Scandal-hit News of the World to shut

Britain’s News of the World tabloid will print the last edition in its 168-year history on Sunday following a devastating scandal over phone hacking, owner Rupert Murdoch’s son James said yesterday.

The shock move comes after Britain’s biggest-selling Sunday newspaper was hit by allegations that it had hacked the phones of a murdered girl, the relatives of dead soldiers and hundreds of celebrities, politicians and royals.

“Having consulted senior colleagues, I have decided that we must take further decisive action with respect to the paper. This Sunday will be the last issue of the News of the World,” James Murdoch said in a statement.

“In addition, I have decided that all of the News of the World’s revenue this weekend will go to good causes,” added Mr Murdoch, the chairman of News International, the British newspaper wing of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Mr Murdoch admitted that the paper, known for its racy diet of sex, scandal and celebrity news but also for its undercover investigations, had lied to Parliament and to the public in its earlier statements on the long-running scandal.

“The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself,” Mr Murdoch said in the two-page statement, which was addressed to News International staff.

James Murdoch said the jailing in 2007 for phone hacking of the paper’s royal correspondent Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had failed to cure the problem.

“Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued,” he said.

The death blow for the tabloid came yesterday when veterans’ charit, the Royal British Legion and a flood of businesses joined a boycott of the newspaper. The deepening scandal threatened a bid by Rupert Murdoch for control of pay-TV giant BSkyB, while British Prime Minister David Cameron faced fresh questions over his ties to the Australian-born media baron.

Scotland Yard said up to 4,000 people may have had their voicemails accessed by the News of the World and added that it was probing claims that the paper had paid policemen for information.

The Royal British Legion said it was “shocked to the core” by claims in the Daily Telegraph that an investigator hired by the News of the World may have accessed the voicemails of relatives of dead soldiers.

It said it was dropping the tabloid as a campaign partner as it could not maintain its links with the paper if it had been “preying on families in the lowest depths of their misery”.

Meanwhile, James Murdoch said yesterday he was satisfied with the “standard of ethics” of chief executive officer Rebekah Brooks, ex-editor of the doomed News of the World tabloid.

Mr Murdoch added that he was confident Ms Brooks did not know about the phone hackings of a teenage murder victim, families of dead soldiers and others when she ran the tabloid.