LONDON — Rupert Murdoch’s media empire suffered a potentially heavy blow in the British phone-hacking scandal Tuesday when Parliament released documents suggesting that reporters and top editors at the News of the World practiced and sanctioned the illegal interception of voice mails.
An internal letter written in 2007 by Clive Goodman, a former reporter at the tabloid and the only one convicted so far in the scandal, alleged that phone hacking had the “full knowledge and support” of others at the paper and was “widely discussed” at daily editorial meetings.
The statements directly contradict the paper’s insistence that hacking was confined to a single “rogue reporter,” Goodman, who was sent to jail for tapping into the voice mails of members of Britain’s royal household.
News International, the British arm of Murdoch’s News Corp. and the owner of the now-defunct News of the World, said in a statement that it recognized the seriousness of the letter and that it was “working in constructive and open ways” with both Parliament and the police.
Lawmakers have now summoned four senior figures at News International and the News of the World to reappear next month before a parliamentary committee looking into the scandal.
Two members of the committee said they were likely to recall Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, chairman of News International, to answer allegations that he gave misleading evidence during a hearing of the panel last month.
Murdoch had told lawmakers that, in authorizing a large out- of-court settlement with a former soccer star whose phone had been tapped into, he was unaware of an e-mail in the case suggesting more than one journalist was involved in hacking.
He is likely to be summoned before the committee again to explain discrepancies between the evidence he gave last month and new allegations that have since come to light.
