Rupert’s media empire finally laid bare

Rebekah Brooks was grilled by a House of Commons committee yesterday but the Murdoch empire has been imploding for years. It was Rupert wot done it, says David Kernek

THERE have been times since the News of the World phone-hacking scandal — and News International sub-scandals — broke when I’ve lost the plot. Watergate and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy are Enid Blyton bed-time stories by comparison.

This detailed history fills in the gaps from 2005, when the story first oozed up from the sewer, to the opening months of the Leveson inquiry. It is co-authored by the Labour MP Tom Watson, who led the tenacious questioning of Rupert and James Murdoch before the House of Commons culture and media select committee, and who likened Rupert to a mafia boss. That comparison was unfair to the mafia; a gangster operation run by Rupert and his clueless son would be rumbled in short order, even by the Italian police.