Pulling few punches, the lawmakers listed failings of the 81-year-old News Corp chief, his son James and a company they said had showed "willful blindness" about the scale of hacking that existed at the British News of the World tabloid.
The cross-party parliamentary committee, which approved the report by a majority of six to four, also scolded News Corp's British newspaper arm for misleading the British parliament during its five year investigation into the hacking of the phones of celebrities, murder victims, politicians and soldiers.
But it split along party lines, with members from Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party voting against the report, saying they did not agree with its view that the Australian-born Murdoch was not fit to run a major company.
Cameron, who has acknowledged that Britain's political elite had been in thrall to the Murdochs for years, is facing criticism ahead of local elections this week that he was too close to the media tycoon.
The report said there had been huge failures in corporate governance which raised questions about the competence of Rupert's 39-year-old son, James. » | Georgina Prodhan and Kate Holton | LONDON | Tuesday, May 01, 2012
