Scandal Splinters a Family Business

The News Corporation, the global enterprise controlled by Rupert Murdoch, has a history of living by its own rules and operating beyond consequence. That ended last week. Murdoch, long a spectral presence who made his plays on a chess board of his own making, was brought low before a committee of Parliament composed of people he could not have been bothered with three weeks ago.

In testimony last week, he appeared as a supplicant, a faltering one at that, who interrupted his son James in the opening moments of the hearing, not to correct him, but to tell the members of the committee how sorry he was. He is very sorry. Sorry that one of his tabloids hacked into the voice mail of a 13-year-old murder victim. Sorry that the scandal threatens to derail his plans of succession. And sorry to find himself suddenly in the public stockade. Is he sorry that he and his employees created a culture and a business where all that seemed cricket? Probably not so much.

James Murdoch is done. He and his father both know that. His testimony curdled as he emitted it, and within two days a couple of former News Corporation executives publicly challenged it. The hooks are still in him, as Prime Minister David Cameron made clear when he said James still had “questions to answer.” And so he will, gradually sinking further into the mess he has overseen. Oddly, the News Corporation’s stock began to tick up during the hearings as Rupert Murdoch testified, his large hands thumping as he dropped them to the table. But it was less about his performance than about the clear message that emerged: an era had ended. The family business is splintering. If James is out, as would seem to be the case, will his other offspring, Elisabeth and Lachlan, come swinging into view? I and others doubt that the charms of a global media enterprise being run as a corner grocery store will continue.