‘War criminal’: Ex-UK PM Blair heckled

>> year and still is from jpmorgan, six months after he left office. the man is a war criminal !

>> that protester, as you see there, physically dragged from the court. blair quickly resumed answering questions, defending his close relationship with rupert murdoch and the media.

>> i cannot believe we are the first and only government that has ever wanted to put the best possible gloss on what you're doing. that's a completely different thing from saying that you go out to say things that are deliberate untrue and you bully and you harass journalists and so on.

>> nbc's stephanie gosk joins us live from london with more on this. stephanie , we'll talk more about that protester in a second, because that was really some jaw-dropping television there. but when we talk about what's happening from the testimony today, what more do we learn about this cozy relationship that's alleged between tony blair and rupert murdoch ?

>> well, right out of the gate, thomas, blair addresses that word you just used, cozy. he says he doesn't really like it that a better word can be unhealthy to describe what happens when the media has too much influence over the government. he did say, however, that it makes sense for senior politicians and members of the media to have a close relationship, just in essence, for what they do. but they said that in this country, newspapers, particularly, wield enormous amounts of power. and that when they support a policy or a person that they then are very aggressive about that. and if a politician falls out of favor with a newspaper, with it can be very painful for him, as it was with his relationship with the "daily mail." but this is, specifically, most of the questions were about his relationship with rupert murdoch . and they were very close. in fact, rupert murdoch 's paper, "the sun," which had supported conservative politicians for quite some time, in the late '90s decided to support tony blair , right before he was elected prime minister of this country. thomas?

>> stephanie , when we talk about the security around the courtroom, we all remember when that one protester got in, tried to pie rupert murdoch in the face and was hit by wendy deng , stopped in midmotion there. as we talk about the protester that got in today, what do we say about the security that allowed someone to get in and be able to interrupt in such a capacity.

>> it's important to point out first of all that those two incidents took place if different places. today blair is in a courtroom and the rupert murdoch incident took place in parliament. but it is a public courtroom and people do have access to it and the man wasn't armed. it certainly will raise some questions on how he got in through that door that he got into, but it's an interesting insight into just how divisive tony blair became towards the end of his administration. he really was elected in this -- on this wave of public support. and his decision to go to war with iraq ended up being extremely divisive that was against that war, predominantly.

>> stephanie gosk in london for