News International chief executive James Murdoch and his billionaire father Rupert were accused of running a mafia-style empire on November 10.
Labour MP Tom Watson made the allegation during James Murdoch’s second appearance before the Commons culture, media and sport committee over the phone hacking scandal.
During lively exchanges Watson asked Murdoch: “You’re familiar with the mafia?
“Are you familiar with the word omerta, the culture of silence around the mafia? Do you accept that applies to the Murdoch empire?”
James Murdoch denied this and said he found the suggestion “offensive”.
Watson retorted that, in that case, Murdoch “must be the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise”.
During testimony, which lasted for over two hours, Murdoch repeated his claims that he had not been aware of the extent of phone-hacking at the News of the World (NotW) newspaper.
He accused former NotW editor Colin Myler and legal chief Tom Crone, who previously gave evidence to the committee, of misleading MPs about what they knew.
Myler and Crone suggested to the committee they had made Murdoch aware of the contents of the “For Neville” email — indicating the wider extent of phone hacking at the paper — at a meeting in June 2008.
The News International boss said he “disputed vigorously” the version of events put forward by the company's ex-employees.
Murdoch denied he had known as long ago as 2008 that phone hacking had not been limited to a single reporter at the newspaper.
Asked by Watson whether he had personally misled the committee in his previous evidence, Murdoch said: “No, I did not.”
Murdoch added: “I believe this committee was given evidence by individuals either without full possession of the facts, or now it appears in the process of my own discovery ... it was economical.”
Pressed on whether that meant Myler and Crone had misled the committee, Murdoch replied: “Certainly in the evidence they gave to you in 2011 in regard to my own knowledge, I believe it was inconsistent and not right, and I dispute it vigorously.”
Murdoch was also put on the spot by Liverpool Walton MP Steve Rotheram over the Sun newspaper’s coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
He told the committee: “I would like to add my full apology for the wrong coverage of that affair.”
Rotheram put it to him that the lack of serious repercussions for the Sun from printing the story may have encouraged a sense at News International that the company was “untouchable”.
Committee chairman John Whittingdale said the MPs would have to decide whether to believe Murdoch or Crone and Myler.
“It is plain that the two accounts we've heard, one of them cannot be true,” he said after the hearing.
[Republished from the British Morning Star].