British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc's Sky News channel breached criminal law by hacking into e-mails for a story, a judge said at an media-ethics inquiry triggered by wrongdoing at News Corp tabloids.
Public-interest exemptions don't apply to e-mail hacking, even though the investigation applied to a case on a man who faked his own death to collect insurance money, judge Brian Leveson, who is overseeing the inquiry, told the head of Sky News, John Ryley. BSkyB is 39 per cent owned by News Corp.
"What you were doing wasn't just invading somebody's privacy, it was breaching the criminal law," Leveson said during testimony by Ryley on Monday. "At the end of the day you committed a crime."
Media regulator Ofcom said on Monday it started a probe of Sky News over the e-mail hacking incident. The Leveson probe, which started last year, is entering its third phase after previously examining the media's relationship with celebrities and police.
BSkyB said earlier this month executives at Sky News cleared a reporter to access e-mails as part of his investigations into criminal activity, including the 2008 case of a British couple who faked the husband's death in a canoe accident to collect life and mortgage insurance. Sky News said the hacking was in the public interest. "I am pretty much ruling it out," Ryley said of the possibility of breaking the law again to get stories. "Journalism is at times a tough business and we need to at times shed light onto wrongdoing.”
“There might be an occasion, but I think it would be very very rare."
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The inquiry began last year after evidence emerged that phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid was rampant and not limited to a rogue reporter, as News Corp. had claimed. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son James, who once led the U.K. unit, will testify for three days starting tomorrow, nine months after being forced to appear before Parliament.
The scandal has led to 45 arrests, the closing of the News of the World and police investigations into phone hacking, computer hacking and bribery at the company's other papers, including the Sun, the best-selling daily title in Britain. Regulator Ofcom is also examining whether News Corp. is "fit and proper" to hold its BSkyB stake.
The inquiry is also scheduled to hear testimony on Monday from Telegraph Media Group Chairman Aidan Barclay, publisher of the Telegraph newspaper, and Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, owner of the Independent and London's Evening Standard titles. Those papers haven't been accused of wrongdoing.