Media scandal
July 15, 2011
Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has resigned under intense pressure over the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Brooks said that, as chief executive of the company, she felt "a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt."
"I want to reiterate how sorry I am for what we now know to have taken place," Brooks said in a leaked internal message to News International staff.
"At News International we pride ourselves on setting the news agenda for the right reasons. Today we are leading the news for the wrong ones. The reputation of the company we love so much, as well as the press freedoms we value so highly, are all at risk."
Brooks said her resignation would give her the freedom to cooperate fully in several investigations being conducted against News International for phone hacking.
News Corp. announced that Tom Mockridge, currently chief of TV channel Sky Italia, would take over as CEO of News International.
Last week, Murdoch pulled the plug on the weekly News of the World, Britain's best-selling Sunday tabloid, after it was revealed that reporters from the paper had tapped into the mobile phone voice mail messages of up to some 4,000 people, many of them the victims of high-profile crimes and the 2005 London bombings.
Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch agreed Thursday to appear before a parliamentary hearing on the matter.
The FBI has announced a probe into allegations that Murdoch's company also hacked into the voice mail messages of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Author: David Levitz (AP, AFP, Reuters)
Editor: Martin Kuebler