It has been alleged that News Group staff were accused of engaging in phone hacking, including Clive Goodman, illegally accessed voicemail for the mobile phones of thousands of public figures, including politicians and celebrities.
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group), is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun newspapers
Rupert Murdoch is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post)
After his father’s death in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World.
In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.
Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.
Ownership of The Times came to him through his relationship with Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of an extended period of industrial action that stopped publication
. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London’s docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse.
The Guardian newspaper, citing official company accounts, claims Rebekah Brooks received a £10.8m payoff for leaving News International.
Times Newspapers was formed in 1967 when the Thomson Corporation purchased The Times from the Astor family and merged it with The Sunday Times, which it had owned since 1959. The company was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News International in February 1981. The acquisition followed an intense 21 days of negotiations with the print unions, conducted by John Collier and Bill O’Neill. The Times Literary Supplement, Times Educational Supplement and Times Higher Education Supplement were also part of the group; the latter two publications have since been sold.
The London Paper was the first newspaper to be launched by News International rather than bought. It was an evening freesheet distributed at bus and rail stations in London. It was published five days a week from September 2006 to September 2009, when it closed down, faced with competition from other free papers.
In contrast to News International’s earlier denials of knowledge, The Guardian cites suppressed evidence revealing that News of the World‘s editorial staff were involved with private investigators who engaged in illegal phone-hacking, and that both reporters and executives were commissioning purchases of confidential information; this is illegal unless it is shown to be in the public interest
