Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper wing, quit Friday as the phone hacking scandal forced the once-mighty media baron to sacrifice his cherished aide.
With the firestorm spreading to the US where an FBI probe is underway, her departure comes as a fresh blow to Murdoch after he was forced to shut the News of the World tabloid and scrap a buy-out of pay-TV giant BSkyB.
The flame-haired 43-year-old Brooks, a former editor at the News of the World dubbed Murdoch’s “fifth daughter”, told staff in an internal email that she felt a “deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt”.
“I have given Rupert and James Murdoch my resignation. While it has been a subject of discussion, this time my resignation has been accepted,” wrote Brooks, whose offer to resign last week was rejected by Murdoch.
She said her “desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate. This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past.” Brooks will be replaced by New Zealander Tom Mockridge, chief executive of Murdoch-owned satellite broadcaster Sky Italia, who must now restore faith in the mogul’s remaining British newspapers The Sun, Times and Sunday Times.
