Murdoch tabloid back in spotlight

London - New evidence of hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World points to a four-year cover-up by the company, and intensifies focus on Prime Minister David Cameron's judgement in hiring an ex-editor who may now face criminal prosecution.

A letter written in 2007 by ex-royal reporter Clive Goodman says former editor Andy Coulson, who went on to become Cameron's spokesman, banned talk in editorial meetings of phone-hacking but not the practice itself, which Goodman said was common.

If true, Goodman's allegations would mean that Coulson lied not only to Britain's parliament but also under oath as a witness in a 2010 criminal trial, when he repeatedly denied that there was a culture of phone-hacking at the News of the World.

It would also imply that many more senior figures at the News Of The World knew about the illegal news gathering practice, casting doubt on repeated statements of ignorance by executives.

The scandal has already caused the resignation of several company executives and two of Britain's top policemen, and forced Murdoch to shut down the News Of The World and drop a cherished $12-billion bid for pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB .

The Goodman letter also spells political trouble for Cameron, who hired Coulson as his director of communications in 2007, four months after his resignation from the News Of The World.

The prime minister has said he wanted to give Coulson a second chance and that they became friends. However, last month he said he regretted the appointment and would offer a “profound apology” if Coulson turned out to have lied.

Cameron is currently fighting a moral crusade against rioters who swept parts of the country last week.

Professor Jonathan Tonge, politics professor at Liverpool University, says Cameron's efforts to hire Coulson as a “man of the people” to counterbalance the many privileged members of his Conservative government, had backfired.

“There's always the argument: Does the average man and woman in the street care about all this?” he says.

“But an image is created of a government that at its margins had some shady characters. People don't want to be preached at by a Conservative government when some of their appointments have been from what you might call, not the moral high ground of society.”

The emergence of Goodman's letter is the latest twist in the deepening scandal, which saw the former tabloid reporter sentenced to four months in jail for hacking in 2007. Until earlier this year, the News Of The World’s parent company News International, a unit of News Corp, maintained he was a “rogue reporter” acting on his own.

“What we're starting to see appears to be the unravelling of a cover-up,” says Amanda Ball, senior lecturer in media law at Nottingham Trent University's Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism.

James Murdoch, the News Corp executive who took charge of News International shortly after Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire went to jail, has also repeatedly denied he knew until recently that hacking went beyond Goodman and Mulcaire.

Goodman's letter, published on Tuesday by a British parliamentary committee investigating the phone-hacking, was not intended for publication but was sent to News International executives as part of an appeal against his dismissal.

“This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor,” Goodman wrote. “Other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures.”

In the letter, he also complained that Coulson and News International's then-top lawyer Tom Crone had not honoured a pledge to give him his job back as long as he did not implicate anyone else during his trial. - Reuters