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Rupert Murdoch and his media empire may soon be the subject of a US Senate committee investigation in connection with the phone hacking scandal in Britain that has dogged the media mogul for nearly a year now. US Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the powerful US Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, asked British officials this week to divulge whether their investigations into News International have turned-up US victims, or collaborators, in unethical or illegal practices. Rockefeller’s inquiry came a day after news that a British Parliamentary report into the practices of parent company News Corporation concluded, “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” The scathing indictment of the man at the helm of News Corp, which owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal in addition to hundreds of media outlets around the world, has major implications.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. controls 39.1 percent of the major British broadcaster BSkyB, and Labour Party officials are pressuring regulators to reduce Murdoch’s interest in the company in light of their Parliament’s conclusion. Britain’s broadcast regulator, Ofcom, can remove a media license from an owner who is found to not be “fit and proper.” News Corp. dropped a bid for full ownership of BSkyB last year in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that has led to investigations of more than 40 people, and which caused the 168 year old newspaper, News of the World, to shut down. The family of a slain British teenager whose mobile phone was hacked in the case that made the extent of the practice known, won £3 million from News International in September. Their attorney is poised to begin litigating 6 cases here in the US and recently stated, “There are so many American aspects to this, it is difficult to know where to begin.”

GUEST: Ed Pilkington, is the Guardian’s US correspondent, based in New York