Rebekah Brooks resigned as chief executive of News Corp’s British newspaper unit yesterday, yielding to political and investor pressure over a phone hacking scandal undermining Rupert Murdoch’s media empire on both sides of the Atlantic.
The 43-year-old Brooks, a former editor of the scandal-hit News of the World newspaper and of the flagship tabloid the Sun, was a close confidante of Murdoch, who had signaled her importance to him when he flew into London to manage the crisis at the News International subsidiary.
The public disgust that erupted over reports that one of News Corp’s newspapers had hacked into the voicemails of murder victims has so far forced Murdoch to shut down the News of the World and pull a US$12 billion bid to buy the shares he does not own in British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
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Murdoch, 80, long courted by Britain’s political elite, faces a showdown with parliament on Tuesday when lawmakers on the media committee grill him, his son James, 38, as well as Brooks to find out more about the phone hacking practices.
Tom Mockridge, CEO of the company’s Italian pay TV arm Sky Italia, will replace Brooks, who spent more than two decades at the newspaper company. Analysts may welcome the New Zealander’s background in television, an area in which News Corp is keen to expand, as well as his lack of direct involvement in the scandal-hit British newspaper business during the past decade.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as his Labour opponents, had said Brooks should have quit. Cameron said last week that an initial offer by her to resign should have been accepted. On Thursday, an influential Saudi investor in News Corp said he agreed.
Brooks, whose youth, mane of red hair and sharp tongue have helped give her a high public profile in Britain, said in a message to staff: “My desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate. This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past. Therefore I have given Rupert and James Murdoch my resignation. While it has been a subject of discussion, this time my resignation has been accepted.”
Rupert Murdoch struck a defiant tone yesterday, saying his media empire would recover from a scandal over alleged phone hacking crimes at the News of the World and an FBI inquiry into similar allegations in the US.
Murdoch has denied that News Corp was drawing up plans to separate its newspaper holdings, which are at the heart of the controversy, from the rest of the media company.
The Murdochs were forced to agree to appear before parliament after Cameron said they should attend and as politicians across the political spectrum united in denouncing the hacking that initially had seemed to focus on celebrities and politicians but has become seen as far more widespread.
Murdoch said lies had been told about his company in the British parliament and that he wanted to put the record straight: “We think it’s important to absolutely establish our integrity in the eyes of the public,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
British Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable, on BBC radio, said of the swift volte-face by politicians lining up to condemn the Murdochs: “It is a little bit like the end of a dictatorship when everybody suddenly discovers they were against the dictator.”
Cable lost responsibility for media policy in December last year after he was taped saying he had “declared war on Murdoch.”
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