Police Expand Hacking Probe Beyond Murdoch Empire

Rupert Murdoch and his British tabloids are under fire for their phone hacking and other lapses in journalistic ethics, but they may not have been alone in breaking the rules.

CNN reports that the British police have expanded their investigation beyond Murdoch’s media empire to include “many other newspapers,” including the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Investigators have also brought in another 15 officers to help out on the case, bringing the total size of the team to 60.

Those moves come as a number of former British journalists have come forward with new allegations of misconduct at their old papers.

Five former reporters from the People, a News of the World rival, tell the New York Times that they witnessed similar hacking in their newsrooms in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “I don’t think anyone quite realized the criminality of it,” one of the reporters said.

Meanwhile, a former Sunday Mirror reporter tells the Times that his paper frequently relied on private detectives to dig up info.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who has his own ties Murdoch's News Corp., told a rowdy Parliament yesterday that it would be naive to think the scandal was isolated within Murdoch’s news empire. (Murdoch, unsurprisingly, agrees.) Cameron has created a panel with sweeping authority to force newspaper owners, reporters, police, and politicians to testify under oath about press ethics and practice.