LONDON (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's Sky News channel twice authorized its reporters to hack into computers, a potentially embarrassing revelation that could further dent the media tycoon's hope of acquiring full control over satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Sky News said in a statement that in one case it broke into emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, the so-called "canoe couple" who became notorious in Britain after the latter faked his own death in a boating accident as part of an elaborate insurance scam.
It acknowledged intercepting the couple's emails, but said that the material was later handed to police and insisted it had done nothing wrong.
"We stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public interest. We do not take such decisions lightly or frequently," Sky News chief John Ryley said in a statement.
He noted that, in a 2004 investigation, a Sky News journalists had bought an Uzi submachine gun to illustrate the availability of banned weapons in Britain. In 2003, a reporter penetrated security at London's Heathrow Airport to highlight failings in the system.
"These investigations serve the public interest and are a legitimate part of responsible journalism," Ryley said.
Shares in BSkyB fell about 2.8 percent following the news to 639 pence ($10.11).
A media frenzy was kicked off when John Darwin - long thought to have died in a boating accident in the North Sea - walked into a London police station in late 2007 and said: "I think I'm a missing person."
He claimed to have amnesia and said he could remember nothing since 2000, but his story unraveled as journalists and police started digging into his background.
Sky News didn't identify which of its stories was the result of hacking, but in an article dated July 21, 2008, journalist Gerard Tubb said the channel had uncovered documentary evidence showing that John Darwin had decided to come back to England because he was having trouble staying in Panama.
"We discovered an email," the article begins, without giving any explanation of how the message was obtained.
Sky's public interest defense immediately drew skepticism from British legal experts.
David Allen Green, media lawyer at Preiskel & Co., said that there was no such thing as a public interest defense as far as Britain's Computer Misuse Act was concerned.
"It is not possible for the editor of any news organization to authorize criminal acts," said Green, who's been a frequent critic Murdoch's News Corp.
Britain's Crown Prosecution Service can decide, however, that it wouldn't serve the public interest to file charges.
"As Sky News took the hacked emails to the police themselves, it appears that any prosecution was decided not to be in public interest," he said in a message posted to Twitter.
The revelation, first reported in Britain's Guardian newspaper, is a further headache for Murdoch, whose international media empire has spent the better part of a year in the spotlight over widespread illegal behavior at his now-defunct News of the World tabloid.
News Corp. owns a 39.1 percent stake in BSkyB, which owns Sky News, and Murdoch was forced to abandon a potentially lucrative bid for full control of the broadcaster after the scandal boiled over in July.
His son James stepped down Tuesday as BSkyB's chairman.
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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
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