MEDIA magnate Rupert Murdoch last night admitted there had been a ''cover-up'' over phone hacking at News International, that he had failed, and that he deeply regretted it.



Mr Murdoch said he was ''misinformed and shielded'' from what was going on at the former tabloid, the News of the World: ''I do blame one or two people for that, who perhaps I shouldn't name, for all I know they may be arrested.



''There is no question in my mind, maybe even the editor, but certainly beyond that someone took charge of a cover-up which we were victim to, and I regret [that].''



Asked where the ''culture of cover-up'' had come from, Mr Murdoch said, ''I think from within the News of the World, there were one or two very strong characters there who I think had been there many, many, many years and were friends of the journalists, or the person I'm thinking of was a friend of the journalists and a drinking pal and a clever lawyer, and forbade them ... this person forbade people to go and report to [chief executive Rebekah] Brooks or to [my son] James.''



He said there was no attempt at cover-up at his level, or for several levels below him.



''That's not to excuse it on our behalf at all. I take it extremely seriously that that situation had arisen.''



He said, ''I also have to say that I failed, and I'm sorry about it.''



He said he was guilty of not having paid enough attention to the News of the World all the time he had owned it because he was more interested in the excitement of building a new newspaper and in the problems of The Times and The Sunday Times.



''All I can do is apologise to a lot of people including all the innocent people at the News of the World who have lost their jobs as a result of that.''



He said he had spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hired outside law firms to investigate the phone-hacking scandal but that he should have taken over the matter himself in 2007, when the royal reporter of the News of the World, Clive Goodman, wrote a letter saying others were involved. ''I should have gone in and thrown all the damn lawyers out of the place and seen Mr Goodman one-on-one — he had been an employee a long time — and cross-examined him myself and made up my mind whether he was telling the truth.



''If I had reached the conclusion he was telling the truth, I would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today.''



He said ''the business of'' the News of the World ''is a serious blot on my reputation''. He killed the paper because there had been a nationwide response to the news that the paper had hacked the phone of a murdered schoolgirl and ''you could feel the blast coming in the window''.



''I would say it succinctly: I panicked, but I am glad I did. I'm sorry I didn't close it years before and introduce a Sunday Sun.''



Mr Murdoch said he thought he had never met Jeremy Hunt, the government minister now under fire following leaks from his office while he was arbitrating the Murdoch bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB.



''I don't believe I ever met him. I am not sure whether he came to a dinner once a couple of years ago, but no, I certainly didn't discuss [the bid with him].''



He said he did not discuss with his son James whether Mr Hunt would be favourable towards the bid.



Asked about the 163 pages of emails between Mr Hunt's office and the office of Fred Michel, public affairs adviser to News International, Mr Murdoch said he thought Mr Michel might have exaggerated.



Mr Murdoch said the company would have achieved the Sky takeover had it not been caught up in the phone-hacking scandal.



Mr Murdoch also reaffirmed his previous evidence that former prime minister Gordon Brown had ''declared war'' on his media empire when it switched its endorsement to the Conservative party and that he appeared to be ''unbalanced'' at the time.



Mr Brown had strongly denied there had been any such conversation.



Mr Murdoch said he gave his evidence under oath, ''and I stand by every word of it''.