Mr. Woodford, who was dismissed as CEO and president in October after exposing an accounting scandal at Olympus, said he has already filed a lawsuit against the company with a tribunal court in the U.K. and that another lawsuit in Japan may follow.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The disclosures established Olympus at the center of one of the most damaging and bizarre accounting scandals in modern business history — a coverup that extended for decades.

Olympus’s shares continued to plummet, falling 20 percent Wednesday morning in Tokyo following a 29 percent drop the day before, and prompting stock-lender Japan Securities Finance Co. to temporarily stop lending Olympus shares to short sellers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Mr. Murdoch, speaking at the annual shareholders meeting in Los Angeles, said the current board and management “will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this and put it right.” He said the unit at the center of the scandal represents a small piece of an otherwise healthy company that is outperforming its peers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

While they are usually much less voluble than the chatty Web execs of Silicon Valley, the execs who run China’s fast-growing Internet companies seem to be keeping up just fine of late.

On Friday, for example, the Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma was positively effusive about wanting to buy all of Yahoo, a company which actually owns 40 percent of Alibaba. “We are very, very interested,” said Ma at an event at Stanford University.

Now, in an interview with Bloomberg, Renren CEO Joe Chen decided to take a smack at Ma over his disputed spinoff of its Alipay payments unit, which caused a high-profile ruckus with Yahoo earlier this year.

“It’s quite unfortunate,” Chen said to Bloomberg about disagreement, which has since been settled. “It caused a lot of uncertainty about Chinese Internet companies.”

Them’s fightin’ words, and a source close to Alibaba reacted with, well, reaction.

“Yeah, it shook confidence so badly that Silver Lake and DST [Global] just decided to put in billions to back Jack Ma,” referring to a recent funding deal by the large investors. “People shouldn’t try to blame their own lack of performance on others.”

Ouch!

Actually, Renren has bigger problems than Alibaba.

According to a substantive report in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, what’s really hurting Chinese Internet companies is the declining stocks caused by recent accounting scandals there, which may have attracted scrutiny from U.S. regulators.

Wrote the Journal: “A series of alleged accounting frauds this year at little-known Chinese companies listed in the U.S. has triggered a sharp shift in sentiment among investors, who are now worried about hidden business risks or financial problems.”

Hence possible investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that will surely drag Chinese stocks on U.S. exchanges down more.

And indeed, the stock of Renren — which had its own controversial issue with accurate data reporting at the time of the IPO of the social networking site earlier this year — declined 13 percent Friday, along with other Chinese companies listed here.

In retrospect, it should have been easy to predict that Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t use an extended interview with Wall Street and the press to make any news today.

That’s because:

• Wall Street (or at least the portion of Wall Street that provides analyst coverage for News Corp.) seems wholly uninterested in the PhoneGate scandal. That didn’t change during today’s call: The only questions from the investor sector that had anything to do with phone hacking were some mild ones about Murdoch’s interest in selling off his newspaper business. No surprise: The media mogul who grew up in newspapers, loves newspapers and thinks newspapers have a bright future in the digital age said he has no interest in selling his newspapers.
• And if the U.K. Parliament and a pie-thrower couldn’t get Murdoch to say much last month, then how could the lowly press? Murdoch (who, as I note below as well, is ultimately my employer) was prepared for the PhoneGate questions he got from my fellow scribes: No, he wasn’t going anywhere soon, and if he did, COO Chase Carey would run the ship, he told a reporter who asked about James Murdoch’s chances to succeed his father. Yes, he was committed to “total transparency” when it came to making sure there were no other News of the World scandals brewing in his empire. But he didn’t want to say anything else about it. And no, his board of directors was not jam-packed with his cronies, he told a reporter who asked about that. It would be interesting, in a setting that allowed for follow-up questions, to follow up with some of those questions, but today’s format wasn’t going to allow that.

Meanwhile, the people whose opinion Murdoch really cares about — News Corp. investors — took a look at the company’s earnings and shrugged their shoulders, leaving the company’s shares more or less unchanged after hours. (During the day, News Corp. shares were slaughtered along with everyone else.) Perhaps they have other stuff on their minds these days.

—————

EARLIER:

You can read about News Corp. earnings (pretty good) here. But odds are that most of you want to hear what Rupert Murdoch has to say about PhoneGate and its fallout. Pretty sure you’ll get to hear a bit about it this afternoon.

For those of you who haven’t tuned in to News Corp. earnings calls before: Wall Street gets to tee off first, starting at 4:30 New York time. Then reporter types, some of whom may work for Murdoch, will get their shot around 5:15. I’ll be here for the duration (here is where I note that News Corp. owns this Web site). So come on in and take a load off.

4:33 pm: Welcome! Introductory remarks coming up. On the call: Murdoch, COO Chase Carey, CFO Dave DeVoe.

4:34 pm: Rupert, reading from script. Our financials this quarter were “exceptional.” Full year “very good.” Proud of team and *all* our businesses.

4:35 pm: That said, we have some “challenges” re: News of the World. “The kind of behavior that occured in that newsroom has no place in” our company. Also: “Make no mistake, Chase Carey and I run this company as a team” (i.e. I’m not going away any time soon).

4:37 pm: Joel Klein’s on the case, etc. “There can be no doubt about our commitment to ethics and integrity.”

4:37 pm: And like we said before, PhoneGate has nothing to do with the rest of the company.

4:37 pm: “Our position is strong, and our future is promising.”

4:38 pm: Bummed about the BSkyB deal, though.

4:38 pm: Now that we have all that extra cash on hand, though, we’ll think hard about what to do with it. “Re-examining our near and long-term opportunities” on top of that $5B stock buyback we announced.

Now here’s DeVoe, reading from script. Will tune out on most of this, but if you’re into it, again, you can see it here.

4:42 pm: Scanning Twitter, I see that the FT’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson pronounces Murdoch’s script reading to be “forceful.” Agreed! Much more at ease than when he was sitting in front of Parliament this month. Then again, no cameras, or pie.

4:45 pm: Speaking of Twitter, my stream has a whole lot less Murdoch-chatter than we saw last month during his UK appearance.

4:46 pm: Myspace generated $230 million in operating losses over the last year. Amazing. That’s separate from the $254 million writedown the company took (I believe).

4:48 pm: The money News Corp. won’t lose from Myspace next year will be offset, in large part, by the money it won’t see from News of the World.

4:49 pm: And here’s Carey, who wants to talk about “operating priorities” and balance sheet plans.

4:50 pm: Hey, look at that! Chase Carey stressing digital distribution. That’s a new one.

4:51 pm: Even *more* digital talk from Carey. Very unusual. Talking about the eight-day window/authentication plan it just rolled out for Fox.com and Hulu. Promises “many more” digital plans.

Also! Will be vigilant about programs that threaten our product, like $1 rentals. (Did I just hear that correctly? Would mean that Apple deal is over, if so.)

Q&A Time:

4:55 pm: Analyst wants to know cable TV pricing, wonders if company won’t be able to raise affiliate (and eventually your) prices.

Not a problem, says Carey. More growth coming next year in U.S., and then lots coming internationally. “We feel very good” about cable in general. It’s matured, and the economy is rough, “but the demand for this bundle out there in the United States continues to be, you know, strong.”

As Chase talks up cable business and TV business, Rupert chimes in to talk up ratings.

4:59 pm: Q: Your ad dollars looked much stronger than other people’s. What’s up with that?

Carey: Advertising is good because our ratings are good. American Idol, Fox News, etc. Looking forward, national business is great. Figures broadcast ads flat for next year, cable up a lot. Local business “not as robust” as national. “Looks like it will be a better for us in September.” That is, he’s not allowing that the whole possible economic collapse thing might chip away at the ad biz.

Q: For Rupert: August 2008, you were asked about buying back stock, and it was much cheaper then than it is now, and you didn’t want to do it. So why are you buying back shares now?

Rupert: “It’s a question of relative values.” In 2008, I was “coy about it, and of course I couldn’t say so openly” because we were saving for our giant BSkyB bid.

[Missed q, sorry]

5:04 pm: How’s the local TV business doing? Also, with the new eight-day delay “authentication” deal, do you have those in place with most distributors (so far just Dish announced) and aren’t you losing some eyeballs by doing it piecemeal?

5:06 pm: Missed first part of answer. On authentication, Carey is explaining justification for the plan, but not answering Q, which is about how many of these deals he has done, and what rolling them out piecemeal does for this business.

“I’m not going to get too deep into all our negotiations” but this will become standard for our deals.

Carey still explaining why authentication isn’t bad. “We think it’s a really great experience.” But yeah, in short term, may be some “sacrifice” by not chasing a quick buck.

Q: On Fox Biz. WTF happened to that? “You don’t even mention it as an undermonetized asset.”

Rupert: We’re doing okay. Sometimes during the day we beat CNBC. We’re at cash break-even. We need more distribution, though.

Carey: “I could have put it on the list” of assets we like. I just didn’t include everything. Don’t read anything into it. “We think this channel really is an exciting growth area for us as well.”

Q: Boring question about print operations in Australia. Skipping.

Rupert still talking about Australian print newspapers. It’s his roots, after all.

