Murdoch ‘unfit’ to run media empire

Rupert Murdoch is unfit to run a major international company, British lawmakers said, finding him responsible for a culture of illegal phone hacking that has convulsed his News Corporation media empire.

Pulling few punches, the lawmakers listed failings of the 81-year-old News Corp chief, his son James and a company they said had showed “wilful blindness” about the scale of hacking that existed at the News of the World tabloid.

The cross-party parliamentary committee, which approved the report by a majority of six to four, also criticised News Corp’s British newspaper arm for misleading the parliament during its five-year probe into the hacking of the phones of celebrities, murder victims and politicians.