Has the old cane-toad lost his touch? The BSkyB takeover bid nixed. Murdoch père and fils summonsed to Parliament with the ousted Rebekah Brooks. News Corp shares in free-fall. One would need a heart of stone not to gloat. Murdoch’s initial response to the crisis in closing the News of the World was acclaimed by several commentators as ‘brilliant’ but ‘ruthless’. That verdict seems at most half-correct. In fact, by folding NotW so early in the game, when (as some News Corp high-ups must have known) the anti-hackers had further high-value cards to play, NewsCorp blew its trump card and kept nothing in reserve. It would probably have done better to launch a wide-ranging internal inquiry, extract Brooks’s resignation there and then, and pledge full co-operation with any police investigation – closure could have been held back as a final pseudo-nuclear option.

LRB 28 July 2011 | PDF Download