Brooks resigns; NZ exec takes place

Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief and loyal lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch who is at the centre of the journalism hacking scandal, has resigned and a New Zealand-born journalist will take her place.

The Times announced today that Brooks has given her notice. Calls for her exit have mounted for several days. Tom Mockridge, the NZ-born chief exec of News Corp.'s Sky Italia, is to take over from Brooks.

Mockridge was chief executive of the publicly listed New Zealand company, Independent Newspapers, and Chairman of Sky New Zealand. He started his career as a newspaper journalist in New Zealand.

Murdoch had vigorously defended Brooks in the face of demands from politicians that she step down, and had previously refused to accept her resignation.

Brooks, who is due to face British lawmakers next week over claims that the now defunct News of the World newspaper hacked phones while she was editor, is the chief executive of News International, the British newspaper arm of News Corp.

Brooks was editor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, the time of the most explosive allegation to hit Murdoch's News Corp. media empire, and she has been in charge of News International's four British newspapers since 2007.

"I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate," Brooks said in an email to colleagues, which was released by News International. "This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past."

Murdoch sought to calm shareholders' fears earlier, telling the Wall Street Journal that the damage to News Corp. in Britain was "nothing that will not be recovered".

Brooks was editor of the mass-circulation tabloid in 2002 when it was claimed to have hacked the phone of missing schoolgirl Millie Dowler, who was later found murdered.

In the U.S., meanwhile, the FBI opened a review into allegations the Murdoch media empire sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims in its quest for sensational scoops.

Those developments - and the arrest of another former editor of a Murdoch tabloid - deepened the crisis for News Corp., which has seen its stock price sink as investors ask whether the scandal could drag down the whole company.



- Agencies