News Corp. Scandal Claims Senior Executives as Probes Widen

News Corp.’s phone-hacking crisis claimed two top newspaper executives as Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch defended his handling of the scandal and the FBI began a U.S. probe of the company.

Les Hinton, chairman of News International in the years the alleged hacking occurred, stepped down as head of the Dow Jones division yesterday. That followed the exit of News International CEO Rebekah Brooks. She was editor of the News of the World, the newspaper implicated in the scandal, from 2000 to 2003.