Rebekah Brooks quits over hacking
Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive officer of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, quit yesterday as the media baron made his biggest sacrifice yet in the phone-hacking crisis rocking his empire and issued his first apology while trying...
Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive officer of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm, quit yesterday as the media baron made his biggest sacrifice yet in the phone-hacking crisis rocking his empire and issued his first apology while trying to defuse the growing crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.
As an FBI investigation spread the crisis to the United States, Mr Murdoch finally abandoned his attempts to protect his flame-haired lieutentant and accepted Ms Brooks’ resignation as CEO of News International.
The Australian-born tycoon, 80, is also formally apologising to victims of the scandal, saying in an advertisement published in British newspapers that the News of the World tabloid was guilty of “serious wrongdoing”.
Ms Brooks was editor of the paper from 2000-2003 at the time when it allegedly hacked the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler – the claim that sparked the crisis and led to the closure of the paper.
Her resignation ends a meteoric rise through the ranks of Mr Murdoch’s empire, having started as a secretary at the News of World at the age of 20. She went on to edit The Sun, the country’s most popular paper. Ms Brooks has denied all knowledge that the practice was in use at the time.
In a further show of contrition Mr Murdoch met Ms Dowler’s parents at a London hotel to issue a personal apology, but the man whose papers once helped decide British elections faced chants of “Shame on you” from protesters.
“As founder of the company I was appalled to find out what had happened and I apologised, and I have nothing further to say,” Mr Murdoch told a scrum of reporters.
The departure of Ms Brooks caps a disastrous week for Mr Murdoch in which he has been forced to shut the 168-year-old News of the World, the foundation stone of his British empire, and scrap a buy-out of British pay-TV giant BSkyB.
The 43-year-old Ms Brooks – dubbed Mr Murdoch’s “fifth daughter” because of her closeness to the elderly magnate – told News International staff she felt a “deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt”.