[CptSternn]

Fox is using the UK as a test audience for their new reality TV show - Are You Smarter Than A Selectively Deaf Media Mogul?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...ne-hacking-pie

Tycoon expresses regret for News Corporation's involvement in scandal but insists he was kept in dark

Rupert Murdoch defiantly insisted on Tuesday he was not responsible for what he called "sickening and horrible invasions" of privacy committed by his company, claiming he had been betrayed by disgraceful unidentified colleagues and had known nothing of the cover-up of phone hacking.

During a three-hour grilling at the culture select committee, disrupted by a protester throwing a plate of shaving foam, the once all-powerful News Corp chairman and chief executive told MPs: "I am not responsible."

In a halting performance, at times pausing, mumbling and mishearing, Murdoch said those culpable were "the people I hired and trusted, and perhaps then people who they hired and trusted". But he denied the accusation he had been "willfully blind" about the scandal.

Flanked by his son James, the chairman of News International, Murdoch said he and his company had been betrayed in a disgraceful way, but argued he was still the best person to clean up the company, adding in a rehearsed soundbite that his day in front of the committee represented "the most humble day of my life".

In a Westminster hearing screened worldwide, he repeatedly tried to avoid identifying the specific culprits in his company, often blaming earlier legal counsel for inadequate advice or leaving his son to explain his behaviour.

But in separate testimony to the home affairs select committee, Lord Macdonald, the former head of the CPS, now on contract with News International, revealed it had taken him three to five minutes to examine documents kept by the company's solicitors showing widespread criminality at the company.

Macdonald said in his view the criminality revealed was "completely unequivocal", adding when he reported his findings to the News International board recently there was surprise and shock. He said: "I cannot imagine anyone looking at the file would not say there was criminality," including payments to police.

The file was kept at the solicitors Harbottle & Lewis, and the police investigation is now centring on which executives tried to conceal its contents. In May 2007 Harbottle & Lewis sent a two-paragraph letter to News International executives claiming their examination of the documents showed there was no evidence any senior executives knew of illegal activities by the reporter Clive Goodman, or of any other illegal activities.