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“We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” the cross-party culture committee said in its long-awaited report on the scandal yesterday.
It said that there had been huge failures in corporate governance which raised questions about the competence of “News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors, including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch, should ultimately take responsibility,” the committee said in its 121-page report.
“If at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye to what was going on in his companies and publications,” it said.
The committee, which approved the report by a majority of six to four, scolded News Corp for misleading the British parliament and trying to cover up illegal phone hacking at the tabloid, News of the World, which Murdoch closed down in disgrace in July last year.
The report singled out former News International executive chairman Les Hinton, former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone and the newspaper’s final editor Colin Myler as having misled the committee.
News Corporation in a written statement said it “is carefully reviewing the Select Committee’s report and will respond shortly”.
“The Company fully acknowledges significant wrongdoing at News of the World and apologises to everyone whose privacy was invaded.”
Murdoch and his son, who was News International’s chairman and chief executive at the time, both gave evidence to the committee on July 19 last year, when Murdoch senior was attacked with a foam pie by a protester.
The report may force James Murdoch, once heir apparent to the media empire, to sever his last ties with Britain’s biggest satellite TV firm BSkyB.
James was forced to resign as executive chairman of News International in February last year. He later also stepped down as chairman of BSkyB, but remains on its board.
The committee’s report, entitled “News International and Phone-Hacking”, said senior executives at the company had misled their investigation.
The panel said it was now for parliament’s lower House of Commons to decide “what punishment should be imposed” on those it thinks have treated the committee with contempt.
Murdoch has apologised for the scandal but told the Leveson inquiry into press ethics last week that senior staff at his British newspaper publisher had hidden the hacking scandal from him.
The 39-year-old James has also apologised for failing to get to the bottom of the scandal but said he was kept in the dark by staff at the paper.
Both Rupert and James Murdoch have put the blame on the journalists and in particular on the News of the World’s former lawyer Tom Crone and former editor Colin Myler. — Al Jazeera.
Online Reporter