Quote:

---

Rupert Murdoch wrongfooted from the start by MPs' questions

Father and son, Rupert and James Murdoch faced MPs with the aim of presenting themselves as an empire in transition. But Rupert's performance was so halting to begin with that any News Corp shareholders watching would be forgiven for hoping that a change at the top could not come soon enough.

Murdoch senior had hoped to begin by reading out to the committee a statement, apologising for hacking into phones such as that once owned by murdered school girl Milly Dowler.

But he was wrongfooted when the first question went to James.

This was so obviously not in the script that the 80-year-old had to interject: "This is the most humble day of my life" - a statement so forced into the testimony that it did not come across as contrite.

Tom Watson, the Labour MP who knows most about phone hacking, then focused relentlessly on the ageing mogul, refusing to allow the clearly better briefed James to intervene.

Rupert struggled with the answers, at times clearly unable to hear. There were marathon pauses, mystified looks, the beating of the table to emphasise a point, and several attempts to defer to James – all denied by Watson.

The MP referred to a Thatcher lecture given by Rupert Murdoch in October, where he said that News Corp would "vigorously pursuing the truth, and we will not tolerate wrongdoing".

In the light of all that had emerged since, the MP asked: "If you were not lying then, somebody lied to you. Who was it?"

The News Corp chief executive could only respond: "I don't know. That is what the police are investigating, and that is what I am looking into."

It was a characteristically unclear answer, and Rupert Murdoch did not look like he was acting ignorant. Behind Murdoch senior sat his newly appointed in-house clean up chief from New York, Joel Klein, who looked edgy, while his wife Wendi sat shoulders cross, unhappy and defensive.

It was not a moment to appear out of touch. Earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg News, the normally cautious financial news wire reported that News Corp had considered a succession plan that would see Rupert kicked upstairs, though remain as chairman, while his number two, Chase Carey, would become chief executive.

However, sources close to the situation, insisted that scenario was incorrect, saying the subject of a reshuffle "was not under active discussion".

James Murdoch had considerably more information at his disposal in answering the committee, able to put together the lengthy answers that both appeared to satisfy the MPs, and which went on sufficiently long to leave the committee members struggling for a follow-up.

However, his answers stuck tightly and carefully to a brief, which was aimed to demonstrate that he knew little about phone hacking at the News of the World until towards the very end of 2010.

James said he decided to settle the Gordon Taylor hacking case in 2008 (for an estimated £700,000) on "the advice from Mr [Colin] Myler and Mr [Tom] Crone", the now departed News of the World editor and his chief lawyer. Their advice was oral, and Murdoch was told it was "a matter in the past", he said, adding: "The police as well had closed their case and said there is no new evidence here."

It was a line of defence that rested on the premise that the younger Murdoch, the chairman of News International, the immediate parent of the News of the World, did not have the full picture of what was going on at NoW.

However, it fell to his father to more explictly apportion praise and blame. He trusted Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton, a News Corp man for 52 years, "with his life", even though both resigned in the past week.

By contrast, Myler was "appointed by Mr Hinton to find out what the hell was going on", according to Rupert, and he commissioned a 2007 legal enquiry. And later Murdoch senior referred to Jon Chapman, News International's little known former chief lawyer, who "had that report for a number of years" without it emerging internally, or even to the police.

Police investigators, journalists, and disaffected former staff, will seek to challenge that narrative.

In an early sign, Myler said that, contrary to what the committee were told by the Murdochs, he had no part in commissioning or reviewing any internal investigation, which was handled by the lawyers at Harbottle and Lewis. Nor were, he said, the conclusions shared with him.

What the Murdochs were prepared to concede was they had lost control of the News of the World, which Rupert Murdoch said was "less than 1% of the company", a paper whose editor he might only ring every other week, although former editors would probably dispute that point. Perhaps, Rupert conceded, it was title that "he lost sight of" because it was so small relative to the size of News Corp; the problem for both father and son, regardless of the all the chatter about the succession, is whether the media empire that the octagenarian has created is too large for its management and its Murdochs to be able to govern effectively. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/19/rupert-murdoch-wrongfooted
-start-mps

---