Parliament saw new internal notes and emails between News Corp. employees today that indicate James Murdoch and other executives were aware of its British newspapers's proclivity for phone hacking. Reuters reports the company agreed to pay soccer players' union boss Gordon Taylor hundreds of thousands of pounds "because it recognized that evidence from the case was 'fatal' to its claims of innocence." Reuters says the new evidence "suggested Murdoch must have been aware of the scale of the problem when he approved the huge payoff and therefore was in some way culpable" which would be bad news for his chances of taking over the company someday, or even keeping his current position. Reuters has details of today's revelation:

Taylor had got hold of a News of the World email which included transcripts of his voicemails and appeared to implicate other News of the World journalists. News Corp executives maintained until recently that only one reporter was responsible for the hacking and he had already gone to jail.

According to Julian Pike, a lawyer from the London firm Farrer & Co who was at the time acting for the tabloid ...  [editor Colin] Myler and James Murdoch met on May 27 to discuss the issue, although this contradicts what James Murdoch told parliamentarians. He has said he held only one short meeting over the issue in June.

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