5:14 pm: For Carey: Are your return on capital projections reasonable?

Carey: Yup.

5:15 pm: And here I’ll just note that there have been zero questions from Wall Street about PhoneGate so far. That’s not a surprise — Wall Street buys the argument that PhoneGate has nothing to do with most of News Corp.’s biz — but figured someone might want to toss them a lay-up.

5:16 pm: Q for Rupe: We’ve asked you about spinning of newspapers before. What about now?

“I’m feeling very confident” about newspapers. “Shocked and appalled” about NOTW, but that was a “tiny corner.” Everything else good, WSJ doing great.

5:18 pm: Sorry, missed this one again. About writedowns in TV. Also, a question about operating income for film business. Rupert says it’s a “very very dangerous thing” to predict movie biz.

5:20 pm: DeVoe (I think) goes back to the buyback question, says buying back stock makes more sense now because “we’re in an entirely different place today.”

5:21 pm: Are you factoring in NOTW closing costs into your guidance?

Murdoch: Nope. “First we have to get to the bottom, exactly, of what happened. Were there a dozen guilty people, or were there two dozen?”

5:23 pm: One last Wall Street questions: Will you consider more structural changes at company? If not, why not?

Rupert: “I think we’ve got a very good mix.” We’ve got one or two … things we would sell, “but no major restructuring.” Chase: Right. What he said.

Rupe on digital: “We’ve learned a tremendous amount.” Have good people working digital now — our newspaper apps are great. “That will expand, and the money from that will expand as more people have tablets, and what is interesting is we’re getting tremendous takeup [?], not just from the iPad, but on the Kindle.”

Time for press questions. Do your best/worst, fellow wretches.

Q: Recently you said you wanted your kids to run the company. Do you think BOD will still support James running the company in the near future?

Rupe: “I hope the job won’t be open in the near future” [much laughter] … but “I have full confidence in James.”

And now my line is dead. Bear with me as I try an alternate route …

5:29 pm: Sorry, missed at least one there, back. Appears to have been about Hulu, and it appears to have been a non-answer from Carey. But I’ll backfill if I can.

5:30 pm: For Rupert: What are you doing to look at the rest of the business to prevent NOTW-style scandals?

Rupert: “We’re absolutely committed to total transparency” throughout the company but don’t want to get into it.

Yikes. One last question. Superfast Q&A: You said board said it makes sense for you to stay as CEO and chairman. But everyone says your board is not really independent.

5:32 pm: Murdoch cuts him off. “That’s not true.” Viet Dinh is a “completely independent” director. “We are in compliance with good governance.”

Annnnnnnnnnd that deflated balloon sound you hear are the sighs of my fellow media watchers, who got nothing of value from Murdoch today.

Going to sign off for now, thanks for listening/watching.

News that the top official at a public company will be present for a quarterly earnings call wouldn’t normally qualify as … news.

But prior to the company’s crisis, Murdoch had been absent from the last couple of News Corp. earnings calls, so this wasn’t a given. (Disclosure: News Corp. owns this Web site.)

And News Corp. earnings calls aren’t like other companies’ earnings calls. When Murdoch is on them, he tends to be much less disciplined than other public company leaders, and is more likely to stray off script, or freelance an answer that his lieutenants weren’t expecting.

Just as important: In addition to fielding questions from Wall Street analysts, News Corp. has traditionally offered up Murdoch and his executives to questions from the press, and I’m told that is in the works for today as well.

So today’s call, which kicks off at 4:30 pm, New York time, ought to be interesting at the very least. Taking questions from Wall Street and journalists isn’t quite the same as answering queries from British lawmakers, so he’ll likely feel more comfortable in the setting. I won’t be surprised if Murdoch simply declines to respond to some questions, for one thing. Also: Very, very, very low odds that he’ll have to duck a pie.

But it will all be on the record, and very well documented. I’ll be making my own contributions via a liveblog this afternoon, so check back then for a play by play, or listen in for yourself.

Still, Stewart did spend eight minutes on the story last night. Here he is on Rupert Murdoch’s visit to Parliament. And, of course, Wendi Deng’s pie-deflection.

Which segued to this bit on some News Corp. properties’ … restraint in covering the story.

And for good measure, here’s Colbert’s contribution from last night — a chat with the New York Times’s David Carr, who does most of the heavy lifting.

This morning, News Corp. CEO and majordomo Rupert Murdoch, his son James (who is also a top company exec) — as well as former employee and full-time lightning rod Rebekah Brooks — march on down to the British Parliament to answer questions from a committee there about the ever-growing PhoneGate scandal.

