UK regulator investigating Sky News email hacking

Officials are investigating email hacking at Rupert Murdoch's Sky News, a spokesman for Britain's broadcast regulator announced Monday, only minutes before the channel's head of news was due to testify to a high-profile inquiry into media ethics.

An Ofcom official said that the investigation would center on "fairness and privacy issues" stemming from Sky News' admission that it had authorized journalists to hack into email accounts to score exclusives. That revelation spread Britain's hacking scandal to a new branch of Murdoch's media empire.

Earlier this month Sky's head of news, John Ryley, acknowledged that hacking had happened twice under his watch. One incident involved the case of Anne and John Darwin, the so-called "canoe couple" who became notorious in Britain after the husband faked his own death in a boating accident as part of an elaborate insurance scam.

Sky News has insisted that the computer breaches were carried out in the public interest, noting that, in the case of the Darwins, it had handed over the hacked information to the police.

Legal experts say that such an argument carries little legal weight.

Ryley is due to testify before Lord Justice Brian Leveson, the judge charged with investigating Britain's media in the wake of the phone hacking and bribery scandal that erupted at the News of the World tabloid.

Last year's revelations that journalists at Murdoch's top-selling Sunday newspaper routinely broke the law to stay ahead incensed Britain, particularly when it emerged that they had sought to violate the privacy of a murdered teenager.

The scandal has since spread to Murdoch's The Sun, where many prominent journalists have been arrested on suspicion of bribery, and the Times of London, which is being sued over email hacking.

Hacking is one of the topics that Sky's Ryley is expected to discuss with Leveson later Monday.

The Ofcom spokesman didn't go into detail as to the nature or the timeframe of the investigation. He spoke anonymously in line with department policy.

Possible penalties range from a formal reprimand to a fine or even the suspension of Sky News' broadcasting license.