Of course the Sun King isn't fit to run a newspaper

In a damning op-ed piece in The Atlantic, the writer makes it abundantly clear that Rupert Murdoch is not fit to run a newspaper.     Cop this.....

"Mr. Murdoch's papers have been a malign influence on Great Britain for at least a generation.  They have ended careers, marriages, and even lives.  They have gleefully exposed individuals to public ridicule.  They have outed closeted gay politicians and entertainers, exposed adulterers, revealed details about unruly sex lives and drug abuse.  If one reads Piers Morgan's memoirs, which are as disconcertingly entertaining as they are shameful, it's clear that this was always the point of the exercise, this was Mr. Murdoch's notion of what journalism is.  All unpleasant enough, one would think, to make the man responsible something of a pariah in respectable circles.

But in addition, Mr. Murdoch's minions have also committed actual crimes.  They engaged in something akin to blackmail—threatening vendettas against politicians who opposed them, for example, and frequently making good on those threats—along with bribery and rampant invasions of privacy.  (In their testimony before the Parliamentary committee and the Leveson Commission, they undoubtedly added perjury to the list, even if it will never be proved in a court of law.)  Although these practices may not have been publicly acknowledged, they could not have been entirely unknown in Fleet Street circles, or in Whitehall, let alone in Scotland Yard.  And yet, through a combination of fear and avarice, no one sought to curtail these activities, let alone make them public.

No, what finally brought the whole corrupt system to a grinding halt was this:  The News of the World hacked into the cell phone of a murdered teenage girl, Milly Dowler.  And they compounded the heinousness of the act by erasing some of the messages in her voice mail in order to make room for more messages, misleading her parents into thinking she might still be alive.

I don't mean to minimize the awfulness of such a thing—is there a parent alive who didn't shudder inwardly when learning about it?—but it would appear, finally, to be merely an especially egregious example of things Murdoch's papers had been doing for years.  It probably says something about how invulnerable his employees regarded their position that they dared to do something so grotesque.  But why had no one blown the whistle on them prior to this?  Why was this the thing that brought the whole edifice crashing down on Murdoch's head?  It might have been the most poignant example of his journalistic offenses, but it was hardly unique.  And there had been other tragic outcomes.

The repercussions of all this remain to work themselves out, but Rupert Murdoch's days of invincibility are clearly behind him, and the stunning power he enjoyed much diminished.  But regardless of how it ends, is there any question whether he's a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company?  He's barely fit to be considered a person."