James Murdoch, son of Rupert and executive chairman of beleaguered News International, is getting the boot. The one-time News Corporation heir apparent is stepping down from his European post and moving to the United States. From the New York Times:
James Murdoch, son of Rupert and executive chairman of beleaguered News International, is getting the boot. The one-time News Corporation heir apparent is stepping down from his European post and moving to the United States. From the New York Times:
A statement from News Corporation depicted the step as part of James Murdoch’s move to the company’s headquarters in New York, announced a year ago. But many media analysts said the move seemed to reflect the more recent travails of News International, whose newspapers include The Sun, The Times of London and The Sunday Times of London.
In July, Rupert and James Murdoch sat side by side at a British parliamentary inquiry as legislators demanded to know the full extent of a phone-hacking scandal at The News of the World, a weekly tabloid newspaper that News International shut down last year. The company had initially claimed the hacking was the work of a single rogue reporter.
But since then the scandal has spread and News International has begun paying settlement money to scores of celebrities whose voice-mail accounts were broken into.