Polarising figure no more?

An eighty-year-old man appeared before a parliamentary committee earlier today to answer questions about how the organistation that he ran had managed to hack into the phones of so many people, including that of the dead schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

No he was not to blame, he said, he had been let down by the people he had trusted.

And he was very, very sorry for the harm that had been caused.

This was, he said, the worst day of his life.

As you watched this giant of the media world being humbled by a parliamentary process of country that was not of his birth, somehow you were aware that you would never look Rupert Murdoch in the same way ever again. Great Power is only great when it is behind in the shadows, when it is exposed to the sunlight it can wilt, that was the lesson that America had taken from the attacks on 9/11, namely that she had ceased to be a great power and in a sense she is still attempting to recover back that position to this day.

We may never look at Rupert Murdoch in the same way again, whether that is a bad thing remains to be seen.