Couldn't happen to a nicer organization. From the New York Business Journal:
News Corp. said the publishing business that it plans to spin off next year had a $2.08 billion loss in its fiscal 2012, due to a decline in ad sales and the costs of its U.K. phone hacking scandal.
The division posted a profit of $678 million in 2011, News Corp. said in a filing Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to separate its publishing and entertainment businesses into two publicly traded companies.
The Rupert Murdoch-controlled company took a $224 million charge due to legal fees associated with the U.K. scandal and a $151 million restructuring charge, mostly from the closure of News of the World, the U.K. newspaper at the heart of the phone hacking scandal, reported Bloomberg News.
http://www.bizjournals.com/...
No company, or arm of a company can last long with that kind of balance sheet.
Or could Rupert be trying to generate sympathy with this disclosure? i.e. "dontcha think I've been punished enough, mate?" Stay tuned...
UPDATE 1:
From Brit in the comments:
* [new] It's a slow burn (1+ / 0-)
And there's more to come. Though many think Murdoch has got off scot free (no offensive to my Caledonian compadres) the split of Fox Group from News Corp means that Murdoch knows there's more pain down the line, and this won't go away.
The trials for phone hacking, police bribes and coverup don't begin till next year. There was another Weeting arrest this week, and the computer hacking charges don't come good till February.
Though he might have tried to get Petraeus to run, Murdoch holds a lot of cash in film and pay tv businesses which care not a whit about his political agenda. Murdoch was always a proxy politician. Does Titanic or Life of Pi reflect his world view? No. What he always cared about were the papers, and they now are in perilous decline
Having said that, one of the reasons I can't hate Rupert is that no one person is always wrong, or irredeemably bad. Not only was he right about Scientology, Murdoch has been a sterling proponent of gun control, even in the face of his own Fox Network.