Quote: LONDON (Reuters) - Britain was looking for a way out of approving media baron Rupert Murdoch's multi-billion dollar deal to buy broadcaster BSkyB amid a phone-hacking scandal that has damaged the prime minister and raised broader questions about politicians' relations with the media.
Prime Minister David Cameron said legal processes had to be followed, but fired a warning shot at Murdoch, saying his company needed to focus on "clearing up this mess" before thinking about the next corporate move.
His deputy Nick Clegg, from junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, earlier urged Murdoch to reconsider the bid after revelations one of his newspapers hacked into the phones of murder victims and relatives of Britain's war dead.
New allegations on Monday included reports it had bought contact details for the British royal family from a policeman and tried to buy private phone records of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Police declined comment.
"Do the decent thing, and reconsider, think again about your bid for BSkyB," Clegg told BBC News, addressing Murdoch, after meeting relatives of one of the victims of phone-hacking, a murdered schoolgirl, who said police had kept them in the dark for years.
A spokesman for Cameron, who faces a parliamentary vote on the scandal this week in which Clegg's party could desert him, said Clegg was entitled to his views.
Piling the pressure on Murdoch, who flew to London on Sunday to limit damage to his media empire, U.S. News Corp shareholders suing over the purchase of a business run by Murdoch's daughter filed a revised complaint, saying the British phone hacking scandal reflected how the company's board fails to do its job.
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