News Corp.

Jamie Pyatt, an award-winning editor at Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, has been arrested on suspicion of police corruption. An ethics scandal at the Sun could mean further legal and financial problems for Murdoch’s global media empire, which has already had to write off $91 million in restructuring costs linked to the closure of its now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

The increase is attributed to stronger ad sales and a “greater than two-fold increase in retransmission consent revenues.”

New documents show Rupert’s former heir apparent had been told of the gravity of the phone-hacking scandal. Staying alive at News Corp. will require a Houdini trick.

The two sides are at odds over a new distribution agreement that would keep News Corp.-owned cable channels including FX on DirecTV. If an agreement is not reached by Nov. 1, DirecTV has said it will stop carrying the channels. In a letter to the FCC, DirecTV took issue with some of the advertisements News Corp.’s Fox has run to alert people to the dispute. Specifically, DirecTV accused the company of misleading consumers.

The results released Monday from the News Corp. annual meeting last week suggest that most shareholders not affiliated with the family are opposed to one of Murdoch’s children taking control of the media conglomerate when its 80-year-old leader steps down.

Investor outrage led Rupert Murdoch to shut down Friday’s annual meeting after less than an hour and a half. The company later announced that the coup attempt against Murdoch and his directors had failed.

More than 100 people demonstrated Friday outside the annual meeting on the lot of News Corp.’s Fox Studios in Los Angeles. British lawmaker Tom Watson asked CEO Rupert Murdoch whether he was aware that a person who had left prison was hired by News Corp. and hacked the computer of a former army intelligence officer.

In Los Angeles for a shareholders meeting today, Rupert Murdoch will face pressure to remove himself and his sons from the News Corp. board. Critics say his handpicked board provides little oversight of a company with questionable ethics.

If shareholder votes of past years are any guide, the protest vote against some members of News Corp.‘s board at Friday’s annual meeting could be sizable—but it is unlikely to precipitate any changes. Meanwhile, some analysts and investors say they are more focused on shareholder-friendly actions being taken, like a share buyback that is under way.

Rupert Murdoch’s campaign to keep control of News Corp. suffered a fresh blow on Friday after another key shareholder group called for his eviction from the board of the embattled media company.

News Corp. went on the defensive Tuesday morning after an investor advisory firm urged shareholders to vote against reinstating several key members of the media giant’s board of directors, including the chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, and his son James Murdoch.

Things could be interesting in Los Angeles on Oct. 21 when News Corp holds its annual shareholders meeting. Advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended today that stock owners reject 13 of News Corp’s 15 board members, including the three Murdochs: Rupert and his sons James and Lachlan.

Mark Lewis, a U.K. lawyer who represents the family of hacking victim Milly Dowler, has consulted with U.S. lawyers about bringing a case against the News Corp. board within the next couple weeks.

News Corp. was sent a letter by U.S. prosecutors investigating foreign bribery, requesting information on alleged payments employees made to U.K. police for tips, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

News International, Murdoch’s British newspaper division, said it hopes to reach agreement soon with the family of Milly Dowler whose phone was hacked by Britain’s now defunct News of the World newspaper.

The ABC sitcom won best comedy series, supporting acting Emmys for TV parents Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell and best writing and direction. AMC’s Mad Men won the best drama series award and Kyle Chandler was the surprise best actor winner from NBC’s Friday Night Lights. Alec Baldwin was to be part of an opening video for Sunday night’s ceremony airing on News Corp.-owned Fox. But he tweeted before the awards that the network had killed his joke about the hacking scandal in Britain involving the now-closed News of the World tabloid.

James Murdoch will have to return to the House of Commons to face more questions about phone-hacking, committee Chairman John Whittingdale said Tuesday. But the committee said News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch — who appeared alongside his son at a July 19 U.K. hearing that was televised around the world — was not being recalled.

Jonathan Chapman, the former director of legal affairs with News International, said Rupert Murdoch wasn’t being accurate when he told Parliament that he blamed the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis for failing to uncover the scope of the hacking scandal back in 2007.

The board shuffle comes after corporate governance experts slammed the media company board for a lack of independence and weak influence after a phone hacking scandal at its weekly UK tabloid paper News of the World. News Corp closed the paper in July, but the fallout reverberates through the company and still threatens to destabilize its operations.

Rupert Murdoch and his son James, accused by two former employees of misleading Parliament last month, will be hauled back to testify again — this time under oath. As the News Corp. phone-hacking and police-bribery scandal continues to unfold, the company is expanding its internal investigation, led by former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein.

Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin downgraded her recommendation on New Corp. on Monday from “buy” to “hold.” But not all media analysts feel that way. BTIG’s Rich Greenfield thinks News Corp. is an inexpensive stock right now, and he issued a “buy” recommendation and raised his 12-month price target for the company’s stock price to $24.

News Corp.’s senior management is starting to think about what the company might do if James Murdoch stepped aside, sources inside and close to the global media empire said. With Rupert Murdoch’s younger son under increasing pressure from the phone-hacking scandal enveloping the company, News Corp.executives want to be prepared if he wants to “take a breather,” one News Corp source said.

In written testimony released by lawmakers today, former Murdoch lieutenants poked holes in the dramatic testimony delivered by their ex-bosses Rupert and James before Parliament last month, accusing them of misrepresentations, exaggerations and more.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s stance came as the company reported that its net income fell in the last quarter by 22%, mainly because of the sale of money-losing social-networking site Myspace. The phone hacking scandal and questions about Murdoch’s control of News Corp. overshadowed the media giant’s results, which beat expectations when excluding the Myspace sale.

The closeness between News Corp. and its independent directors is an example of how chumminess in the boardroom can be a problem.

News Corp. executives will try to use a board meeting and full-year earnings this week to steer attention away from the scandal at the media giant’s U.K. newspapers unit and refocus investors on the company’s core operations.

News Corp. is facing about 35 privacy-invasion lawsuits against its News of the World, the tabloid at the center of the phone-hacking scandal. That is up from about two dozen in April.

The FBI is in the initial stage of a probe of News Corp. as investigators evaluate whether U.S. charges can be brought over claims employees hacked into a rival’s website and sought access to phone records of victims of the 9/11 attacks, a person familiar with the matter said.

The FBI’s early fact-gathering could turn into a long saga that tests or reinforces the long-standing cooperation between U.S. and British law enforcement. Most of the records and witnesses to prove or disprove the allegations are in the hands of British investigators.

A leading private investigations firm said it had strong reason to suspect that Will Lewis, a senior executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., was involved in “orchestrating” a leak of material from a competing news organization that helped Murdoch’s business interests.

News Corp. is considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to chief executive officer to succeed Rupert Murdoch, people with knowledge of the situation said. A decision hasn’t been made and a move depends in part on Murdoch’s performance before the U.K. Parliament, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Murdoch would remain chairman, the people said.

Parliament is due to break up for the summer on Tuesday, but British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in South Africa, said that “it may well be right to have Parliament meet on Wednesday so I can make a further statement.” Murdoch’s former British CEO — and Cameron’s friend — Rebekah Brooks, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of hacking. Then, London police chief Paul Stephenson resigned Sunday over his ties to Andy Coulson, a former editor of the shuttered tabloid News of the World, who was arrested earlier this month over hacking.

Just a day after saying in a newspaper interview that News Corp. had made only “minor mistakes,” Murdoch signed an apology to run in Britain’s national newspapers for “serious wrongdoing” by the News of the World, which shut down last week amid allegations of large-scale illegal hacking by its staff.

Brooks headed the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media division. She was editor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, the time of the most explosive allegation to hit Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire,

The Associated Press says the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims.