The newspaper is dead, but the outrage and backpedaling continues. With no end in sight to the News of the World phone hacking scandal, News International chairman Rupert Murdoch Friday visited the family of Milly Dowler, the murdered girl whose voicemail his reporters illegally accessed, to apologize in person.
Murdoch also prepared a full-page apology to run in UK newspapers this Saturday and accepted the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the embattled former editor of the News of the World and CEO of News International.
“We are sorry,” reads the ad, which is signed by Murdoch alone. “The News of the World was in the business of holding others to account. It failed when it came to itself.” A twitpic of the ad, taken by a producer at Murdoch’s British satellite channel Sky News, was quickly splashed across the Internet. Until this week, Murdoch was bidding for full ownership of the satellite system that Sky News is broadcast on, BSkyB.
Leaving aside the ad’s unfortunate use of the royal “we,” it seems doubtful whether any of these apologies — and even Brooks’s scalp — can stem the tide of the phone hacking scandal. Murdoch and his son, James, still have to testify before Parliament Tuesday. Opposition leaders smell blood in the water. Prime Minister David Cameron, still smarting from the arrest of his former communications chief Andy Coulson, another ex-NOTW editor, is looking to do all he can to distance himself from Murdoch.
And the London Metropolitan Police investigation into the phone hacking has claimed its ninth arrest — a former NOTW executive editor who until recently was employed by police as a PR consultant. With such a tangled web of police and newspaper corruption, the arrests and the investigation aren’t likely to slow any time soon.
Even Murdoch’s ad seems to recognize he’s mired in this scandal for some time to come. “I realize that simply apologizing is not enough,” it reads. “In the coming days, as we take further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused, you will hear more from us.”
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