LONDON — Rupert Murdoch’s dream of controlling a British broadcasting behemoth has evaporated with the withdrawal of his bid for BSkyB — the latest, biggest casualty of what Prime Minister David Cameron called the hacking “firestorm” sweeping through British politics, media and police.
Cameron appointed a senior judge to lead an inquiry into the phone-hacking and police-bribery scandal engulfing Murdoch’s British newspapers, and promised it would investigate whether Murdoch’s reporters sought the phone numbers of Sept. 11 victims in their quest for sensational scoops.
“There is a firestorm, if you like, that is engulfing parts of the media, parts of the police, and indeed our political system’s ability to respond,” Cameron said Wednesday in the House of Commons.
“What we must do in the coming days and weeks is think above all of the victims . . . to make doubly sure that we get to the bottom of this and that we prosecute those who are responsible,” he said.
As lawmakers from all the country’s main parties united to demand that Murdoch’s News Corp. withdraw its bid for British Sky Broadcasting, the media magnate bowed to the inevitable, accepting that he could not win government approval for the multibillion-dollar takeover.
“It has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate,” News Corp. deputy chairman and president Chase Carey said in a brief statement to the London Stock Exchange.
Murdoch had hoped to gain control of the 61 percent of BSkyB shares that he doesn’t already own. The takeover — potentially his biggest, most lucrative acquisition — appeared certain to succeed just over a week ago, despite concerns about the size of Murdoch’s hefty share of the British media market.
But the deal unraveled with stunning speed after a rival newspaper reported that Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid had hacked into the phone of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into the 13-year-old’s disappearance.
What had for several years been a trickle of allegations by people who claimed to have been hacked by the paper — from celebrities such as Sienna Miller and Jude Law to politicians including former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott — became a torrent.
News Corp. responded by killing off the 168-year-old weekly newspaper, which published its final issue Sunday.
Murdoch flew to London in a desperate scramble to keep the BSkyB bid alive. But politicians from all parties, who for more than three decades have sought the approval of the Murdoch press, finally abandoned him.