For those living under a rock, News Corp. is embroiled in ever more serious controversy about who knew what and when (also where, why and how much) in the hacking of phones of a myriad of well-known people in the U.K. by its News of the World tabloid newspaper.

Besides celebrities and politicians, that has included the voicemails of a murdered girl, an appalling act that has galvanized public opinion and the weak spines of legislators into action in this inquiry.

It’s sordid, it’s ugly and it makes for what could be an explosive event, starring the man who brought you “Titanic,” Glenn Beck, “Glee” and, most recently, the sale of Myspace.

There’s no question, getting the 80-year-old Murdoch on the ropes will be the aim of the committee members holding the hearing, and how one of the world’s most famous and legendary media moguls performs — or does not — will be a big deal to both interested observers and News Corp. shareholders.

By way of full disclosure, that’s not me, but this site is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. In other words, somewhere up the corporate food chain, Murdoch is my boss.

In any case, that has never stopped me or AllThingsD.com from telling it like it is, so here is the liveblog of what is sure to be a doozy of a media event:

6:36 am PT:: It all starts for the Murdochs, as soon as the former Scotland Yard head John Yates has completed questioning about the police’s obvious bungling of the various investigations over the years.

Rupert Murdoch and his son, James Murdoch, are on, looking grave and dressed in grey.

Sitting behind them are Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, and his top adviser at News Corp., Joel Klein, who is heading up the phone hacking scandal internally at the company.

The hearing — in a room that looks like a high school debate could take place there — starts off politely enough.

But the first question is directed toward James Murdoch about his clearly incomplete investigation when phone hacking allegations were first made many years ago. He begins with an apology.

“These actions do not live up to the standards of News Corp.,” says the younger Murdoch.

He is interrupted by his father, Rupert Murdoch, who notes rather dramatically: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

The questioner quickly asks the obvious query, after James Murdoch claims News Corp. was not in full possession of the facts when execs had told a previous committee there was no reason to believe there was more widespread hacking.

Were News Corp. execs lying?

James Murdoch continues to insist that the bulk of evidence came out — “real evidence” — in later civil trials. And also, that News Corp. is now investigating the situation fully.

He throws around words like “proactive action” and “transparency,” which is probably cold comfort now to those hacked when things were less clear to News Corp.’s senior management.

Now up, Rupert Murdoch, who is asked quickly about statements he made about not tolerating wrongdoing and who had lied to him at News Corp. about the phone hacking.

Apparently, he “didn’t know” a lot about the hacking that took place, while also defending the non-hacking employees of his company.

But the questioner is still on him about exactly what he did know about the situation, which seems to be — at least according to his testimony — a lot of I-don’t-knows.

6:53 am: It continues about what Rupert Murdoch knew and when he knew it and what he did. Or not.

As Rupert Murdoch keeps up with this tone of not being clued in to what have turned out to be critical events, James Murdoch wants to keep jumping in with the details, which he is eager to impart.

“At what point did you find out criminality was endemic at News of the World?” asks the questioner.

Rupert Murdoch does not like the word endemic, but stresses that he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed” by the case of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler.

The questioner seems frustrated by Rupert Murdoch’s answers, which are, for the typically razor-sharp media mogul, unusually slow.

Like a persistent terrier who wants to perform, James Murdoch is back again offering to serve up the deets.

7:04 am: Now, it is onto the closing down of News of the World: Was the tabloid shut down because of the criminality?

“We had broken our trust with our readers,” says Rupert Murdoch. “We felt ashamed for what had happened.”

A new questioner is on, with a bizarre query about why Rupert Murdoch came in the back door of the Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street on a recent visit there.

It’s a cloddish effort to show him as a powerful puppetmaster to pols, but only serves as a punch line.

Back on track, with questions about whether there was hacking in the U.S., which Rupert Murdoch said he could not believe had happened.

More questions about how badly the company acted, which came down to the questions about whether he was “ultimately” responsible for the hacking.

“Nope,” says Rupert Murdoch, who keeps insisting he relied on others, some of whom apparently “misled” him.

It’s an astonishing admission and, really, excuse, given he has been chairman, CEO and a very strong leader of News Corp. for more than a half-century.

7:16 am: A new questioner, who asks who decided to close down News of the World. It was Murdoch himself, his son and other execs.

Next up, why did News Corp. pay off a victim of hacking, which James Murdoch did without informing his father or the News Corp. board.

James Murdoch essentially points out that it is typical to do this in companies of the global scale of News Corp.

These are apparently very busy, busy, busy people, who do not seem to have time to notice how such juicy and best-selling scoops might have been magically produced by News of the World.

