LONDON (AP) — The apologies keep on coming: Rupert Murdoch took out a second newspaper ad Sunday promising that News Corp. will make amends for the phone hacking scandal shaking his global media business.
Murdoch’s empire came under renewed attack as Britain’s opposition leader called for new laws to stop one man from owning such a big chunk of the national media.
The ad in several U.K. Sunday newspapers, titled "Putting right what’s gone wrong," said News Corp. would assist the British police investigation into phone hacking and police bribery. It vowed there would be "be no place to hide" for wrongdoers.
"It may take some time for us to rebuild trust and confidence, but we are determined to live up to the expectations of our readers, colleagues and partners," the ad said.
That follows a full-page Murdoch ad in Saturday’s papers declaring, "We are sorry." It’s all part of a campaign of contrition as Murdoch struggles to tame a scandal that has already destroyed one major British newspaper, cost the jobs of two of his senior executives and scuppered his dream of taking full control of a lucrative satellite broadcaster, British Sky Broadcasting.
Last week Murdoch shut down the 168 year-old News of the World after it was accused of eavesdropping on the phones of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims. Sunday was the first day in Britain that the popular gossipy, muckraking weekly tabloid was not on the newsstands.
Murdoch abandoned a bid to take full control of BSkyB, and two of his senior executives — Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton and Rebekah Brooks, head of News Corp.’s British arm News International — stepped down.
But Murdoch’s critics say that is not enough. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband says Murdoch had "too much power" in Britain and his share of British media ownership should be reduced.
Now that News of the World is shut down, Murdoch owns three national British newspapers — The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times — and a 39-percent share of BSkyB.
"I think that we’ve got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 percent of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News," Miliband told The Observer newspaper.
"I think it’s unhealthy because that amount of power in one person’s hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organization. If you want to minimize the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous," he said.
Deputy prime Minister Nick Clegg agreed there should be greater plurality in the media.
"A healthy press is a diverse one, where you’ve got lots of different organizations competing, and that’s exactly what we need," Clegg told the BBC.
Clegg’s Liberal Democrat party has asked Britain’s broadcast regulator to consider whether News Corp. is a "fit and proper" owner of BSkyB.
There is more pressure ahead for 80-year-old Murdoch, who usually shuns the spotlight. On Tuesday he, his son James and Brooks face questioning by U.K. lawmakers investigating the scandal.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led government and the London police also are facing increasing questions about their close relationship with Murdoch’s media empire.
Cameron has held 26 meetings with Murdoch executives since he was elected in May 2010 and invited several to his country retreat. Senior police officers also had close ties to Murdoch executives, even hiring as a consultant a former News of the World editor who has since been arrested for alleged hacking.
Police are under pressure to explain why their original hacking investigation several years ago failed to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone other than News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Detectives reopened the investigation earlier this year and now say they have the names of 3,700 potential victims.
Records show that senior officers — including Paul Stephenson, the current chief of London’s Metropolitan Police — have had numerous meals and meetings with News International executives in the past few years. The force also hired Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor arrested last week in phone hacking, as a part-time PR consultant for a year until September 2010.
Stephenson also stayed for free earlier this year at a health resort that employed Wallis to do its public relations. The police force said the stay had been arranged through the facility’s managing director, a family friend, so that Stephenson could undergo therapy as he recovered from surgery. It said the police chief had not known that Wallis worked there.
In New York, a special committee at Dow Jones & Co. that was formed to monitor editorial integrity took pains to distance the company from the hacking scandal even as it called it "deeply concerning." Hinton was both publisher of the Wall Street Journal and chief executive of Dow Jones when he resigned Friday.
"To date, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the resignation of Les Hinton as publisher of the Journal is in any way related to activities at the Wall Street Journal or Dow Jones or that any of the London offenses or anything like them have taken place at Dow Jones," committee chairman Tom Bray said in a statement.
In the United States, Murdoch’s News Corp. owns Fox News, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.
