Murdoch closes ‘World’ as scandal broadens
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch will close Britain’s most popular newspaper, The News of the World, in a bid to prevent the outrage over the tabloid’s phone hacking scandal from infecting the other news outlets he owns. British detectives investigating the illegal phone hacking conducted by the newspaper’s staff say the number of victims could exceed 4,000. Murdoch is chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which counts FOX and The Wall Street Journal amongst its $60 billion of assets, and he’s also spending $12.5 billion to purchase BSkyB, Britain’s biggest pay-TV operator.
Sarah Ellison is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, and the author of “War at the Wall Street Journal: The Struggle to Control an American Business.” She speaks with us about what the ramifications of these events will be for the rest of Murdoch’s media empire. Paul McMullan, who was deputy features editor for The News of the World between 1994 and 2001, also speaks with us.
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