answer everything as openly as i can and not to use that, if at all possible. i know you all had a briefing around the same. we are grateful for that. so, perhaps i could invite you to comment on whether or not you now accept that the statement is, saying that news of the world journalists have not accessed voice mails or indeed instructed investigators to do so is actually untrue? well, again, as you have heard, in the last few hours, the fact is that since, since miss sienna miller civil documents came into our possession the end of december, december 2010, that was the first time that we at the senior management of the company at the time had actually seen some documentary evidence. actually relating to a current employee. and i think that we acted
asked by my colleague if you had read it yourself, and you said no. under the circumstances when you relied on the people and advisers and they severely let your company down, do you not think, mr. murdoch that perhaps you and you mr. rupert murdoch ought to take the time and read through everything in that file personally. for clarity, i did say that i did read some of the contents of that. they were shown to me, and what i saw was sufficient to know that it should be that the right thing to do was to hand these over to the authorities to help them with their investigation. i understand that, but do you not think that under the circumstances, and the enormous reputation tphal damage, i m sure you ll be the first to admit has been done to news corp., don t you think as senior executive of the company you should take the time to read through the entire file so you are completely comprised of what happened? i m happy to do so. i think i ve seen a bit of it. okay. my last questi
settlement. as to other settlements, more recent, i believe some are confidential, some are not. i don t believe any have been confidential settlements. i can follow-up as to whether think have been. it s customary for both parties to agree. there is nothing unusual about an ou out-of-court settlement bg made confidential and being agreed to being confidential. but it was. and with respect to i think the base of the question is the disparity in the amount of money involved? there was nothing in the taylor settlement with respect to confidentiality that spoke to the amount of money. the amount of money was derived, as i testified earlier, from a judgment made about what the likely damages would be, and what the likely expenses and litigations costs would have been had the company taken the litigation to its end and lost. you ve been great sure, that
international reached a crisis otherwise you won t be here today and news of the world wouldn t have been closed. who do you hold responsible for that failure? you re saying that people should have told you, but you didn t know. you really said just now, not that they should have told you, but you let them get on and manage it but they should have told you, shouldn t they? what went wrong. that s a good question. it s not to say that we re saying and i m not saying that somebody should have told me. to my knowledge certain things were not known, and when new information came to light with respect to my knowledge of these events, and to the understanding when new information came to light the company acted on it. and the company acted on it in a right and proper way as best the company could. but it s difficult to say that the company should have been told something, if it s not known that a thing was a known fact to be told. now, i ve been asked today that, you know, about what oth
you said that your friend of 52 years, i think, les hinton has stepped down and has resigned because he was in charge of the company at the time. in other words, he said he was the captain of the ship and therefore he resigned. is it not the case, sir, though that you in fact are the captain of the ship? you are the chief executive officer of news corp., the global corporation. yes. i ran a much bigger ship. it is a much bigger ship. you are in charge of it. as you said in earlier questions you do not regard yourself as a hands-off chief executive. you work ten to 12 hours a day. this terrible thing happened on your watch. mr. murdoch have you considered resigning? no. why not? because i feel that people i trusted, i m not saying who, i don t know to what level have let me down, and i think they behaved disgrace flee and betrayed the company and me, and it s for them to pay. i think that frankly i m the