2nd UPDATE: US Senators Query Dow Jones Editorial Integrity Panel
21 July 2011 - 7:50AM
Dow Jones News
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Two Democratic U.S. Senators are
pressing for more answers in connection with a News Corp. (NWS,
NWSA, NWS.AU) phone-hacking scandal, asking whether a five-member
editorial oversight board created following the company's purchase
of Dow Jones & Co. raised questions about the executive who was
appointed to lead the U.S. company.
The letter, from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay
Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), was
sent to the committee that was established in 2007 to protect the
editorial independence of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones
Newswires. As part of its agreement to purchase Dow Jones, News
Corp. agreed to create a five-member panel to protect Dow Jones's
journalism from interference by its new owner and review the hiring
and firing of top editors. The panel is led by Tom Bray, the former
Detroit News editorial-page editor.
News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of Dow Jones
Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. A News Corp. spokesman
declined to comment. A Dow Jones spokeswoman also declined to
comment. Bray couldn't immediately be reached. Les Hinton, who
stepped down last week as the chief executive of Dow Jones, also
couldn't immediately be reached.
In the letter, the lawmakers singled out Hinton, whose stint at
News Corp.'s News International, whose papers included the
now-shuttered News of the World, had come under increasing scrutiny
amid allegations about reporting tactics at the newspaper. In
testimony in 2007 and 2009, Hinton told a parliamentary committee
that News International had carried out a full investigation into
the matter and was convinced just one of the company's journalists
was involved.
"Did the Special Committee investigate Mr. Hinton's knowledge of
alleged criminal activity at News International before or after he
was named publisher of the Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow
Jones?" the lawmakers asked. They also asked whether any member of
the special committee or other senior Dow Jones executives had
expressed "any concerns regarding the hiring of Mr. Hinton given
his role in overseeing News International's News of the World when
its employees engaged in criminal phone hacking."
In his resignation letter Friday, Hinton said that "in September
2009, I told the Committee there had never been any evidence
delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one
journalist. If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I
was not told about it." He also said that "when I left News
International in December 2007, I believed that the rotten element
at the News of the World had been eliminated; that important
lessons had been learned; and that journalistic integrity was
restored."
The committee said in a statement last week that it has had
conversations with Dow Jones officials about hacking. It also said
that "to date, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to
believe" that Hinton's resignation was "any way related to
activities at The Wall Street Journal or Dow Jones or that any of
the London offenses or anything like them have taken place at Dow
Jones. We will continue to monitor the situation closely."
The lawmakers wrote that while they were "pleased to to learn
that the Special Committee will take steps to ensure that no
illegal activity took place at Dow Jones and Company publications,"
they were "were surprised that the Committee's statement appears to
foreclose any further investigation, despite the fact that the
former chief executive officer of Dow Jones and former publisher of
the Wall Street Journal served as the top official at News
International while illegal phone hacking occurred at its
newspapers."
The other members of the panel are Lou Boccardi, the former
chief executive of the Associated Press; former Federal Reserve
Governor Susan Phillips; former Chicago Tribune publisher Jack
Fuller; and Nicholas Negroponte, a one-time Massachusetts Institute
of Technology professor who has spent much of his career focused on
digital information.
Rockfeller has previously expressed concern about whether
reporting tactics at the U.K. newspapers were imported to the U.S.
and whether American phones were hacked, saying he was concerned
that hacking may have extended to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. News Corp. has declined to comment.
In questioning the special committee, the lawmakers said that
"this information will help give Americans confidence that the
illegal activity that appears to have taken place at News
Corporation in the United Kingdom did not spread to News
Corporation entities in the United States."
-By Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6654;
siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com
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