Andrew Vine: Day Murdoch was called to account for his failings – and found wanting

No, not a pointless attack with foam by a protester who achieved nothing except to elicit sympathy for an 80-year-old bogeyman who looks every day of his age, but a forensic skewering by a tubby, quietly-spoken, bespectacled man from the Black Country that made one of the most feared men in the world look like a doddery has-been who doesn’t know what is done in his name.

Tom Watson, the Right Honourable Member for West Bromwich East, had his finest hour yesterday, lighting up an already highly-charged session of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee with a cool, calm, commanding and condemnatory cross-examination of Rupert Murdoch that left him smiling in helplessness and swatting away the attempted interjections of his son with disdain.

What had Mr Murdoch done to ensure responsible behaviour in his empire? Nothing. What did he know of possibly illegal payments? Nothing. What of criminality at the News of the World? Nothing.

Mr Murdoch knew he was being hung out to dry, knew equally he had no answers, and knew for sure he was being bested. Big beast that he is, he shook his head ruefully, smiled and looked down at the desk as alarm flitted across the face of his son, James, seated next to him. This just doesn’t happen in his world, but it happened yesterday. In the World According to Murdoch, public appearances are carefully orchestrated global media events.

The great man speaks and is listened to. His words and his take on the world are analysed and can change the course of the businesses who pay close attention to him. All is orchestrated, all is deferential.

Mr Watson plainly had not read that particular script. His questioning of Mr Murdoch was electrifying. Over the course of 10 minutes, the air of power that had drifted into the committee room with him was diminished and demolished. There was no aggression, no stridency, and Mr Watson was all the more effective for his restraint. It was a moment that anybody who has ever felt a twinge of unease about the unelected, unaccountable influence wielded by Mr Murdoch across the course of four decades and more will savour for years to come.

Of all the people in that room across the course of a session that was meant to last for an hour, but stretched out into more than two-and-a-half, Rupert Murdoch said the least. Yet he was without doubt the star attraction, the person that members of the public hoping for a seat inside had queued outside Portcullis House to see.

His public image has suffered in recent days. Unflattering pictures of his scrawny legs poking out of a pair of gym shorts during his morning workout in Hyde Park had done him no favours, and nor did his entry. He looked aged and tired, his face deeply lined, his voice, at least initially, a little hoarse.

He and his son were dressed almost identically – dark grey suits, white shirts and blue ties. Plainly, they had come prepared and comprehensively briefed, but committee chairman John Whittingdale effortlessly wrong-footed them at the start by refusing permission for them to make an opening statement. Not to be deterred, Mr Murdoch senior got a punch in, declaring: “This is the most humble day of my life.” That was probably true – he is not accustomed to being told what to do, but he had been ordered to come here.

After that, though, he seemed to fall into a kind of reverie. At first he was monosyllabic, perhaps a little hard of hearing as he asked for questions to be repeated, raising his head only to speak, then subsiding into silence, staring downwards at his hands on the desk, often enough splayed out, palms downwards. Behind him, his much younger wife, Wendi, looked concerned and leaned in towards him when he spoke.

James Murdoch had plainly come prepared to act as his father’s human shield. His default facial expression is one of a man whose temper is barely held in check, but for the most part he adopted a keen-to-help look, half-smiling, eyes wide open. He has a blaring voice, a mid-Atlantic accent and a rising inflection at the end of many of his answers that lent them an uncertain, quizzical quality. The eager-to-please look came and went throughout the hearing, as his eyes narrowed in response to the questioning. There was a pre-cooked flavour to much of what he said, the answers flowing, even a little glib, their delivery speaking of carefully rehearsed responses in practice sessions with polished public relations practitioners, or lawyers.

The committee, though, was in no mood to let Junior stand in its way when it came to pinning down what his dear old dad knew or did not know, and made it clear that its members were principally interested in the star turn, who is, after all, still the CEO of the empire he created, still engaged enough with his newspapers that he calls the editor of his prestige Sunday title on Saturday evening to find out what is within its pages the following morning.

Mr Watson, who has campaigned long and effectively to get at the truth of what went on at News International, was given first bite at Mr Murdoch, and his questioning woke the mogul up. Gradually, he appeared increasingly engaged with what was going on around him. There were even a few jokes about his influence, about being asked to enter 10 Downing Street by the back door, or about the path beaten to his own front door by successive Prime Ministers: “I wish they’d leave me alone.”

Despite his age, there was plainly still plenty of fire in his belly. The intensely competitive streak that took him to the top of his profession was still there as he took a swipe at his competitors, accusing them of creating “hysteria”. His body language grew more emphatic as he tapped the desk to emphasise the points he made, until his son told him to stop gesticulating. He wasn’t going to hurried either, thinking for a few moments before answering the questions put to him.

His answers had a rougher edge than his son’s. Perhaps he had been less inclined to rehearse, or relied on the lessons learned from a lifetime in business to cope with whatever came his way, or maybe even felt himself more than equal to the task of seeing off a roomful of MPs he probably knew little about.

He was frank about how much, or rather how little, he knew of what went on in his newsrooms despite the Saturday night phone calls to editors. He employed 53,000 people he said, the News of the World had represented only one per cent of his business, though he regretted not paying it more attention. “I am not responsible,” he said. “The people I trusted and the people they trusted are responsible.”

One of those he trusted followed him into the committee room. Rebekah Brooks, ex-chief executive, ex-editor of the News of the World, ex-schmoozer of the political classes, ex-of everywhere where morally repugnant behaviour and relationships of questionable judgment occurred in this whole affair, looked pale, tired, but composed. She apologised for it all again, denied all knowledge of what had happened on her watch again, expressed her shock again, just as she had when Mr Murdoch stood by her in a gesture of solidarity, and appeared to sacrifice a newspaper to save her skin. The only thing she did differently this time was to use her arrest as an excuse not to answer a series of questions.

It was a day of denials, not of responsibility, but of foreknowledge. And of all of those denials, the ironic thing was that the most plausible came from the man cast as the chief villain.