News Corp faces new rash of hacking allegations on a global scale

Murdoch's media empire denies fresh wave of claims that his firms undermined rivals through code cracking and piracy

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 March 2012 16.00 BST

Rupert Murdoch's troubles over the ongoing phone hacking scandal have become the subject of a renewed flurry of media attention this week, with broadcasters and websites across the world releasing the results of months of investigative digging.

What's striking about this week's rash of material is its truly global nature. What began as a largely internal UK affair has now spread its tentacles across national US television, prompted forensic delving into a News Corp company with roots in Israel, and inspired probing questions about some of Murdoch's Australian holdings.

Here's a guide to what's being claimed – and the News Corp responses.

Murdoch's Scandal, the PBS documentary aired in the US on Tuesday and in the UK on Wednesday, is significant not so much for what it says as where it says it. America is Murdoch's adopted home; it is where his empire is headquartered in an imposing skyscraper on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan; and it is where he planned to lay his legacy.

So when 50 minutes of prime time television are set aside to unpick the influence of the Murdoch school of media ownership in forensic and critical detail, that is felt at the very core.

(More here.)