News of the World phone hacking scandal finally claims career of Rebekah Brooks

Rebekah Brooks, the for­mer News of the World edi­tor who was sub­se­quent­ly pro­mot­ed to a high-rank­ing posi­tion with­in News Cor­po­ra­tion, has belat­ed­ly announced her res­ig­na­tion, bow­ing to sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure from Par­lia­ment, the pub­lic, and even the com­pa­ny’s shareholders:

Brooks announced her deci­sion to News Inter­na­tion­al staff in Wap­ping just before 10am on Fri­day, say­ing her res­ig­na­tion had been accept­ed by Rupert and James Mur­doch. She said she no longer want­ed to be a “focal point of the debate” sur­round­ing the com­pa­ny’s future and reputation.

She stopped short of issu­ing a per­son­al apol­o­gy. “As chief exec­u­tive of the com­pa­ny, I feel a deep sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty for the peo­ple we have hurt and I want to reit­er­ate how sor­ry I am for what we now know to have tak­en place,” Brooks said in a statement.

Con­sid­er­ing that News of the World and News Inter­na­tion­al were for years engaged in a cov­er-up, her state­ment rings hol­low. Where was her “deep sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty” when News of the World was try­ing to cov­er up its crimes?

The Mur­dochs obvi­ous­ly still have absolute con­fi­dence in her, as an excerpt from James Mur­doch’s memo to News Inter­na­tion­al employ­ees makes clear:

Ear­li­er today, Rebekah Brooks resigned from her posi­tion as CEO. I under­stand her deci­sion and I want to thank her for her 22 years of ser­vice to the com­pa­ny. She has been one of the out­stand­ing edi­tors of her gen­er­a­tion and she can be proud of many accom­plish­ments as an exec­u­tive. We sup­port her as she takes this step to clear her name.

Out­stand­ing? Maybe she was out­stand­ing at pub­lish­ing filth. She cer­tain­ly was not account­able or respon­si­ble as either an exec­u­tive or an editor.

Mean­while, in Aus­tralia, where he is attend­ing a con­fer­ence of jus­tice offi­cials, U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Hold­er con­firmed that a probe of News Cor­po­ra­tion is get­ting under way. For now, it’s a pre­lim­i­nary inquiry:

“There have been mem­bers of Con­gress in the Unit­ed States who have asked us to inves­ti­gate those same alle­ga­tions and we are pro­gress­ing in that regard using the appro­pri­ate Fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies,” Hold­er told reporters.

It’s kind of iron­ic that Hold­er made these com­ments from Aus­tralia, because that’s the coun­try where Rupert Mur­doch hails from, and where the News Cor­po­ra­tion empire began. Mur­doch’s Aus­tralian oper­a­tions have not been impli­cat­ed in the phone hack­ing scan­dal, but the chief exec­u­tive of News Lim­it­ed (the Aus­tralian arm of News Cor­po­ra­tion) has pledged to con­duct “a thor­ough review” of expens­es over the last three years to con­firm that all expen­di­tures were legitimate.