Rupert Murdoch has been recalled to give evidence to MPs after a recording emerged of him apparently venting his anger about police investigations into phone-hacking and payments to officials.
The Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee will ask the mogul to appear before it again to discuss his comments in the autumn. Scotland Yard said it will "fully assess" the recording of his comments in a meeting with News International journalists.
Critics said the tape showed Mr Murdoch's real attitude to the crises that have engulfed his empire, in contrast to his contrition when giving evidence to the committee two years ago.
The Hacked Off campaign group has demanded his recall and suggested he may have committed a contempt of parliament.
The News Corp boss is heard saying the treatment of arrested journalists was a "disgrace" and suggesting he regretted the extent to which the company had co-operated with the investigation.
The audio, broadcast by Channel 4 News, was said to have been made in March during a meeting with journalists from The Sun at his British newspapers' headquarters in Wapping, east London.
Mr Murdoch is heard railing at the way the police behaved. "It's a disgrace. Here we are, two years later, and the cops are totally incompetent," he said. "The idea that the cops then started coming after you, kick you out of bed, and your families, at six in the morning, is unbelievable.
"But why are the police behaving in this way? It's the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing... They're going to put all newspapers out of business."
When asked why so much material had been handed over to police by News Corp's management and standards committee, Mr Murdoch indicated he believed they had gone too far.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article