Will Murdoch Clan Remain at News Corp?

When will James Murdoch be arrested? Alone among those Rupert Murdoch claims to have let him down in the firestorm over journalistic ethics that is engulfing his media company, his son James has so far avoided the attention of Scotland Yard detectives.

Others close to the gnarled 80-year-old—his trusted lieutenant Les Hinton, his flame-haired editrix Rebekah Brooks, and Colin Myler, the editor of the scandal sheet News of the World whose criminal practices led to its closure after 168 years—have accepted some responsibility for the mess and find themselves rich but jobless. When the cheery Hinton arranged to meet a pal in an Upper East Side Starbuck’s, he quipped, “I’m the one who looks retired.”

The arrest of James Murdoch, until earlier this year his father’s favorite and the unrivaled heir apparent to the worldwide media empire, has moved sharply closer with the admission by a London-based attorney, whose company represents News Corp. and Queen Elizabeth, that Murdoch Jr. misled the parliamentary committee investigating the hacking. One committee member cheekily suggested a headline: “Queen’s solicitors knew News of the World was lying to Parliament—but did nothing about it.” James Murdoch will return next month to face more cross-examination from the peeved parliamentarians.

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And it will be James Murdoch, too, who can expect the toughest ride when shareholders meet on Friday at the News Corp. AGM in Los Angeles. To be helpful, The New York Times, long the butt of Murdoch’s acerbic New York Post, reported that father and son are now at each others’ throats and spend days not talking. “You’re coming back to New York or you’re out,” Rupert is said to have snarled at James, whom he suspected of setting up a rival power base in Europe. “This is one company, not two. And it is run out of New York.”

News Corp AGMs are usually lame, ill-attended affairs, with a benign Rupert indulging shareholders who complain about Fox News or a new Fox movie. This time, though, the theft of private phone messages from celebrities and victims of crime, among them a murdered schoolgirl, promises to turn the snooze-fest into a circus. Angered by his rough treatment at the hands of the Brits, whose bobbies could not save him from having a plate of shaving foam pressed in his face, Murdoch has insisted there can be no repetition of what he described in July as “the most humble day of my life.”

What perennial Murdoch observers will be looking for is whether he continues to portray himself as a medicated Murdoch, more gaga than gung-ho.