British Minister Concedes Sympathy to Murdoch TV Bid

With his career in the balance, Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt said at a judicial inquiry into the British media that he had been personally sympathetic to a bid by Rupert Murdoch to take over Britain’s most lucrative pay-television network, but that he did not act with improper bias.

Hunt, 45, was responsible for overseeing the regulatory processes for the $12 billion bid for the 61 percent of the British Sky Broadcasting network, or BSkyB, that Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation did not already own, and held the ultimate authority to approve it. Last July, Murdoch withdrew the bid amid widespread outrage over the phone hacking scandal, which has enveloped two newspapers in Murdoch’s British stable and shaken his global media empire. At the inquiry, headed by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, Hunt faced intense questioning over e-mails, phone calls, text messages and other communications with Murdoch, his son James and News Corporation executives that suggested he was sympathetic to the bid. Confronted with the cascade of supportive communications that flowed between his office and a Murdoch lobbyist — and in one case, with James Murdoch himself — Hunt admitted that he had strongly favored the takeover but insisted that he had set aside his own bias when taking on the “quasi-judicial” decision.