Replacing Rebekah Brooks is the start of the process of cleansing News Corporation.
FOR AN organisation that prides itself on an omnipotent sense of its readers’ and viewers’ hopes and fears, News Corporation’s response to the phone-hacking crisis has been remarkable for being so behind the tide.
Even now, with today’s apologia in the UK press, it is focused on its problems in Britain, when bigger storm clouds are gathering in the US.
Les Hinton, the chief executive of Murdoch-owned Dow Jones, who was executive chairman of News International when the News of the Worldwas hacking the phones of anyone who found themselves within sniffing distance of a minor news story, resigned his post yesterday but still faces scrutiny.
His role in the settlements handed out to civil litigants such as Gordon Taylor, the former chief exutive of the UK’s Professional Footballers’ Association, whose silence over the potential crimes perpetrated against him was secured with a cheque for Stg£700,000, is now being questioned.
Even more seriously, if he is shown to have known about corrupt payments to London police officers, that would be a felony in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Worst of all, the FBI has launched an investigation into accusations that News of the Worldjournalists asked a former New York police officer for the phone records of relatives of 9/11 victims.
If that allegation is shown to have been true, one thing is certain: Fox News is finished. The emotional supercharge of 9/11 in the US is many times greater than that of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in the UK.
Even Republicans would join the clamour for News Corp to be stripped of the 27 federal licences it holds under the banner of the Fox Broadcasting Company.
News Corp’s US interests are more valuable than its British and Australian operations; if the US business started to crumble, that would surely lead to the break-up of the company. It seems the corporation has belatedly woken up to the seriousness of the situation. It has appointed Edelman, a global communications company that specialises in crisis management, to manage the fallout.
But is it all too late? James Murdoch’s bid to lead the company after his father is surely in ruins. Rupert Murdoch may reputedly regard Rebekah Brooks as the “daughter he never had”, but one of the four daughters he does have, Elisabeth, reportedly said the former NI chief executive had “f***ed the company”.
With UK parliamentary hearings due next week, the hawks circling in the US and Rupert Murdoch appearing to have lost his legendary sure footing, the prospects for News Corp are looking grim. It must now be a serious prospect that the Murdoch brand has been so toxic that the company will have to be cleansed of the name that made it. The appointment of Tom Mockridge to run News International is the start of that process.
One thing is clear: there is much more to come. Commentators have compared the crisis to Watergate; Carl Bernstein, the reporter whose revelations helped depose a US president, says the events of the past week “are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event”. – (Guardian service)