The person who headed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.’s British newspaper division has finally resigned. You can say “finally” because Murdoch reportedly looked upon Rebekah Brooks as one of the family and had resisted calls for her corporate scalp so far. But no more:
Rebekah Brooks resigned as chief executive of News Corp.’s British newspaper unit on Friday, yielding to political and investor pressure over a phone hacking scandal undermining Rupert Murdoch’s media empire on both sides of the Atlantic.
The 43-year-old Brooks, a former editor of the scandal-hit News of the World newspaper and of the flagship tabloid the Sun, was a close confidante of Murdoch, and has been under intense pressure to step down from her role since the phone-hacking scandal began last week.
She served as the first female editor of the News of the World newspaper between 2000 and 2003, the time of the most explosive allegation to hit Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire, and she has been in charge of News International’s four British newspapers since 2007.
Brooks has been the target of intense anger over the past week as she kept her job while hundreds of News of the World employees were let go when the newspaper shut its doors.
“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 an email to colleagues, which was released by News International.
“I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate. This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavors to fix the problems of the past,” she said in the statement.
Throughout the scandal, Brooks has denied knowledge of illegal behavior at the paper. She will be replaced by Tom Mockridge, the head of News Corp.’s Sky Italia division.
Time’s Catherine Mayer tries to answer the question: what took her so long and why? Some excerpts:
In an affair that intrigues and baffles, perhaps the most puzzling question was this: why on earth was Britain’s highest-ranking redhead after Prince Harry still clinging on to her job at the helm of News International, News Corporation’s London-based subsidiary—and why did Rupert Murdoch seem so determined to keep her there? Those questions have not gone away though the mogul has finally accepted his CEO’s resignation.
…..Here are two possible explanations, both plausible—and both apparently contradictory. The first is the domino theory. Knock down Brooks and who might fall next? James Murdoch, hitherto seen as a strong contender to succeed his father at the pinnacle of News Corp., has oversight of News International, the company at the eye of the storm.
The second is that Brooks, far from being the human shield for James Murdoch, is regarded as one of the family, at least by its patriarch. The day after the News of the World’s highly regarded political editor Ian Kirby learned he was out of a job—an unreported aspect of this story is that the News of the World employed some very good journalists as well as some who were neither good nor recognizably journalists—I asked him about working for Brooks, or Rebekah Wade as she was before her 2009 second marriage. Kirby said that staff knew she was “central to [Rupert Murdoch’s] plans in the future even before she joined us.” ….
The admiration is by no means universal. The Daily Telegraph reports that Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth told unnamed friends that Brooks “[expletive deleted] the company”; erstwhile friends of Brooks, including Prime Minister David Cameron, had publicly cut her loose; her enemies are gleeful. The enigma about her role—in the drama, in the Murdoch empire and the heart of the family—remains.
Under fire and pressure, Murdoch and Brooks have agreed to testify before Parliament and here in the U.S. the FBI is opening an investigation into whether News Corp. violated any laws here.
So some of the enigma may remain about Brooks — but more will increasingly become known about the operations of News Corp. Although some who support Murdoch have begun to suggest that he is partly under fire for his conservative political views, in fact, his company stands accused of allegations that go beyond any leveled at a news corporation. For more background GO HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.