NEW YORK (Reuters) - No illegal activities have
taken place at Dow Jones & Co, the News Corp unit that
publishes the Wall Street Journal, according to an independent
panel tasked with overseeing the integrity of the newspaper.
The panel said in a statement released on Friday that none
of the "London offenses or anything like them have taken place
at Dow Jones."
The committee said it was monitoring the situation and that
it has been in talks with officials at Dow Jones over the phone
hacking scandal that rocked Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and led
to several arrests in London.
The panel added that the resignation of Les Hinton, the
Wall Street Journal's publisher, is unrelated to activities
that have taken place at the newspaper or at Dow Jones.
"Nothing has come to our attention that causes us to
believe that (the) resignation of Les Hinton as publisher of
The Wall Street Journal is any way related to activities at The
Wall Street Journal or Dow Jones or that any of the London
offenses or anything like them have taken place at Dow Jones,"
the panel said in an e-mailed statement.
Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch's British
newspaper business, was arrested on Sunday in the latest twist
of a phone-hacking scandal that has tainted British police and
politicians and shaken the tycoon's global media empire.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker; Additional reporting by
Mohammed Abbas in London; Editing by Richard Chang)
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