Onto ethical conduct guidelines, which News Corp. has in a pamphlet form, says James Murdoch, but pages which some at the company have obviously never cracked.

Rupert Murdoch is asked again about his culpability in the case, which he continues to maintain he does not shoulder the blame.

James Murdoch does note that the company “will think more forcefully … about our journalism and ethics.”

Given the situation, in which every day brings a new revelation of bad acts by News Corp. employees, this promise of better behavior seems to be a case of much too little and very, very late.

Rupert Murdoch still uses the opportunity to stress the need for a free press, despite its excesses.

7:31 am: More about the payments to settle with phone hacking victims and how soon the company realized the problems were more widespread.

James Murdoch talks about how he might have acted differently had he known more then as he does now.

“If we knew now what we knew then,” says James Murdoch, “we would have taken more action and moved more aggressively.”

But what else is he going to say? It’s a could-have, would-have, should-have line of questioning that is eliciting very little in the way of true information.

Finally, a good point about “willful blindness,” which is a term from the Enron scandal about avoiding knowing about problems you really should have known about.

“Is that a question?,” asks James Murdoch. It is a statement, actually, and a decent enough one.

“We didn’t do that,” says Rupert Murdoch firmly this time.

Still, soon enough, Rupert Murdoch is insisting he was not as involved as people have imagined him to be with the management of his newspapers.

A new questioner is pressing this important point, but Rupert Murdoch is not biting on a query about his legendarily hands-on managing style.

“I’d say, ‘What’s doing?’” he explains about his conversations with editors, but adding he might not have been told about payoffs to phone hacking victims.

The questions are in the deep weeds here, but it’s still interesting that Rupert Murdoch continues to maintain that his life was too busy to wallow in the details, however controversial and important those details might be.

7:55 am: More and more don’t-knows pile up and up in a giant mountain of acts perpetrated by someone somewhere, but not the Murdochs.

“I can tell you I was surprised as you were,” says James Murdoch about certain payments to various hackers and those who were hacked.

Was it Les Hinton, who then ran News International and later Dow Jones, from which he recently resigned?

Could be! Maybe! Mistake were made! Who knows!

Well, someone does!

It moves onto Brooks, the tarnished News International exec and editor whom Rupert Murdoch does note he still trusts. Finally, some certainty!

Brooks is definitely one of the more compelling characters in this drama, although the media focus on her striking red hair color seems odd and vaguely sexist, as if she is some flame-haired she-devil from media hell. She might certainly be guilty in this mess, but her fabulous hair has nothing to do with it.

(Rupert’s mane is grey, by the way, and James’ is brown, if you really need to know.)

Fascinatingly, Murdoch’s backing of Brooks has been strong and consistent, despite intense criticism of her by many in this scandal.

The payment of legal fees of perpetrators and payments to the victims in the hacking seems to obsess one questioner, who wants News Corp. to stop doing it.

Murdoch says he’d like to if contracts did not preclude that, which essentially means News Corp. will keep up forking over the legal fees and payments.

8:12 am: The attention turns to how James Murdoch found out about the various emails that showed there was more evidence of hacking than was first thought about and what he felt about it.

He says very little, noting that the matter is under police investigation. It’s not don’t-know now, but can’t-say.

The hearing is beginning to feel a little rope-a-dope, with the Murdochs apologizing and taking blows, saying very little — either claiming lack of knowledge or lack of ability to comment about the ongoing police inquiry — and tiring out the questioners.

It is a classic tactic of the boxing champion Muhammad Ali and it works in the ring.

Whether that will be the case with PhoneGate remains to be seen, but it certainly has made what could have been a more explosive hearing much less so.

Instead, it seems to have turned into a what didn’t the Murdochs know and when didn’t they know it hearing.

On questioner gets this irony. “That’s frankly unsatisfactory,” he says about the Murdochs continuing shock and surprise at the thorny situation they find themselves in.

Maybe it seems a little hard to believe, but the persistent story from James Murdoch is that they were told by their lawyers, the police and others that nothing was awry once the initial phone hacking investigation was complete and only found out about the larger problem in later civil lawsuits.

But, asks the questioner to Rupert Murdoch, should his editors and managers at News of the World have known about it?

Of course, they should have.

But, once again, the legendary media baron, who made his fortune and fame in disseminating news and information across the world in newspapers, on television, on satellite and on the Web — at least for now — can’t say.

So, was he “kept in the dark” about the situation? Rupert Murdoch acknowledges he might have asked more questions, although he noted his British newspapers were only a small part of his massive empire.

But, he adds, “Anything that is seen as a crisis comes to me.”

Well, not the phone hacking crisis, it seems.

But, they’re sorry. So sorry. And, of course, humbled.

