NEW YORK – Amid the continuing phone hacking scandal, U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday asked for assurances from the editorial committee of News Corp.’s Dow Jones unit that no U.S. top executives of the conglomerate engaged in misconduct as questions about the company’s U.S. operations came back into the spotlight.
“The American people need to be reassured that this kind of misconduct has not occurred in the United States and that senior executives at News Corporation properties in our country were not aware of or complicit in any wrongdoing,” they said in a letter.
The Senators, who previously also asked authorities to probe whether victims of the 9/11 attacks were targeted by Murdoch’s newspapers, also requested information about the hiring of Leslie Hinton, the former chairman of News International who on Friday stepped down as Dow Jones CEO and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asked the Justice Department and FBI to examine details of a legal case settled by News Corp. unit News America Marketing and rival marketing firm Floorgraphics. The case had alleged computer hacking by the News Corp. division in 2003 and 2004 to help it gain business.
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“I wanted to make sure that you were fully aware of the case of Floorgraphics and News America, as it may be relevant to your current investigation,” Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI head Robert Mueller.
The FBI is already looking into the claims that representatives of shuttered News Corp. tabloid News of the World tried to gain access to voicemails of 9/11 victims, while the Justice Department is examining if alleged payments to the U.K. police contravened the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
