Murdoch's Wall St. Journal publisher quits

BY JILL LAWLESS

AND ROBERT BARR

The Associated Press

LONDON -- Rupert Murdoch accepted the resignation of The Wall Street Journal's publisher and the chief of his British operations Friday as the once-defiant media mogul struggled to control an escalating phone hacking scandal with a public statement of contrition and a personal apology to the family of a murdered schoolgirl.

The scandal has knocked billions off the value of Murdoch's News Corp., scuttled his ambitions to take control of lucrative British Sky Broadcasting and withered his political power in Britain. It is now threatening to destabilize his globe-spanning business.

The controversy claimed its first victim in the United States as Les Hinton, chief executive of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of The Journal, announced he was resigning immediately.

Murdoch's British lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, stepped down earlier Friday.

Hinton worked for News Corp. for 52 years. He was chairman of Murdoch's British newspaper arm during some of the years the abuses took place.

Hinton said that "the pain caused to innocent people [by the hacking] is unimaginable." "That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant, and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp. and apologize to those hurt by the actions of News of the World," he said.

Just a day after asserting that News Corp. had made only "minor mistakes," Murdoch issued an apology to run in Britain's national newspapers on Saturday for "serious wrongdoing" by the News of the World, which he shut down last week amid allegations of large-scale illegal hacking by its staff.

"We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred. We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out," said the full-page ad, signed by Murdoch.

He also met the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone was hacked by the News of the World in 2002.

The revelation that journalists had accessed her phone in search of scoops inflamed the long-simmering scandal about illegal eavesdropping by the newspaper.