The humbling of Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch was grilled by British lawmakers on the phone-hacking scandal that has badly damaged the News Corp.’s reputation.

What happened

Calling it the “most humble day” of his life, Rupert Murdoch was grilled by British lawmakers this week on the phone-hacking scandal that has badly damaged his company’s reputation and now threatens Murdoch’s control of his global media empire. Sitting alongside his son James, who runs News Corp.’s European operations, the 80-year-old told a parliamentary committee that he was “shocked, appalled, and ashamed” to discover the scale of wrongdoing at his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid. His reporters are accused of stealing phone messages from 4,000 people, including dead soldiers and a murdered 13-year-old girl, and paying police for information. But the billionaire insisted that as CEO of a company with 53,000 employees, he couldn’t be held responsible for the misdeeds of a few journalists. “People I trusted,” he said, “behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay.”

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