Rupert Murdoch's UK news channel Sky News has admitted twice authorising its reporters to hack into computers in a statement released April 5, The Daily Mail reported.

The potentially embarrassing revelation is a fresh blow to the media tycoon and risks shattering his hopes acquiring full control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Sky News said that in one case it broke into emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, the so-called “canoe couple”.

Darwin, 61, faked his own death in a canoeing accident in 2002 so his wife, 60, could claim hundreds of thousands of pounds from insurance policies and pension schemes.

In a separate case, Mr Tubb was authorised to access the emails of a suspected paedophile and his wife, although this investigation did not result in any material being published or broadcast.

Sky News is part of BSkyB, which is 39 per cent owned by Mr Murdoch's News Corporation.

The revelation, first reported in Britain's Guardian newspaper, is a further headache for Mr Murdoch. His international media empire has spent the better part of a year in the spotlight over widespread illegal behaviour at his now-defunct Sunday tabloid the News of the World. Mr Murdoch was forced to abandon a potentially lucrative bid for full control of BSkyB after the scandal boiled over in July.

It is not the firs time that a email hacking has been uncovered at a News Corporation business. The Leveson Inquiry into press standards has heard that former Times reporter Patrick Foster hacked into the emails of Lancashire detective Richard Horton in 2009 to unmask him as the author of the anonymous NightJack blog.

James Harding, editor of the Times, which is owned by Mr Murdoch, told the inquiry in February that he 'sorely regretted' the intrusion and 'expected better' of his paper.

Mr Murdoch's son James stepped down on Tuesday as BSkyB's chairman.