The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Murdoch apologizes: ‘I failed’
Publisher ‘very sorry’ for newspaper’s actions in hacking scandal.
LONDON — After a day of testimony at a British judicial inquiry over his ties, friendships and disputes with British politicians, Rupert Murdoch returned to the witness stand Thursday, saying he apologized for failing to take measures to avert the hacking scandal that has convulsed his media outpost here.
“I also have to say that I failed,” Murdoch told the socalled Leveson inquiry. “I am very sorry about it.”
He said he had not paid adequate attention to the newspaper at the center of the scandal, The News of the World tabloid, which Murdoch closed in July as the affair widened.
“It was an omission by me,” he said, adding that he wished to apologize “to a lot of people, including all the innocent people” at The News of the World, a Sunday tabloid, “who lost their jobs.”
Murdoch’s appearance of- fered rare public scrutiny of one of the world’s most powerful media tycoons, who is usually shielded from unwelcome attention by his power, influence and wealth. His son James testified at the inquiry for five hours on Tuesday.
Overall, the questioning by the inquiry this week seemed almost deferential and genteel, in contrast to the Murdochs’ appearances before Parliament last year. There, in November, one questioner, Tom Watson, likened James Murdoch to a Mafia boss — a comparison the younger Murdoch called offensive and untrue. In July, when the two men appeared together at the parliamentary inquiry, a protester hurled a foam pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face.
On Thursday, however, the questioning seemed not to have struck any major target in the elder Murdoch’s carefully constructed verbal defenses.
Casting himself as a victim, Rupert Murdoch coupled his apology with suggestions that there had been a cover-up “from within The News of the World” to hide the extent of the phone hacking scandal from the owners’ top executives. And, like his son in testimony Tuesday, he seemed to blame subordinates for not alerting him to the practices the newspaper used to secure its scoops.
Since the scandal erupted last summer, Rupert Murdoch, 81, has been forced to undertake once unthinkable measures, like closing The News of the World and abandoning a $12 billion satellite television bid by News Corp., as questions have deepened about the behavior and ethics of editors and managers working for him.
Asked why he had closed The News of the World, he said that after disclosures of hacking the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a teenager who was abducted and killed in 2002, “I panicked.”
“But I’m glad I did,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t close it years ago and put a Sunday Sun in.” Since closing The News of the World, Murdoch has introduced a Sunday edition of the daily tabloid, The Sun.