Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch "not fit to run News Corp" By DAVID MADDOX Published on Tuesday 1 May 2012 13:36 A DAMNING report by a Commons committee has stated that the media mogul Rupert Murdoch is not a fit and proper person to run a major international company. Members of the Culture, Media and Sport committee have also announced that they are to ask the House to consider contempt proceedings against senior News International executives and the company for misleading the same committee in 2009. While withholding criticism of individuals who are subject to criminal proceedings, including former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, the report was devastating in its assessment of the phone hacking scandal which led to the closure of the News of thwe World and sunk the Murdoch family's ambitions to take full ownership of BSkyB. But the committee split over the key line that Rupert Murdoch is not fit to run a major international company with the four Tory members voting against it and as a result refusing to endorse the report as a whole. It said it could now ask the House of Commons to decide whether there had been a contempt of Parliament and what the punishment should be. "The integrity and effectiveness of the select committee system relies on the truthfulness and completeness of the oral and written evidence submitted," it said. The behaviour of News International and certain witnesses in this affair demonstrated contempt for that system in the most blatant fashion. The committee said it was "simply astonishing" that News International - including the Murdochs - had sought to maintain that phone hacking was down to one "rogue reporter."