Rupert Murdoch, Old and Tired, Admits: "I'm Not Really in Touch"

Even before a demonstrator attacked Rupert Murdoch with a cream pie, the News Corp. (NWS) CEO looked frail and out of touch as he gave testimony to a U.K. parliamentary select committee. Prior to the arrest of the demonstrator -- who appeared to have been slapped by Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, who moved a lot quicker to defend her husband than the police did -- Murdoch's answers to MPs' questions on the News of the World phone hacking scandal produced little drama.

Rather, it was Murdoch's discomfort, and his slow answers, punctuated by long pauses, that belied what is increasingly the central issue at News: Murdoch is 80 years old. He cannot remain CEO forever. The company must put a succession plan in place.

Murdoch's age and the company's insistence that he will not leave loomed behind his often mumbled responses. At one point his son James asked him to stop banging the desk as he spoke, because it reverberated loudly through the microphones. At another, Murdoch went off on an irrelevant tangent about his late father: "He was hated in this country for many, many years." (Murdoch's belief that his family is a group of underdogs who have been oppressed by the establishment -- even though he has been an establishment mainstay for decades -- is the backbone of his worldview.) It was the performance of a senior citizen trying not to be cantankerous, and barely succeeding.

Two recent reports focused on Murdoch's ability to handle a stressful Q&A session:

• Bloomberg said executives who watched Murdoch rehearse for the appearance "had concerns about how he handled questions."
• Former New York Post features editor Vicky Ward told CNN's Piers Morgan -- who has ties to the phone hacking scandal himself -- that "Rupert wanted to tell me personally that he's not okay. ... Ever since he met with Milly Dowler, the murdered girl's parents, he hasn't felt the same. His voice has been cracking. The people around him are very concerned. His children are very concerned. And this is a man who is more devastated than he has ever been in his entire 80 years."

"I'm not really in touch"
Rupert, by contrast, admitted he was out of touch with the company even though he is nominally in charge of it. At one point, Rupert was asked how often he calls editors at his tabloids to hear what is going on. He replied, "I'm not really in touch":

Very seldom. Sometimes I would ring the editor of the News of the World. ... I would ring the editor of the Sunday Times every Saturday. ... I'm not really in touch. If there is an editor I spend most time with it's the editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps I lost sight of it maybe because it was so small in the general frame of our company but within a load of other things too.

I'd say, what's doing? They'd say we've got a great story exposing X or Y, or they may say 'nothing special.'

He was calling his editors every day. He came into his all-white office and every newspaper of his from around the world, 130 at the time, were lined up. He saw those headlines. He would leafed through many of those papers he published. I would expect he might have asked the question how are we getting all this wonderful stuff?

As the session closed, Murdoch read a prepared statement in which he thanked the Dowler family for "giving me the opportunity to apologize." His voice cracked as he read it. He seemed small, diminished.

And that was the end.

Related:

• Inside News Corp.'s (Alleged) U.S. Computer-Hacking Scandal
• The Isolation Tank: Murdoch Faces His Darkest Hour Almost Entirely Alone
• Dow Jones Chief's Resignation Bolsters Murdoch's Plausible Deniability
• The Fall Guy: How Everything Might Work Out Nicely for Rupert Murdoch
• The End of Murdoch: How the Phone Hacking Scandal Could Topple the Press Baron