Rupert Murdoch on Thursday admitted there was a “cover-up” at the News of the World over the scale of phone hacking by its journalists and said he wished he had closed it much earlier.
But he denied any personal culpability claiming he and senior executives of his company News International were not told the full facts. “I do blame one or two people for that... someone took charge of a cover up we were victim to and I regret that,” said the 81-year-old media tycoon on the second day of his deposition before a judicial inquiry into media ethics in the wake of the hacking scandal.
'Permanent blot'
Describing what happened at NoW as a “permanent blot” on his career, Mr. Murdoch repeatedly apologised to the victims of the newspaper's tactics and to the “innocent” staff who lost their jobs when he finally closed it last summer. “I am guilty of not having paid enough attention to the News of the World, probably throughout all of the time that we've owned it. I was more interested in the excitement of building a new newspaper and doing other things... it was an omission by me,” he said admitting that he should have probed deeper when the scandal first erupted and the paper's Royal Editor Clive Goodman was jailed in 2007 for hacking the phones of the royal family.
At the time it was claimed that he was the lone “rogue” reporter and there were no other instances of hacking.
Mr. Murdoch said he should have had a “one-on-one” meeting with Goodman and tried to find out more when the latter claimed the practice was widespread. He said the penny really dropped after the revelation that the NoW had hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a teenage schoolgirl who went missing and was found dead.
The Dowler story got “huge publicity” and he “panicked”. He “could feel the blast coming in the window, almost”, he said.
Downing Street, meanwhile, rejected calls for an inquiry into Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's role in passing crucial inside information to News International about the Murdochs' £8-billion controversial bid for BSkyB.
Keywords: Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, phone-hacking row, Leveson Inquiry
@ Rama Seshadri, well said! Murdoch is known for all you have said. I want to tag the British parliament which was working hand in glove with him. Having enjoyed all the perks the media moughal offered them, they are now induling in a hogwash to deflect the attention away from them. I am sure after this afair blows over, the same gentlemen would compete against each other to curry favours on Mr. Murdoch. As Pandit Nehru once noted, "The English have a knack of bending aside to led the storm pass"
The world knows Rupert Murdoch as a ruthless, egoistic media baron,
who knew broke the law, threw all ethics & morals to the winds, in the
singular pursuit of wealth & power. His former employees have
testified under oath, that he had knowledge of the phone hacking, and
the goings on. To claim to be a "victim" is a shame, and an insult to
everyone's intelligence .
As someone who has closely followed the inquiry, I know this - Mr
Murdoch is a crafty, and cunning businessman. He had selective
amnesia, when he said " I don't recall that", when he was clear on
other questions, which were not relevant to the character of his
business. That he was close to the conservatives in UK or the right
wingers in the US, that he had direct access to 10 Downing street,
speaks volumes of his reach and power. To say that "he never asked any
prime minister for any favor" is hardly believable.
The sad part though, is that he will get away with all this wrong!
doing.
Please Email the Editor