The UK tabloid The Mirror is obviously thrilled at the scandal that sunk Rupert Murdoch's century-and-a-half old weekly The News of the World, which folded over the weekend after it was revealed, among other things, that employees of the paper allegedly hacked the phone of a missing teenager who was later found murdered. Now The Mirror is reporting that the phone hacking scandal nearly jumped the pond when reporters at The News of the World allegedly tried to buy the personal information of 9/11 victims who died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
An unsubstantiated source tells The Mirror that The News of the World offered to pay an ex-NYPD officer turned private investigator for phone numbers and details of the calls victims made and received during the attack and in the days leading up to it. The reporters were said to be particularly interested in British victims, and The Mirror's source claims "the presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look."
Of course, this has only been reported in The Mirror, which is reveling in its rival's downfall, and eager to see Murdoch's bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting go down in flames. However, there have been plenty of other revelations about how The News of the World was run and how Scotland Yard may have been paid off by the tabloid (they closed a prior inquiry, claiming the hacking was just the work of one rogue reporter). And there are questions about former editor, now News International CEO (and Murdoch favorite) Rebekah Brooks's tenure. Brooks climbed the ranks by outrageous acts, such as dressing as a cleaning woman to go to a rival paper's printing press to steal a copy off the press and the use the article for the News of the World.)
BBC News can explain what this scandal is and now the head of another News Corp.-owned property, Dow Jones, Les Hinton, is sought for questioning because he headed News International during the hacking scandal.
