LONDON — Rupert Murdoch was attacked by a demonstrator during a highly-charged showdown with British lawmakers Tuesday in which the News Corp. chief publicly voiced his disgust over allegations that one of his newspapers hacked the cell phone of a murdered schoolgirl.
The News Corp. chairman and chief executive and his son James, News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer, faced searching questions about their global media empire as they appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport parliamentary committee in central London — an occasion the elder Murdoch described as “the most humble day of my life.”
The two men had repeatedly spoken of their regret and shame at the allegations leveled at the company’s News of the World (NotW) newspaper, when two hours into proceedings, a member of the public audience lunged at Rupert Murdoch with a plate covered in shaving foam.
In extraordinary scenes broadcast live on television, the mogul’s wife Wendi Deng was seen leaping to her 80-year-old husband’s defense, slapping the perpetrator in the head before police handcuffed and led him away. James Murdoch also tried to come to his father’s aid.
After a short suspension, the public were told to leave and the elder Murdoch sat back in his chair and answered questions just as before — minus his foam-spattered jacket.
Labour Party lawmaker Chris Bryant described the attack, which will now be subject to its own investigation, as “despicable.” Conservative politician Louise Mensch agreed the mogul had “huge guts” for carrying on with the hearing.
As the session wrapped up, another lawmaker, Tom Watson, told him, “Your wife has a very good left hook.”
James Murdoch had opened the session by saying how sorry he was about the phone-hacking scandal, calling it “a matter of personal regret of mine and my father’s and everyone at News Corporation.”
“These actions do not live up to the standards our company aspires to everywhere around the world,” he said. “It is our determination both to put things right, make sure these things don’t happen again, and to be the company that I know that we have always aspired to be.”
He was referring to allegations that as many as 4,000 people may have had their cell phones hacked by journalists or private investigators working for the NotW, including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the families of British terror victims and the relatives of dead soldiers.
Rupert Murdoch told the committee he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed by the Milly Dowler case” and had apologized in person to her family. He went further in a statement read out at the end of his appearance.
“At no time do I remember being as sickened as when I heard what the Dowler family had to endure — nor do I recall being as angry as when I was told that the News of the World could have compounded their distress. I want to thank the Dowlers for graciously giving me the opportunity to apologize in person,” he said.
During intense questioning from lawmakers, Murdoch disputed the assertion he was ultimately responsible for the crisis as head of the global corporation, suggesting instead that it was “the people that I trusted and then, maybe, the people they trusted.”
At times the News Corp. chairman appeared hesitant and apologetic for being unable to answer questions about the details of the internal investigations within News International, News Corp.’s UK newspaper business, and about decisions made on his behalf.
“The News of the World is less than one percent of our company. I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud and great and ethical and distinguished people, professionals in their work,” Rupert Murdoch said. “I’m spread watching and appointing people whom I trust to run those divisions.”
The phone-hacking crisis has led directly to the closure of the Sunday tabloid, a rash of resignations by senior News Corp. executives and top police officers, awkward questions for British Prime Minister David Cameron over his decision to appoint the former NotW editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief, and the setting-up of several far-reaching political and judicial inquiries.
Asked about allegations that the cell phones of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks may have been hacked, Rupert Murdoch said, “we’ve seen no evidence of that at all and as far as we know neither has the FBI.” He added that he would be prepared to commission an investigation into the claims if evidence of interceptions came to light.
When asked if he had considered his own position, Rupert Murdoch replied, “I think frankly that I am the best person to clean this up.”
Ironically, the media magnate had already had to clean himself up, having been targeted by a foam pie-throwing protester minutes earlier. The offender was named in media reports as the self-styled comedian Jonnie Marbles, whose real name is said to be Jonathan May-Bowles.
“It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat,” May-Bowles wrote on his Twitter account prior to the attack, evoking a famous quote from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.”
A spokeswoman for the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, subsequently announced an investigation into the security breach, saying it was “wholly unacceptable.”
After the Murdochs had finished their stint in the firing line, it was the turn of Rebekah Brooks, who last week stepped down as chief executive of News International, which published the NotW until it was closed on July 10.
The redhead was questioned for nine hours on Sunday by detectives investigating phone-hacking and improper payments to police officers.
Brooks told the committee she had acted “quickly and decisively” when new evidence of widespread hacking at the title emerged in 2010 during a civil case against the NotW by the actress Sienna Miller.
“It was only when we saw the Sienna Miller documentation that we realized the severity of the situation,” she said.
Brooks also said she had never sanctioned any payments to the police. And she insisted she had only learned of the alleged hacking of 13-year-old Dowler’s phone several weeks ago.
Brooks, who was editor of the NotW when the girl was abducted in 2002, said, “The idea that Milly Dowler’s phone was accessed by someone being paid by the News of the World, or even worse, authorized by someone at the News of the World, is as abhorrent to me as it is to everyone in this room.”
Brooks also denied having any contact with Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed in 2007 for phone hacking along with Clive Goodman, the NotW’s former royal correspondent.
Earlier in the day, James Murdoch had admitted News Corp. paid legal fees for Mulcaire And Goodman, even after they were imprisoned, a discovery that left him “surprised and shocked.” His father told the committee any payments would stop immediately unless they were legally obliged to continue them.
Shares of News Corp., which also owns NewsCore, rose by as much as 6.8 percent in the hours following the proceedings. The company’s stock had lost about 17 percent of its value in the past few weeks.
In further news Tuesday, the Conservative Party was forced to admit that Neil Wallis, another ex-NotW employee arrested over the phone-hacking scandal, may have provided “informal advice” to Coulson while he was working for Cameron before the 2010 UK General Election.
And police also confirmed there was no evidence of third-party involvement in the “unexplained” death of Sean Hoare, the former NotW reporter who gave information about phone hacking to The New York Times and was found dead Monday at his UK home.
News Corp. owns The Post and NewsCore.