By ROBERT BARR and JILL LAWLESSLONDON -- Rupert and James Murdoch said Thursday that they planned to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating Britain's phone hacking scandal - a sudden U-turn that followed an extraordinary rebuff of lawmakers seeking to question them.
A spokeswoman for Murdoch's New York-based News Corp. said that the pair were in the process of confirming their attendance on Tuesday.
"The intention is to go," Miranda Higham said.
Hours earlier, the Murdochs refused to appear at a hearing next week before the committee, which is investigating allegations of phone hacking and bribery by employees of their newspapers.The snub had set up a confrontation between two of Britain's most powerful men and a Parliament once seen as easily bent to his will.
Britain's legislature had already forced them to abandon their ambitions of purchasing highly profitable British Sky Broadcasting network Wednesday after lawmakers from all parties united to demand that News Corp. withdraw its bid.
Witnesses are regularly called to appear before parliamentary committees, which quiz everyone from business leaders to prime ministers on a wide range of issues.
Defiance of a parliamentary summons is illegal, and can in theory be punished with a fine or jail time. In practice, such measures have been all but unknown in modern times; the House of Commons last punished a non-member in 1957.
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