Britain’s scandal-hit News of the World to shut
UK: 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 Thursday.
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 Murdoch, the
chairman of News International, the British newspaper wing of Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corp.
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,” 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 on Thursday when veterans’
charity 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.” AFP |