Rupert Murdoch should have sacked Rebekah Brooks when this started

12 April 2012

Rebekah Brooks succumbed finally to the pressure. She has gone - and not before time.

It was the right decision but it came far too late. Rupert Murdoch should have requested her resignation on the day that he discovered Milly Dowler's phone was hacked under her watch as editor of the News of the World.

That revelation by itself was so shocking to have warranted her red head on a platter. The subsequent reports about the likely hacking of the relatives of other murder victims, 7/7 bombing casualties and of soldiers should have left Murdoch in no doubt about firing his News International chief executive.

Instead, he placed her in initial charge of the investigation into the very matters for which she had, by virtue of her editorship, been responsible. A truly calamitous decision, making him and his hapless son, James, look decidedly foolish and weak-willed.

Clinging to her job contrasted poorly with her successor as NoW editor, Andy Coulson, who saw fit to resign when two of his staff were jailed for hacking. Why should she be treated differently?

Murdoch's loyalty to Brooks appeared impossibly misplaced. She was regarded as his fifth daughter, but business is business, and he should have realised that she was the lightning conductor for criticism of the hacking scandal.

There were suggestions that she was a "human shield" for James Murdoch but the unravelling of events made a nonsense of that ploy - if that was what it was. She became part of the problem, not the solution. What a tawdry business it has been.

Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London

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