Murdoch’s Nemesis

One evening last week, Tom Watson was sitting in his office in Parliament when his assistant burst into the room. News International, she announced, had agreed to appear before the Labour M.P.’s committee hearing the following Tuesday. Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks—the three people at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal tearing apart the media giant—were all going to show. A look of surprise washed across Watson’s tired face.

“F--k me,” he said. “I’ve got Rupert Murdoch in front of me in a week.”

Just days before, News of the World, News International’s flagship tabloid, had ceased to exist, its office in the company’s gated complex near the Tower of London sealed off as a crime scene. That morning, Britain’s top cops had been grilled in Parliament over their failure to properly investigate the news conglomerate, and suspicions of corruption and cover-up were running high. It was easy to forget that for the last two years, Watson had appeared to many as a lonely and possibly unhinged figure as he railed against the apparent lawlessness of the Murdoch empire. While British politicians and media ignored the issue, Watson hammered away at it in speeches and parliamentary sessions, in the process becoming its public face—which was not necessarily a good image to have.

Some friends, Watson admitted, “probably said, ‘This is getting a bit obsessive.‘”

Stocky and bespectacled, Watson doesn’t cut the figure of crusading scourge. But with the News International executives heading to his committee room, the M.P. has become one of the scandal’s most lauded heroes. On Sunday, the British newspaper The Guardian called him Rupert Murdoch’s “tormenter in chief...”

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Mike Giglio @'The Daily Beast'