James Murdoch leaving News International position
Scandal-plagued son exits News Corp.’s newspaper division; brother may take over
LONDON – Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corp., announced Wednesday that his son, James, had stepped down as executive chairman of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary that is embroiled in layers of overlapping police and judicial inquiries into phone hacking and illegal payments to the police.
A statement from News Corp. depicted the step as part of James Murdoch’s move to the company’s new york headquarters, announced a year ago. But many media analysts said the move seemed to reflect the more recent travails of News International, whose newspapers include The Sun, The Times of London and The Sunday Times of London.
In July, Rupert and James Murdoch sat side by side at a British parliamentary inquiry as legislators de- manded to know the full extent of a phone-hacking scandal at The News of the World, a weekly tabloid newspaper that News International shut down last year. The company had initially claimed the hacking was the work of a single rogue reporter.
But since then the scandal has spread and News International has begun paying settlement money to scores of celebrities whose voice mail accounts were broken into.
The News Corp. statement Wednesday said that Tom Mockridge, chief executive of News International, would continue in his role and report to Chase Carey, president of News Corp.
“We are all grateful for James’s leadership at News International and across Europe and Asia, where he has made lasting contributions to the group’s strategy,” the elder Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of the parent company, said in a statement.
Rupert murdoch saidj ames would now focus on the company’s pay-television businesses and its international operations. James Murdoch was named News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer last year, and he cut more ties in London by stepping down from the board of drugmaker Glaxosmithkline.
“I deeply appreciate the dedication of my many talent- ed colleagues at News International,” James Murdoch said in the statement. “News International is now in a strong position to build on its successes in the future.”
Earlier this month, Rupert Murdoch flew to London to restore morale at his battered British outpost. When he visited the newsroom of The Sun, Murdoch was accompanied by his son Lachlan, rather than by James, as he ordered an end to the suspension of reporters and editors caught up in the hacking scandal. He also unveiled plans for a new Sunday edition of The Sun, which made its first appearance this week.
The presence of Lachlan suggested to media analysts that James – who had been the heir apparent and overall head of British newspaper operations until the phonehacking scandal that erupted last summer – may have ceded his place to his older brother. Lachlan, a one-time heir apparent himself, had a falling-out with News Corp. executives in 2005.
“James Murdoch has been carrying the can for a number of matters which remain under police investigation,” said Claire Enders, a media analyst in London. “There is also a family dynamic, with a greater control of James’s activities in New York than in his own space in Europe.”