8:54 am: Suddenly, there is a disturbance, in which someone seems to have possibly attempted to accost the Murdochs.

But it is not clear what has happened, as the hearings are suspended for 10 minutes.

James Murdoch leaps up quickly to protect his father, which he has been doing in this hearing verbally already, where the strategy seems to be to let him largely do all the talking.

Even faster on her feet and with arms raised toward a man in a plaid shirt and carrying a pie plate with shaving cream is Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi.

The man seems to have managed to get some of the foam on Rupert Murdoch, but Wendi Deng appears to have partially thwarted her husband from receiving a full pie in the face.

It’s the first striking visual of this hearing, protecting the patriarch and the king of the empire from harm, no matter what.

Here is a video of the incident:

According to Britain’s Channel 4: “As the man was being led away in handcuffs escorted by a single police officer, he refused to give his name, saying: ‘As Mr Murdoch himself said, I’m afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation.’”

9:09 am: The room is cleared, so it is only the Murdoch crew behind James and Rupert Murdoch, and now the committee is even more solicitous.

Rupert Murdoch is without his jacket and his wife is being commended for her most excellent left hook.

Still, it’s back to business and the questioner does zero in on a major disconnect over how two media execs as famously aggressive and involved as the Murdochs were so passive in this hacking situation.

It “was a terrible shock,” says James Murdoch.

The same is said about what would be even more disturbing and recent allegations of the hacking of the victims of the 9/11 bombings.

Both father and son say there is no evidence of this so far, but they were surely looking into it.

While it certainly did not come through in what have largely been feckless questions from the committee, the final questioner does correctly ask the pair if they might want to pay more attention.

The last question is for Rupert Murdoch and finally gets to the real query everyone wants to ask.

Noting Murdoch is “captain of the ship,” she asks if he has considered resigning.

“No,” answers Murdoch firmly.

“Why not?” she presses.

“People let me down and it’s for them to pay,” says Rupert Murdoch. “But I think, frankly, I am the best person do clean this up.”

He finishes up with a statement about being sorry, how he was also betrayed and how phone hacking and bribery is wrong.

“Saying sorry is not enough, things must be put right,” he says.

Finally, something we do know.

The News Corp. CEO, along with his son James and former employee Rebekah Brooks, head to British Parliament today to answer questions about the still-mushrooming PhoneGate scandal.

You’ll be able to watch the event, which begins at 9:30 am Eastern time, on just about any U.S. news channel you’d like: CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and the Current will be broadcasting the hearings. So will Fox News Channel, which — like this Web site — is owned by News Corp.

You should also have multiple opportunities to watch the event live via Web video. British broadcaster ITN, for instance, is offering up a live stream via its Facebook page. I believe, but haven’t confirmed, that C-SPAN will stream live, too.

And we’ll be liveblogging the event ourselves, courtesy of AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. (I’m biased here, but I’m quite sure Kara will provide entertaining coverage — this is a woman who won an award for liveblogging Yahoo earnings calls.)

Meanwhile, some context. You can find plenty of news outlets telling you what’s at stake for the Murdoch men today, but Staci Kramer at paidContent does a concise job. A reminder: This isn’t a trial, and no matter what the men say, they’re not going to appease outraged Britons.

So in some ways, today’s event is most consequential for the way it plays out for News Corp. shareholders. Rupert Murdoch needs to show that his company would be better off if he remains chief executive; James needs to demonstrate that he’ll still have the ability to run the family company down the line.

A couple more thoughts before the show gets underway:

• Rupert Murdoch is used to performing in public, but under very different circumstances. Until recently, Murdoch has used his quarterly earnings calls as an extended public interview, taking questions from both investors and the press. That’s a rarity for public company CEOs, and has made for some very entertaining moments (at least by the standards of paint-drying earnings calls). But those questions were never really that pointed. And while Murdoch tended to answer the queries with imperial certitude, the stakes were always lowish — if need be, his investor relations or public relations could usually reel a stray answer in after the fact. Today he’ll face hostile questions, and will be operating without any kind of net at all.
• Rupert Murdoch’s great love for newspapers is now a liability. The corporate scandal playbook calls for an embattled chief executive to take responsibility for his company’s missteps, while explaining they’re the result of a few bad actors working in isolation. But Murdoch’s affection for his newspapers, and his hands-on approach to many of them, will make it much harder for him to do that. In the words of New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman: “Rupert will have to demonstrate that, after a lifelong passion for the newsroom, he detached himself from his journalists’ activities. It will be a hard sell.”

Back in 2006, one of the most dramatic moments of the “pretexting” scandal at Hewlett-Packard was when a very high-profile board member — legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins — quit in indignation over the company’s efforts to obtain the phone records of reporters.

