LONDON  - With the last edition of Britain's News of the World tabloid in hand, Rupert Murdoch arrived at the offices of his UK newspaper division Sunday to face the growing phone-hacking scandal that prompted the paper's closure.

TV footage showed the News Corp. CEO being driven into the east London offices of News International. He was seated in the front passenger seat with a copy of the last issue of the best-selling Sunday tabloid in his hands.

News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch is driven into the News International headquarters in London July 10, 2011. Britain's biggest selling weekly newspaper hit the streets for the last time on Sunday, victim of a phone hacking scandal that has sent tremors through the British political establishment and may cost media baron Rupert Murdoch a lucrative broadcasting deal. [Photo/Agencies]

Britons, too, were snapping up the last edition of the News of the World, after the 168-year-old muckraking paper warked for us, or in our name, fell shamefully short of those standards," read a full-page editorial in the paper. "Quite simply, we lost our way. Phones were hacked, and for that this newspaper is truly sorry."

Allegations the paper's journalists paid police for information and hacked into the voicemails of young murder victims and the grieving families of dead soldiers prompted Murdoch's News International to shut down the tabloid.

The developments have turned up the heat on Britain's media industry amid concerns a police investigation won't stop with the News of the World, and cast new scrutiny on the cozy relationship between British politicians and the tabloid press.

Murdoch, who has long been considered a kingmaker in the British media establishment, is facing a maelstrom of criticism and outrage not just over the new allegations of impropriety at his tabloid, but also the decision to shut the paper and put 200 joth Prime Minister David Cameron conceding politicians developed too cozy a relationship with the tabloid press. Cameron's former communications chief, Andy Coulson, is an ex-editor of the News of the World and was one of three men arrested this week as part of a police investigation into the phone-hacking and corruption allegations.

Cameron has called for a new media regulation system and pledged a public inquiry into what went wrong; the head of Murdoch's UK newspaper operations has alluded that more revelations are yet to come.