Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”, MPs have said.
The UK culture committee said that the News Corporation chief exhibited “wilful blindness” to what was going on in his media empire and “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.
The MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee found News of the World and News International corporately misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking.
Three former NI senior executives – former executive chairman Les Hinton, ex-legal manager Tom Crone and former NOTW editor Colin Myler – misled the 2009 Parliamentary inquiry into phone-hacking, the MPs added.
The Committee dismissed as “simply astonishing” suggestions Murdoch and his son James only realised phone hacking was not confined to ‘one rogue reporter’ in December 2010.
But the committee was split six to four with Tory members refusing to endorse the report and branding it “partisan”.
Conservative Louise Mensch called it “a real great shame” that the report’s credibility had potentially been “damaged” as a result, with the report carried by Labour and Lib Dem members backing it.
News Corp said in a statement it was “carefully reviewing” the report and would “respond shortly”, adding: “The company fully acknowledges significant wrongdoing at News of the World and apologises to everyone whose privacy was invaded.”
The committee of MPs began its inquiry in July 2011 in the wake of fresh revelations about the extent of hacking at the tabloid newspaper, with reported victims including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings.
It heard evidence from Murdoch and his son James, and has now concluded that the notion that a hands-on proprietor like Rupert Murdoch had “no inkling” that wrongdoing was widespread at the News of the World was “simply not credible”.
It noted that the newspaper mogul had “excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail when it suited him”, and added: “On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.”
News Corp as a whole was guilty of “huge failings of corporate governance” and, throughout, its instinct had been “to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators”, the committee said.
And it concluded: “Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth.”
The committee raised the possibility of a vote in the House of Commons about whether witnesses had been in contempt of Parliament, and if so, what punishment should be imposed.
It said it would table a motion inviting the House to endorse its conclusions.
