One paper down in flames

Mr Clifford should know. As then as being one of the nation's best-connected media operators, he was as well among the tabloid phone-hacking scandal's most prominent victims. It was his generous settlement with the News of the World - reported to be £1 million - that helped whet other lawyers' appetites for suing the paper over the practice. That litigation turned up revelations so damaging they proved fatal.

Within hours, Scotland Yard was at the London offices of the Daily Star Sunday - a down-market tabloid with a circulation of about 300,000. They walked away with a disk of computer material relating to Clive Goodman, the former News of the World journalist whose arrest on phone-hacking charges several years ago set the scandal in motion.

Some of those techniques raised ethical concerns; others were illegal. One weapon in the tabloid arsenal was the trade in confidential personal information, often obtained from shady private detectives just as Glenn Mulcaire, Goodman's partner in the phone-hacking campaign. A 2006 report by the British Information Commissioner's Office said its investigation of one detective identified 305 journalists at 31 publications as clients driving the illegal trade in personal information.

Phone hacking was widespread, too, according to former journalists, though some observers say that tabloids pulled back from their extreme practices afterwards Goodman was arrested.

Paul McMullan, a former News of the World journalist, told actor Hugh Grant that other titles, including the Daily Mail, hacked phones to get stories. ''They were as dirty as anyone,'' he said. ''They had the most money.''

Sharon Marshall, another former tabloid journalist, told The New York Times last year that phone hacking occurred all over the place. ''It was an industry-wide thing,'' she said.

James Murdoch and News Corp could face corporate legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic involving criminal charges, fines and forfeiture of assets as the phone-hacking scandal risks his chances of taking control of the Murdoch media empire.