I did not mislead MPs over phone hacking – Murdoch

Culture Committee chairman John Whittingdale said MPs would now have to decide whether to believe Mr Murdoch or the former editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler and News International’s legal chief, Tom Crone.

“It is plain that the two accounts we’ve heard, one of them cannot be true,” he told reporters after the hearing.

During his second appearance in front of the hearing, Mr Murdoch News International said he “disputed vigorously” the version of events put forward by the company’s ex-employees.

Mr Murdoch denied that he had known as long ago as 2008 that phone hacking had not been limited to a single reporter at the newspaper.

He rejected Mr Myler and Mr Crone’s suggestion that they had made him aware of the contents of the so-called “For Neville” email – indicating the wider extent of phone hacking at the paper – at a meeting in June that year.

Asked by Labour MP Tom Watson whether he had personally misled the committee in his previous evidence, Mr Murdoch said: “No, I did not.”

He added: “I believe this committee was given evidence by individuals either without full possession of the facts, or now it appears in the process of my own discovery… it was economical.”

I believe their testimony was misleading and I dispute it. James Murdoch

Pressed on whether that meant Mr Myler and Mr Crone had misled the committee, Mr Murdoch replied: “Certainly in the evidence they gave to you in 2011 in regard to my own knowledge, I believe it was inconsistent and not right, and I dispute it vigorously.”

He added: “I believe their testimony was misleading and I dispute it.”

Mafia

At one point the session threatened to descend into farce when Tom Watson asked James Murdoch if News International operated like the mafia and abided by the “omerta” a code of silence which prohibits co-operation with authorities.

“I frankly think that’s offensive and not true,” replied Mr Murdoch.

Documents released by News International’s former lawyers Farrer & Co last week suggested there was an earlier discussion between Mr Myler and Mr Murdoch, around 27 May 2008, at which the “For Neville” email might have been raised.

A briefing note prepared at the time by Mr Crone said that its discovery left the company in a “very perilous” position. Mr Murdoch said he could not recall discussing the Gordon Taylor case with Mr Myler before 10 June 2008.

“The first and only substantive meeting or conversation that I recall about the matter was the 10 June meeting with Mr Crone and Mr Myler, although I cannot rule out whether or not he called me or stopped me in the hallway, or something like that, for a brief conversation,” he told MPs.