I haven’t been following the News of the World wiretapping scandal very closely, but what I have heard has boiled my blood. Private investigators hired by journalists working at the paper were hacking into the phones of countless people, including celebrities, politicians, murder victims, fallen British soldiers and their families, and missing persons, just to get their messages and record conversations for story leads. In at least one case they deleted voicemail messages to make room for more, giving the family of a missing 13 year-old girl false hope that she was alive and retreiving her messages. Two journalists went to jail when the news came out in 2006, but it was apparently much more widespread than it was first thought. It was despicable, and many people were outraged that Rupert Murdoch, the head of parent organization News International, wasn’t firing the editor of NOTW right away. (Reports have her trying to resign twice and getting turned down.) It looks like Murdoch had other plans though as it was just announced that Sunday’s edition of the paper will be its last.

Reporting from London— In a stunning move, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire announced Thursday it was shutting down the News of the World tabloid, Britain’s bestselling Sunday newspaper, because of an alleged phone hacking scandal that has triggered a major public backlash here.

James Murdoch, a senior executive at his father’s News Corp., said Sunday’s edition of the News of the World would be its last. In a statement, he said the company accepted responsibility for the distress inflicted by the phone hacking allegations and the paper’s breach of journalistic ethics.

“The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account,” the statement said, “but it failed when it came to itself.”

The statement acknowledged the gravity of allegations that the paper hacked into the cellphones of celebrities, politicians and even crime and military combat victims in its pursuit of scoops. Earlier this week, Britain was rocked by reports that a private investigator hired by the tabloid had illegally accessed – and deleted – voicemail messages on the phone of a 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped and later found murdered.

Such a practice, if it occurred, “was inhuman and has no place in our company,” the statement said — in effect concurring with an outpouring of public outrage over the reports that has swept the nation.

The closure will mean the death of a weekly newspaper that has been a part of the British media landscape for more than a century. The News of the World enjoys a circulation of more than 2.5 million, far beyond its closest rival.

But the elder Murdoch and News Corp. evidently felt that the hacking scandal had created too toxic of an environment for the company and that the News of the World had to be sacrificed.

News Corp.’s British subsidiary, News International, also owns other iconic publications, such as the Times of London and the Sun tabloid, which have been caught up in a boycott campaign by Facebook and Twitter users angered by the allegations surrounding the News of the World.

[From LA Times]

US Weekly reports that NOTW was the “largest-selling English language newspaper in the world.” This was the right thing to do. Can you imagine if you lost a loved one and there were people snooping in on your phone conversations and reporting details in the press? There were families of terrorist bombing victims and soldiers killed in duty whose phones were being tapped. How could any person with an ounce of compassion ever justify that?

Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng are shown at Cannes in May and also in April. She’s 42, he’s 80. Credit: WENN.com