After Tuesday’s foam-filled appearance by the House of Murdoch (in father-and-son matching outfits) before the British House of Commons, the New York Times filed a relatively restrained eight pieces in its Wednesday edition.
Begin with the bad news front-page story:
Murdochs Deny That They Knew of Illegal Acts
LONDON — It was riveting theater, a newly emboldened parliamentary committee facing off against the 80-year-old Rupert Murdoch, the world’s most powerful media mogul, in a series of exchanges designed to get to the bottom of the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed not just Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation, but also Britain’s political and law-enforcement elite.
In two hours of intense questioning broken only by a bizarre incident in which Mr. Murdoch was accosted with what appeared to be a foil pie plate filled with shaving cream, both he and his son James declared repeatedly that they had been shocked to discover something that has become increasingly apparent: that phone hacking and other illegal behavior were endemic at their News of the World tabloid, which is now defunct.
Then there’s the good news story on A11:
Murdochs Caught a Break at Hearing, Stock Analysts Say
After days of intense anxiety over their appearance before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, there seemed to be consensus inside the company and out that the Murdochs and the News Corporation had finally caught a break.
Instead of finding a signal that this was the beginning of the end of Rupert Murdoch’s run at the helm of his company, analysts stressed that there was no single revelatory moment during the proceedings. If the Murdochs seemed at times distant, even oblivious, to what was going on in their own company, there were no obvious admissions of wrongdoing or glaring contradictions in their testimony, analysts said.
From there you have the requisite Key Figures in the Phone Hacking Case graphic, the requisite Ninja Wendi Deng feature, and etc.
Just another news day at Renzo Piano Plaza.