A Year After Hacking Scandal Fiasco, Rebekah Brooks to Return

News Corp announces Rebekah Brooks’ return as CEO of News UK, the post she had left after the hacking scandal broke.

File photo of Rebekah Brooks, former News International chief executive, leaving the Central Criminal Court in London. (Photo: AP)

News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has confirmed that Rebekah Brooks is returning to the top spot in London. The news comes more than a year after she was acquitted of charges in a hacking scandal that shocked the UK.

The New York company said on Wednesday that Brooks will be CEO of News UK, returning on Monday to a role she left in 2011. She had stepped aside amidst the hacking scandal at the company’s now defunct News of the World (NOTW) paper.

News Corp has spent more than $500 million in legal settlements with hacking victims and other related costs. The case had shed light on the fact that reporters eavesdropped on private voicemails of thousands of people.

Brooks began her career at NOTW in 1989. She has long been considered a protege of Murdoch, who promoted her to senior positions in his British newspaper empire. She had casual access to senior figures in the British government, getting advice from former Prime Minister Tony Blair and frequently socialising with Prime Minister David Cameron.

The scandal seemed to have put a premature end to Brooks’ rise as one of Britain’s most prominent media chieftains. But she was acquitted in June 2014 of charges related to the phone hacking, bribing officials and obstructing police. She has said that she didn’t know of phone hacking while she was NOTW editor between 2000 and 2003.

Labour Party Legislator Slams Murdoch

The return of Brooks, who had maintained a low public profile since she and her husband were acquitted, was not welcomed by Labour Party legislator Chris Bryant. He had been a victim of phone hacking.

Rupert Murdoch has just stuck two fingers up to the British public and the thousands of people whose phones were hacked by News International. Hundreds of ordinary journalists lost their jobs when Mr Murdoch closed the News Of The World, but it seems Rebekah Brooks is to get very special treatment.
– Chris Bryant, Labour Party legislator

Brooks will also work on digital efforts at News Corp, which separated from the entertainment conglomerate Twenty-First Century Fox two years ago.