THE CANADIAN TIMES

Murdoch has no plans to step down from News Corp.

Rupert Murdoch has told British lawmakers that he has not considered resigning his job as the head of News Corp., and he believes he is the most qualified person to resolve its current problems.

"I think that frankly, I'm the best person to clean this up," Murdoch said when appearing before a House of Commons committee on Tuesday.

Murdoch's remarks about his leadership came only a few minutes after a brief interruption to Tuesday's proceedings, in which a protester rushed up behind the 80-year-old media mogul with what appeared to be white foam in a pie dish.

But the protester was struck by Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, who was sitting behind him while he was at the hearing. The protester was soon in police custody.

Lawmakers apologized to Murdoch for the interruption, before adjourning the hearing for an afternoon break.

Earlier in the day, Murdoch told lawmakers that he appoints trusted lieutenants to run the divisions of his sprawling news empire, and he believes them to be largely "proud and great and ethical and distinguished professionals."

Murdoch is appearing before a House of Commons committee at the request of lawmakers who are probing a phone-hacking scandal that has embroiled many top politicians, police officers and journalists in Britain.

The News Corp. chairman recently shut down his popular News of the World tabloid after it was revealed staff members had allegedly hacked into the phone of a murdered British teenager in 2002.

News of the World staff are accused of accessing Milly Dowler's phone and deleting messages, which then gave her family false hopes that the slain 13-year-old schoolgirl might still be alive.

Murdoch told the committee Tuesday that he was "shocked, appalled and ashamed" at the reported actions of News of the World staff who were involved in the alleged Dowler debacle.

Despite speculation that Murdoch had closed the News of the World down for financial reasons, he told lawmakers that he had done so because of the criminal allegations about the paper.

But when questioned in detail about the extent of his knowledge of the News of the World operations, Murdoch suggested that the shuttered tabloid had been only a small fraction of his worldwide business.

"The News of the World is less than one per cent of our company," Murdoch told lawmakers in London.

"I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud and great and ethical and distinguished professionals in their own right," he added, trying to convey a sense of the former tabloid's importance in News Corp.

He also told the committee that he did not believe the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had uncovered evidence that staff members from any of his papers had hacked the phones of Sept. 11 victims and their families.

James Murdoch, the elder man's son and the head of News Corp.'s European and Asian operations sat beside his father and also answered questions from lawmakers on Tuesday.