Murdoch and libel on chopping block

Press baron Rupert Murdoch and Britain’s libel laws have been singled out in a scathing parliamentary report published today, leads the Guardian. A cross party committee on press standards, privacy and libel was “withering” about the conduct of Murdoch-owned News of the World which, in a scandal that broke last year, hacked the phones of police, members of the royal family and government ministers “on a near industrial scale". According to the Daily Telegraph the report also found that the UK’s libel laws, which allow foreign litigants to take libel suits to British courts, regardless of their origin, were “overly flexible” and a threat “to the country’s reputation for free speech.” Demanding an urgent overhaul to end the rise of libel tourism, the report has also unleashed calls by the MPs for a judicial inquiry into Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News International.