“I resigned solely to protest the questionable ethics and the dubious legality of the chairman’s methods,” he said at the time about HP’s sneaky indiscretions, which included spying on a journalist from The Wall Street Journal.

But yesterday, in an interview with the New York Times, Perkins sounded a very different tone as a current independent board member of News Corp., which owns the Journal (and this site too) and, more importantly, is knee-deep in its own phone-hacking disaster.

Noting that the directors are “fully supportive of the top management,” Perkins added: “There’s no reason to believe top management was lying. That’s my very strong belief.”

Ironic? You bet, but apparently not to Perkins.

“This is not like the HP situation,” he told the Times. “The board supports top management.”

This morning, News International head Rebekah Brooks apologized for her role in the mess and resigned. Now News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is apologizing to the general public via print ads signed in his name. Here’s the full text of the ad, via Sky News producer Tim Gatt, and Gatt’s photo of one of the ads. Note that Murdoch’s apology only deals with his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, and doesn’t address allegations of wrongdoing at other News Corp.-owned papers. (News Corp. owns this Web site.)

The News of the World was in the business of holding others to account.
It failed when it came to itself.
We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred.
We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected.
We regret not acting faster to sort things out.
I realise that simply apologising is not enough.
Our business was founded on the idea that a free and open press should be
a positive force in society. We need to live up to this.
In the coming days, as we take further concrete steps to resolve these issues
and make amends for the damage they have caused, you will hear more from us.

The last one means Wolff is particularly in demand these days, which is why he showed up to the BBC’s satellite studio in New York today.

The Beeb had other (unintentional) plans. You must watch this clip:

As Sky News reminds us, this is not the first time the BBC has brought the wrong dude on camera. Here’s a clip of Guy Goma, who had shown up to a BBC studio for a job interview in 2006, and was instead put on air and asked about Apple.

(Not terribly necessary disclosure in this case: Both Sky News and this Web site are owned by News Corp., the company at the center of the scandal that prompted Wolff to go on air today.)

“It has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate,” News Corp. COO Chase Carey said in a statement, referring to the ever-widening PhoneGate scandal that has already forced the company to shut down its News of the World tabloid.

The paper’s closure was a huge news event in Britain, but the BSkyB deal, which would have seen News Corp. buy the 61 percent of the company it didn’t already own, would have been much more meaningful for Rupert Murdoch’s company.

It’s unlikely that this is the last shoe to drop at News Corp. (which also owns this Web site). Murdoch, his son James and News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks are all scheduled to appear in front of the British Parliament next week to answer questions about the scandal.

Meanwhile, News Corp. has discussed selling off or spinning out its News International unit, which runs its remaining British papers.

And preliminary reports indicate that a scheduled debate about the News Corp. BSkyB deal will still take place today in the House of Commons.

Yesterday News Corp. announced a $5 billion stock buyback program, designed to allay investor fears. But it didn’t do much good, as shares drooped from $16.25 to $15.48. For now, it seems, investors are happier that News Corp. has moved on from BSkyB, and are pushing shares back a few cents toward the $16 mark.

For years now, it looked like the tousled adorkability and winsome charms of British movie star Hugh Grant were beginning to grow long in the tooth.

That is, until the phone-hacking scandal in Britain — with the News Corp.-owned tabloid News of the World’s editors, reporters and managers accused of serious misconduct — got really going in recent weeks.

The issue about the out-of-control press has put the well-spoken Grant, a victim of the hacking, at the center of the action and he’s doing a laudable job as both an indignant and also reasonable voice.

Here are three videos where you can see Grant talking about the controversy and also debating both the hackers and the pols who apparently protected them.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

If that’s the only fallout, Rupert Murdoch will have dodged a bullet. [Update: It isn’t the only fallout. News Corp. just announced it is shutting down News of the World.)

Earlier this month the transaction, which would see News Corp. acquire the 61 percent of the British satellite TV company it doesn’t already own, looked like a done deal.

Now, as a string of new allegations in the three-year-old voice mail hacking affair at the company’s News of the World tabloid have surfaced, the BSkyB deal is going to take much longer to close. And there’s some speculation that the whole thing may be in jeopardy. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

The Financial Times (registration required) says the deal won’t be approved until September at the earliest, citing an influx of public comments on the proposal. The British government, in response, says there isn’t an official timetable, but that’s more of a “definition of the word ‘is’” response than a denial.

In any case, hackergate is definitely going to cause more problems for Murdoch than the run-of-the-mill scandals that News Corp. is used to dealing with.

