The 81-year-old Murdoch gave evidence to the British parliament’s media committee last July in the wake of one of his newspapers, the now-defunct News of the World, illegally hacking into people’s mobile phones in the guise of newsgathering.
LONDON: In a severe indictment of media baron Rupert Murdoch, a British parliamentary committee report on Tuesday said he is unfit to be the chairman of News Corporation, the $60bn New York-based conglomerate. The House of Commons select committee said Murdoch “is not fit to exercise the stewardship of a major international company” in its report, ‘News International and phone-hacking’. News International is News Corp’s British subsidiary.
The 11-member committee has left it to the House of Commons to decide whether News International committed contempt of parliament and, if so, what punishment should be imposed on the organisation. “The behaviour of News International and certain witnesses in this (phone-hacking) demonstrated contempt for that (select committee) system in the most blatant fashion,” said the report.
News Corp is the biggest media concern in the United Kingdom with vast interests in print and television. The 81-year-old Murdoch gave evidence to the British parliament’s media committee last July in the wake of one of his newspapers, the now-defunct News of the World, illegally hacking into people’s mobile phones in the guise of newsgathering.
The committee said, “On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee, we conclude that, if at all times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.”
