Hacking testimony begins

Political/media junkies: live streams of Rupert Murdoch's testimony in a probe of the British phone hacking scandal are available at Fox, CNN and C-SPAN. London's police chief has testified today that 10 of the bureau's 45 press officers worked for Murdoch's press empire.

Testimony starts with an apology by James Murdoch, whereupon his father breaks in to say, "This is the most humble day of my life."

Here's a Reuters story looking into life at the now-shuttered News of the World -- it's a glimpse of how movies might imagine the most scummy newsroom in the world (but, it bears repeating, is not the way things normally work):

LONDON (Reuters) - "It was the kind of place you get out of and you never want to go back again." That's how one former reporter describes the News of the World newsroom under editor Rebekah Brooks, the ferociously ambitious titian-haired executive who ran Britain's top-selling Sunday tabloid from 2000 to 2003.

Journalists who worked there in that period describe an industrialized operation of dubious information-gathering, reporters under intense pressure attempting to land exclusive stories by whatever means necessary, and a culture of fear, cynicism, gallows humor and fierce internal competition.

"We used to talk to career criminals all the time. They were our sources," says another former reporter from the paper who also worked for Murdoch's daily tabloid, the Sun. "It was a macho thing: 'My contact is scummier than your contact.' It was a case of: 'Mine's a murderer!' On the plus side, we always had a resident pet nutter around in case anything went wrong."