Ed Pilkington, chief reporter for the Guardian US, joins “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer to analyze the latest in a phone hacking and bribery scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s news empire in England — and potentially impacting him here in the United States.
Former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and former “News of the World” editor Andy Coulson have been formally charged for bribing public officials in England — in Brooks’ case, as recently as 2011. The alleged bribery ”brings Rupert Murdoch’s empire, News Corporation, right into the legal remit of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” Pilkington says, which could get the company in hot water stateside.
The timing of the alleged bribery is also significant: “James Murdoch — the heir apparent until this whole burning inferno went up in flames — he took over chairmanship of Rupert Murdoch’s British holdings in 2007. So we’ve got a four-year period when James was in charge of the whole caboodle in Britain, and bribery was — according to the police, according to these charges — still going on during that period.”
