A report on phone-hacking: Dial M for muddle HAD the House of Commons" Culture, Media and Sport Committee not been so persistent, the extent of phone-hacking at the News of the World might never have come to light. For years the committee - and in particular the Labour MP Tom Watson (pictured) - harried newspaper executives and lawyers. Scraping patiently through layers of obfuscation and denial, the committee worked to get at the truth about misdeeds at the newspaper. On May 1st it finally released a report into the affair - and promptly disgraced itself. The report is damning. It says that Les Hinton, a senior News Corporation executive until last year, misled the committee about the full extent of his knowledge of phone-hacking. It strongly criticises Tom Crone, News International's legal manager, noting that "any competent newspaper lawyer" would have seen that one 2002 article had been based on voicemails left for Milly Dowler, a murdered girl. Both Mr Crone and Colin Myler, the News of the World's former editor, are also found to have misled the committee. Parliament could vote to hold them in contempt, although the punishment is unclear. The committee also slated Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation's boss, and his son James. The younger man is said to have displayed "wilful ignorance" of one e-mail which suggested phone-hacking was widespread. More broadly, the elder Murdoch is said to have turned a blind eye to misbehaviour in his company. The report concludes that he is "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company." The expression "fit person" is a loaded one. In Britain, only "fit and proper" people can hold broadcast licences. The regulator has previously stripped them from broadcasters of pornography who broke its rules. The culture committee has effectively told it to find News Corporation lacking, too. If the regulator agrees, the firm might have to sell its controlling stake in BSkyB, a profitable satellite broadcaster. A once-mighty media empire would be reduced to holding four shrinking newspapers. A 17-page annex to the committee's report reveals how it arrived at this judgment. Many of the sharp assessments of the Murdochs ended up in the text thanks to amendments pushed by the committee's five Labour MPs and approved by its sole Liberal Democrat. Nearly all of them were opposed by the committee's four voting Conservatives. One of the dissenters, Philip Davies, described the report's conclusion about Mr Murdoch as "completely ludicrous." Another, Louise Mensch, went further. Labour MPs were driven to find the Murdochs guilty of something, she said. Because they had no proof that either father or son had misled Parliament, they hurriedly came up with something else. The Conservatives refused to endorse the amended report. The committee's Labour members hardly contradicted this charge. Mr Watson, who has published a book on the phone-hacking scandal, "Dial M for Murdoch," explained that the Murdochs had "corrupted our country," and talked about "lies" and "crimes." Mr Watson explained that the condemnations shoehorned into the report reflected his steadfast beliefs. The British public, too, had concluded that the Murdochs were a malign influence. Besides, he said, the committee had been too soft on News Corporation in the past. This is absurd and counter-productive. In pursuit of Murdoch-bashing headlines, and in a far-fetched attempt to drive News Corporation from the airwaves, the culture committee's Labour and Liberal Democrat members have compromised an otherwise hard-hitting report. They also opened a convenient exit for the man that they sought to bring down. Declaring the report to be "partisan," Mr Murdoch quickly stepped through it.