The New York Times has a concise synopsis of the new problems at the tabloid: Allegations “that its executives had paid police officers, lied to Parliament, hired investigators to intercept voice mail messages left on the cellphones of murdered children and terrorism victims, and, in one instance, tampered with a murder investigation in which the suspects were linked to The News of the World.”

So far most of the pressure from the scandal has been directed at Rebekah Brooks, who runs the News International group that oversees News of the World. Murdoch, in a statement, has backed Brooks. But it won’t be surprising to see her go, regardless. The big question is whether the scandal bubbles up to engulf Murdoch or his son James, his likely successor.

Yesterday investors weighed in and drove down News Corp. stock as much as 5 percent; this morning it’s ticking back up.

His predecessor, Mark Hurd, resigned in August following an investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment, which Mr. Hurd denied. HP’s board was then broadly criticized for forcing out an executive who was popular with investors, if not the company’s employees.

Since November, when he assumed the top job at the world’s biggest technology company by revenue, Mr. Apotheker has worked to put the scandal behind the company. Last month, HP’s board was shaken up with a slate of new appointees to replace members who left.

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Management said it gave false information about the president’s dismissal, and apologized.

The meeting was shareholders’ first chance to voice opinions about the way the technology company handled the controversy over the departure of former President Kuniaki Nozoe.

Shareholders criticized managers for initially saying in September that Mr. Nozoe was stepping down because of illness. After Mr. Nozoe went public with a claim of wrongful dismissal, Fujitsu changed its explanation, saying he had associated with an investment fund with suspected ties to organized crime–claims that he denies.

“If the media hadn’t found out, would you have just kept the whole thing secret and kept sticking to illness as an explanation?” one investor demanded.

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Citing misconduct by prosecutors, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ordered a new trial for Reyes, who had been convicted of 10 charges of conspiracy, fraud, making false regulator filings and falsifying records for backdating hundreds of employee stock options.

A favorable turn of luck for Reyes, who had been sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay a $15 million fine for misdeeds that, according to that three-judge panel, had been grossly exaggerated and perhaps even fabricated.

“Deliberate false statements by those privileged to represent the United States harm the trial process and the integrity of our prosecutorial system,” Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in the 3-0 ruling. “We do not lightly tolerate a prosecutor asserting as a fact to the jury something known to be untrue or, at the very least, that the prosecution had very strong reason to doubt.”

The panel stopped short of throwing the case out entirely, noting that “there was no question that Reyes signed off on stock-option grants that were priced retrospectively and that the backdating allowed Brocade to understate its compensation expenses.” So the United States attorney could opt to retry the case, though that seems a bleak option at this point given the tenor of the ruling.

“This is the highest profile [backdating] case they had that went to trial, so I’d expect they will try it again, if for no other reason than for reputational purposes,” Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning told the Mercury News. “But talk about a case that’s stale.”

A few weeks ago I sat down with Josh Marshall, the journalist/entrepreneur behind Talking Points Memo, and had a great chat about news, new media and the business of running a self-funded Web site. But my notes and video have sat on my hard drive since then, for no other reason than I never got around to publishing them.

Thank you, Maureen Dowd, for the kick in the pants I needed: Over the weekend, the New York Times (NYT) columnist has given Marshall a huge, if unintended, endorsement by borrowing his work and then getting caught.

After an initial attempt by Dowd to explain away the similarity between her work and his, the Times is now running a correction on Dowd’s Sunday column, noting that she “failed to attribute a paragraph” to Marshall.

You’ll read plenty more about this on the Web over the next few days, if you’re inclined. But it would be a shame if that’s the only thing you know about Marshall’s site, which is an interesting hybrid of politically focused reporting, commentary, and aggregation/blogging.

And I do mean a mix: If you just glimpse quickly at his site, you might think it’s the same grouping of links and headlines that you can find anywhere else on the Web. But Marshall was a real reporter prior to starting the site and his 12-person staff does real reporting. Its best work, to date, was uncovering the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorneys scandal in 2007, which led to prestigious Polk Award in 2008.

Just as interesting: It’s a profitable business that has never taken outside investment and until recently, has made almost all of its money by relying on ad networks. The most effective ad network, says Marshall: Google’s AdSense. See! Google (GOOG) really does support content!

More recently, Marshall has hired Yahoo (YHOO) vet Diane Rinaldo to serve as the company’s first real ad rep, trying to translate the site’s one million (give or take) monthly unique readers into more significant revenue. That’s alleged to be a real challenge since advertisers are supposedly loath to touch political content. But then again, start-up blogs aren’t supposed to do real journalism–or act as unattributed contributors to the country’s most prestigious newspaper.