarding the hacking.

U.S. prosecutors have sent News Corp. a letter seeking information about possible payments made by its U.K. tabloid newspapers to British policemen, according to people familiar with the matter. The letter of request, sent last week, is part of a Justice Department investigation, these people said, into whether the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. law that prohibits companies from bribing foreign officials. The fact the Justice Department chose to issue a "letter of request" rather than a criminal subpoena suggests the department has opted for a less confrontational approach to the matter, legal experts say.

To most news Web sites, what happened at the White House on Thursday night was a private 50th birthday party for President Obama. To an editor at Fox News, it was something a little different. “Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs,” read the headline on an article on The Fox Nation,a conservative arm of FoxNews.com, which is owned by the News Corporation. Below the headline were photos of Mr. Obama and, separately, three black celebrities who attended the party, the basketball player Charles Barkley, the comedian Chris Rock and the rapper Jay-Z. Not pictured were any attendees of other racial...

The scandal involving NewsCorp head Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid empire continues to widen, bringing scrutiny to, of all places, Grand Rapids and the Zondervan publishing company.

Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation. The transparency watchdog noted Tuesday that Democrats received 51 percent of contributions while Republicans received 49 percent, despite the firm's highly publicized links to the GOP, such as a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association in August.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch was testifying to British Parliament when he was attacked.

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How does this year's phone hacking scandal at the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World . . . compare with last year's contretemps over the release of classified information by Julian Assange's WikiLeaks and his partners at the New York Times, the Guardian and other newspapers? At bottom, they're largely the same story. . . . Both, in short, are despicable instances of journalistic malpractice, for which some kind of price ought to be paid. So why is one a scandal, replete with arrests, resignations and parliamentary inquests, while the other is merely a controversy, with Mr. Assange's name...

Rupert Murdoch's News Limited is the most powerful media organisation in Australia, but has come under unprecedented scrutiny in the wake of the UK phone hacking scandal. Some have questioned its domination of the newspaper industry and are demanding an official investigation into News Limited's operations, although it has yet to find any evidence of wrongdoing. Here is some of the fighting talk that has come from Australia's leading politicians: Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, on Australian radio: "It's [News Limited] decided it wants to have an election. Ignore the fact that we had an election nine or 10 months ago....

Death of Sean Hoare – who was first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson knew of hacking – not being treated as suspicious Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned. Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home. Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but...

Critics: WSJ edit is suck-up to Murdoch By: Reid J. Epstein July 18, 2011 09:38 AM EDT Safe to say the Wall Street Journal’s defiant editorial page defense of News Corp. in the growing phone hacking scandal did not convince anyone in the liberal blogosphere or the Journal diaspora. The scathing editorial, which attacks the Guardian, the New York Times, ProPublica and politicians who have called for investigations into News Corp., drew outrage from both inside the Journal newsroom – anonymously, of course – and from former Journal reporters. “(The) WSJ Editorial is sad,” wrote Sarah Ellison, former Journal reporter...

snip ...British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler. snip The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren't attempting to influence public affairs, and don't skew their coverage to do so, can't stand a day's scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician. snip...

Just a headline so far. The war against Murdoch and FOX News continues. Hinton is the latest casualty.

The Guardian has apologised to The Sun fora front page report on Tuesday which stated that the paper had accessed the medical records of the infant son of former prime minister Gordon Brown. In a correction published on page 36 of today's paper, The Guardian admitted the mistake and apologised for the error. The Sun is now pursuing other news organisations which ran the story. The allegation that The Sun had hacked the medical records of Gordon Brown's infant son Fraser in 2006 led the news agenda and looked like being nearly as damaging for The Sun as allegations about...

In his first significant public comments on the tabloid newspaper scandal that has engulfed his media empire, News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch vigorously defended the company's handling of the crisis but said it would establish an independent committee to "investigate every charge of improper conduct." In an interview, Mr. Murdoch said News Corp. has handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes." News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal. The six-year saga centers on dubious reporting tactics at the company's News of the World tabloid in the U.K., a controversy that in...

The New York Times has put several journalists on producing acres of newsprint detailing the impact of the story on British politics, on News Corp's stock price, on London police... No doubt the NYT is motivated by its ever-earnest search for “all the news that’s fit to print”. But there are other things going on here, too. Murdoch is more than just another proprietor: he’s a bitter enemy. He owns the Wall Street Journal, the NYT’s main upmarket rival. He owns the New York Post, its main downmarket rival. More to the point, Murdoch owns Fox News, the enormously profitable...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a probe into whether employees of News Corp. might have hacked or attempted to hack into the private calls and phone records of Sept. 11 victims and their families, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation was opened Thursday morning, following a request a day earlier by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) who heads the House Homeland Security Committee and whose Long Island district was home to many victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The investigation will try to determine whether employees of News Corp. illegally accessed the private calls, voice-mail...