A judge is to question Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, in the High Court following the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
Lord Justice Leveson will hold the inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice and is likely to call up a number of senior politicians, including the prime minister, David Cameron.
The inquiry, which was ordered by Mr Cameron earlier this year, will formally begin in October. Lord Justice Leveson has invited several potential witnesses to attend.
It is expected that Rupert and James Murdoch and the former editors of the News of the World, Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, will be called.
A series of seminars will open the inquiry, dealing with topics such as the law and ethics of journalism as well as press regulation and freedom of the press.
Lord Justice Leveson has admitted that the inquiry may take up to 12 months to complete.
Meanwhile, the names of News of the World journalists who ordered a private detective to hack into the mobile phones of public figures will not be publicly disclosed after the police intervened.
Glenn Mulcaire, who was hired by the paper, was ordered by the high court to reveal the identity of those at the paper who asked him to illegally intercept messages on the phones of Elle Macpherson, Max Clifford and four others.
He was also ordered to pass on these names to Steve Coogan in compliance with the initial court order.
However, Mr Coogan has been stopped from revealing these names on the grounds that doing so could potentially compromise Scotland Yard’s investigation into the phone hacking scandal.
Mr Mulcaire has already served a prison sentence as a result of the 2007 phone-hacking court case.
