Les Hinton
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
After Rebekah Brooks resigned this morning, talk moved to other parts of the Murdoch empire. And now, the
New York Times is reporting that Les Hinton, the publisher of the
Wall Street Journal and a Murdoch associate for five decades, is gone.
The hacking scandal that has roiled Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation reached his American media empire for the first time on Friday, claiming the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, who has resigned.
Les Hinton, 67, was the executive responsible for running Mr. Murdoch’s British newspapers at the time the most egregious known examples of the hacking occurred. Mr. Hinton was one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest deputies and a veteran of News Corporation for more than 50 years.
Here's the problem for Hinton:
Mr. Hinton ran News International, Mr. Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary, from 1995 to 2007. He has occupied various high-level positions within News Corporation, from the head of the Fox television station network to head of the American newspaper division, which includes The New York Post.
That's the period of time where there are/were issues with phone hacking in the UK.
Is Hinton trying to walk the plank for Murdoch and preserve the empire? Murdoch's starting to run out of swords for people to fall on.
In the meantime, this now involves the WSJ, and Hinton is ex-Fox. I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling in this casino.
More discussion here in Adept2u's diary.