News Corp phone hacking trial about to begin
The criminal trial of former News Corp executive Rebekah Brooks and several of the company's former employees involved in an alleged phone-hacking scandal starts here Monday, kicking off a courtroom drama that could further embarrass both the media giant and the British government.
Prosecutors have charged Ms. Brooks, a onetime protégé of News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch, with a variety of offenses, including conspiring to illegally intercept mobile-phone voice-mail messages—known widely as phone hacking. She is also charged with making payments to public officials in exchange for information and obstructing justice.
Ms. Brooks, the former editor of the now-defunct News of the World, resigned as chief executive of News Corp's U.K. newspaper unit in July 2011. She left following allegations that, while she was the tabloid's editor in 2002, it intercepted voice-mail messages on the mobile phone of missing teenager Milly Dowler, who was later found dead. The Dowler case figured into the charges prosecutors filed against her in July 2012.
