Not a fit person

Yesterday's release of the House of Commons Select Committee's report on phone hacking and other matters at the News of the World suggests that it must have been deliberately withheld until Rupert Murdoch had completed his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry last week. If it had already been public knowledge that the Committee considered Mr Murdoch “not a fit person to exercise stewardship of a major international company” the questioning and his responses might have been much more pointed.

It is unfortunate that the cross party Committee, while agreeing that MPs had been “misled repeatedly” by senior officials of News International, could not agree on the report's direct criticism of Mr Murdoch's “fitness” to run his companies.

Although the agreed report says he “turned a blind eye” to the hacking, four Conservative MPs on the Committee voted against inclusion of the “fitness” reference while the five Labour and one Liberal Democrat MPs ensured its inclusion. Given the highly critical tone of the report -- for instance, an observation about Mr Murdoch's “excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail when it suited” -- it is puzzling that the Conservative MP's were unwilling to join the majority. The report will be read with interest in the United States where Mr Murdoch is having increasing difficulties with shareholders who want him and his family to have less influence on the running of News Corporation.