Just one day after Rupert and son James Murdoch announced they would testify for the Parliamentary court in London, Rebekah Brooks, the long time chief executive of Murdoch’s British newspaper and media operations, announced her resignation. Murdoch’s media empire is now under serious investigation in the UK and United States over their cascading phone hacking scandal that has led to discovery of other criminal hacking activity, including snooping through the medical and financial records of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Murdoch’s company has now lost a $12 billion deal to acquire Britain’s largest satellite broadcaster and has been forced to shut down the 168 year old newspaper tabloid The News of the World.
Ms. Brooks has worked for the Murdoch family as a “favored daughter” for many years, having been a rising star at News International, one of Murdoch’s subsidiaries that ran several British tabloids, and having close ties with many politicians. After two of her close colleagues were arrested and jailed back in 2006, Brooks has struggled to completely detach herself from the situation. As she said in an email to her staff, “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. Therefore I have given Rupert and James Murdoch my resignation. While it has been a subject of discussion, this time my resignation has been accepted.”
Her resignation follows a demand from Parliament, an especially hurtful blow, as many of the people on the bench calling for her resignation are her former colleagues and close friends. Even Prime Minister David Cameron, once considered a close personal friend of Brooks (does this say anything about his electability and back door media deals?), said that her resignation was the right move for her to make. Even her own staff members believed that her resignation was a little over due: “Our paper was sacrificed to save her career, and now she’s gone as well,” one former employee said, requesting anonymity.
Either way, Ms. Brooks will have to answer questions on the stand for the select committee on culture, media and sport in Parliament, and Prime Minister Cameron is also calling a separate investigation committee, headed by a senior judge. As the scandal continues to unravel, it is hard to discern just how truly widespread the hacking and prying has extended, and what other unethical journalistic practices have become a stronghold for the Murdoch empire. One thing is for sure, politicians will not longer have to set their electability on their relationship with the Murdoch family and Murdoch’s view of them personally and politically.
