Rupert Murdoch’s son James was recalled by parliament this week to explain “inconsistencies” in his earlier testimony over the phone-hacking scandal, which has already led to the closure of the News of the World tabloid. It is certainly clear that so far the Murdoch empire has treated parliament with little more than “contempt”, says Philip Stephens in the Financial Times. Yet the truth is that the exact detail of “who knew what and when” is almost a sideshow now – “the damage has been done”.
The original crimes and subsequent cover ups reveal a family “out of control”. Whether innocent or not, the Murdochs, both junior and senior, were clearly culpable. Either they were fully aware of the hacking taking place on their watch, in which case they were complicit in illegal activity, or they didn’t and so are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty as the heads of a global media empire.
At the heart of this sorry mess is a “tragedy for the son and the family”, says Peter Preston in The Observer. Anyone who doubted it in the summer must now surely realise that “James Murdoch can never sit at his father’s desk”. No “sentient shareholder” is going to sit back and let the Murdoch family run the show any longer. It’s arguably worst for Rupert Murdoch – the cost of this scandal so far includes the demise of News of the World, “some $90m gone, a reputation and influence lost, [and] a family at war”. It turns out that hacking can damage “your health, wealth, your nearest and dearest”.
This will not end with the Murdochs, says Tim Worstell in Forbes. The enquiry has yet to “examine evidence that other newspaper groups might have been doing the same thing”. It is generally assumed in London that “all the tabloid press
was up to these tricks” and maybe even some broadsheets. Other former editors should be worried.