LONDON — Rupert Murdoch apologized Thursday for the phone-hacking scandal that has tarnished his global media empire, declaring: “The buck stops with me.”
But he also blamed underlings at News Corp. for keeping him in the dark and trying to keep a lid on evidence of widespread phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid, which he shut down in July when the scandal broke wide open.
On his second day testifying before a British judicial inquiry on media ethics, the Australian-born tycoon said he has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on the legal fallout of the hacking allegations and on cleaning up his newspapers to ensure such lapses didn’t happen again.
“I failed. And I’m very sorry about that,” Murdoch, 81, told the court, adding: “It’s going to be a blot on my reputation for the rest of my life.”
Three separate criminal investigations have been launched as a result of the hacking scandal, and dozens of journalists at Murdoch’s News of the World and the Sun have been arrested, although no one has yet been charged.
