Too Little, Too Late? News Corp Forms Group To Oversee Ethics

When News Corporation ran an ad in multiple newspapers across the UK this weekend, it promised “further concrete steps” to right the wrongs that have engulfed the company and its key executives in scandal. Here's an example: the company has announced the “formal establishment and extension” of the Management and Standards Committee, independent of News International, which will cooperate with the current investigations and also provide standards for ethics and governance in the future.

News Corp has appointed Lord Grabiner QC as the independent chairman of the MSC. Grabiner is a commercial lawyer, who is also non-executive chairman of the retail holding company Arcadia Group, and has been a past head of the London School of Economics. The MSC will work with authorities that are currently investigating News International in relation to the phone hacking scandal and the police corruption that has emerged as a by-product of that investigation. By appointing an outsider -- not just to News Corp but to the media world as a whole -- it is hoped that this will give the arm’s-length independence that the MSC will need to be credible.