Murdochs abandon ship, announce that News of the World tabloid will shut down

The News of the World, the Rupert Mur­doch-owned tabloid at the cen­ter of the phone-hack­ing scan­dal that has rocked the Unit­ed King­dom, will be shut down fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of this Sun­day’s edi­tion, News Cor­po­ra­tion said today.

The week­ly tabloid is accused of hack­ing into the mobile phones of crime vic­tims, celebri­ties and politi­cians. On Thurs­day, the Met Police said it was seek­ing to con­tact 4,000 pos­si­ble tar­gets named in seized doc­u­ments. The UK’s biggest sell­ing paper has been in cir­cu­la­tion for 168 years. The News of the World, which sells about 2.8 mil­lion copies a week, is famed for its celebri­ty scoops and sex scan­dals, earn­ing it the nick­name, the News of the Screws.

In a state­ment to News of the World employ­ees, James Mur­doch (son of Rupert Mur­doch) admit­ted fault and attempt­ed to explain why News Cor­po­ra­tion was cut­ting the paper loose.

The News of the World is in the busi­ness of hold­ing oth­ers to account. But it failed when it came to itself.

In 2006, the police focused their inves­ti­ga­tions on two men. Both went to jail. But the News of the World and News Inter­na­tion­al failed to get to the bot­tom of repeat­ed wrong­do­ing that occurred with­out con­science or legit­i­mate purpose.

Wrong­do­ers turned a good news­room bad and this was not ful­ly under­stood or ade­quate­ly pursued.

As a result, the News of the World and News Inter­na­tion­al wrong­ly main­tained that these issues were con­fined to one reporter. We now have vol­un­tar­i­ly giv­en evi­dence to the police that I believe will prove that this was untrue and those who act­ed wrong­ly will have to face the consequences.

He went on to say:

This was not the only fault.

The paper made state­ments to Par­lia­ment with­out being in the full pos­ses­sion of the facts. This was wrong.

The Com­pa­ny paid out-of-court set­tle­ments approved by me. I now know that I did not have a com­plete pic­ture when I did so. This was wrong and is a mat­ter of seri­ous regret.

The extra­or­di­nary deci­sion to sac­ri­fice News of the World seems to have been made in the hopes that it will quell ris­ing pub­lic anger in the Unit­ed King­dom against Mur­doch and his media empire. Of course, noth­ing is going to stop the Mur­dochs from turn­ing around and direct­ing addi­tion­al resources into their oth­er prop­er­ties. The Sun, described as the News of the World’s “sta­ble­mate”, is now expect­ed to begin pub­lish­ing on Sun­days. Some Mur­doch crit­ics are already call­ing the deci­sion to close NotW “cyn­i­cal”. And Hacked Off, a group that has been watch­dog­ging News Cor­po­ra­tion, says there still needs to be a full inves­ti­ga­tion.

The announce­ment by News Inter­na­tion­al that this Sun­day’s News of the World will be the last does not alter the need for a full pub­lic inquiry into phone hack­ing and relat­ed matters.

Indeed, James Mur­doch’s state­ment rais­es fur­ther ques­tions about the con­duct of senior fig­ures at the com­pa­ny. We feel that the clo­sure of a 168-year-old title, with the con­se­quent loss of jobs, is a destruc­tive act which actu­al­ly under­lines the need to get to the truth. Hacked Off will con­tin­ue to press for a judge-led pub­lic inquiry, with full pow­ers to establish:

• The extent of the use of ille­gal infor­ma­tion-gath­er­ing meth­ods by the press, direct­ly and through intermediaries;
• The con­duct of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Ser­vice in inves­ti­gat­ing these mat­ters, and its rela­tions with the press;
• The com­mu­ni­ca­tion between press and politi­cians in rela­tion to these matters;
• The con­duct of the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion and of the Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er, and of oth­er rel­e­vant par­ties such as mobile tele­phone companies;
• The lessons to be learned from these events and actions to be tak­en to ensure they are not repeated.

Labour’s Tom Wat­son, one of the more out­spo­ken Mur­doch crit­ics in Par­lia­ment, is sug­gest­ing that there is evi­dence still to be made pub­lic which could impli­cate more of News Cor­po­ra­tion’s prop­er­ties in the scan­dal. If so, that helps explain why the Mur­dochs made an overnight deci­sion to sac­ri­fice News of the World. They’re obvi­ous­ly try­ing to get ready to weath­er what­ev­er fall­out is com­ing down the pike. They seem to have real­ized they can­not escape from this.

Roger Ailes’ Fox Noise Chan­nel deserves the same fate as the News of the World. Actu­al­ly, it’s prob­a­bly more deserv­ing, because its hosts and employ­ees con­tin­ue to mas­quer­ade as a news orga­ni­za­tion when they are real­ly just the unof­fi­cial pro­pa­gan­da arm of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Ailes’ oper­a­tion has delib­er­ate­ly and repeat­ed­ly spread mis­in­for­ma­tion in the hopes of dam­ag­ing pop­u­lar sup­port for Demo­c­ra­t­ic office­hold­ers and weak­en­ing elec­toral prospects for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. As far as we know, they’ve nev­er hacked into peo­ple’s voice­mail box­es, but they cer­tain­ly have done many awful things.

POSTSCRIPT: So we know that many News of the World employ­ees appear to be on the verge of los­ing their jobs. But no News Cor­po­ra­tion exec­u­tives are step­ping down or resign­ing over this.

Rebekah Brooks, a for­mer NotW edi­tor, is keep­ing her job, despite loud calls for her res­ig­na­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom. And Media Mat­ters notes that anoth­er for­mer NotW edi­tor, Les Hin­ton, has faced no scruti­ny at all. He’s now in charge of run­ning the Wall Street Jour­nal here in the U.S. MM’s Eric Boehlert observes:

[P]rior to tak­ing over Murdoch’s Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing jew­el, Hin­ton ran the mogul’s British news­pa­pers, includ­ing News of the World. And Hin­ton ran the news­pa­pers at a time when the tabloid was hack­ing mobile phones at an aston­ish­ing rate.

That in and of itself is a prob­lem, giv­en the week’s extra­or­di­nary events.

But per­haps even more trou­bling is the fact that Hin­ton over­saw News Corp.’s ini­tial inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the phone hack­ing scan­dal and came away con­vinced there was no evi­dence of wide­spread wrong­do­ing in the com­pa­ny, and that the hack­ing had been con­fined to just one reporter.  (The com­pa­ny went to “extra­or­di­nary lengths” to uncov­er any crimes, Hin­ton boast­ed at the time.) And that’s the hap­py line Hin­ton told to mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who pressed him in 2009 about the long-sim­mer­ing controversy.

It sure sounds like Hin­ton was one of the “wrong­do­ers” iden­ti­fied by James Mur­doch in his state­ment. Will he be held to account? Or will the Mur­dochs stand by him as they have stood by Rebekah Brooks?

Anoth­er for­mer NotW edi­tor, Andy Coul­son (who was hired by David Cameron to help man­age his P.R.) is report­ed­ly going to be arrest­ed today, The Guardian is report­ing.  That’s bad news for Cameron’s gov­ern­ment, which now looks irre­spon­si­ble for hav­ing brought Coul­son aboard and defend­ed him from critics.