BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Here's former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Parliament this week:

GORDON BROWN:

…and many, many wholly innocent men, women and children, at their darkest hour, at the most vulnerable moment in their lives found their private tears bought and sold by News International for commercial gain.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

This week, Rebekah Brooks resigned as head of the British newspaper division of Rupert Murdoch's News International. Les Hinton who had run Murdoch's British newspapers until 2007 and then Fox News, and now The Wall Street Journal, followed her out the door.

Also, this week Rupert Murdoch withdrew his multi-billion-dollar ownership bid for the U.K.'s largest pay TV service and agreed to attend a parliamentary hearing.

Simon Hoggart is a Guardian columnist, and we reached him in the paper’s bustling parliament newsroom, where he told us that Murdoch’s British empire seems to be on the wane at the moment. As for the future?

SIMON HOGGART:

We don't know. It could be that he will sell his other British papers, The Times and The Sunday Times. The Sunday Times was accused of hacking into information about the former prime minister’s bank statements. Of course, that didn't help things at all. So what we had on Wednesday was that the whole of the British Parliament united in condemnation — and I think “loathing” is not too strong a word — of the entire Murdoch empire.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

This whole scandal has unveiled, in great detail, the interlocking relationships between the Murdoch empire, law enforcement in Britain, and even the highest reaches of government.

SIMON HOGGART:

Well, we always knew that policemen took money for information. And this is a very serious offense but, of course, mainly it’s done with used bank bills, no great sums of money involved. This seems to have been on what we call an industrial scale now.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

SIMON HOGGART:

So that makes a difference. And I think some policeman are going to find themselves quite possibly in jail and, indeed, the people who paid them and the former editor who used to work for David Cameron, our present prime minister.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Andy Coulson.

SIMON HOGGART:

Yes, who approved the payments to corrupt police officials.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

But what about Cameron himself?

SIMON HOGGART:

Cameron himself, he’s under great pressure. The Labour Party, which is still licking its wounds after an election defeat a year ago, sees a real opportunity to go for him.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

What about Murdoch's image? He has a reputation as kind of a Wizard of Oz, doesn't he, the man behind the curtain?

SIMON HOGGART:

Yes, Wizard of Australia.

[BROOKE LAUGHING]

And I think what you're seeing is the end of that particular movie, because the curtain has been drawn back and there is a rather old confused elderly man who doesn't quite know what’s hitting him.

The fact that he didn't sack the chief executive, even though she was associated with the most terrible over-the-phone hacking, the fact that he was seen in all the pictures since he arrived in London smiling with her, as if there was nothing to worry about, as if he was just setting off on a rather nice vacation.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

He really seems to me to have lost the plot, frankly.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

I don’t think Murdoch really understands what’s going on.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

I have one final question for you, and it has to do with The Guardian.

SIMON HOGGART:

Mm-hmm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Malfeasance on the part of the News of the World was for a long time the Guardian story and the Guardian story alone. It was a lonely crusade to get the world to pay attention. Is there some elation in the newsroom as you watch the entire British media landscape change because of what your paper reported?

SIMON HOGGART:

Well, of course there is, yes, though frankly it has been so incredibly busy and hectic over the past few days, I don’t think people have really had time to be very elated. But yes, of course.

And I have to pay tribute in particular to Nick Davies, the reporter, who went for this like a dog refusing to let go of a bone and our editor, Alan Rusbridger, who in the face of flat denials and literally hatred from many of his colleagues again persisted with the story.  They must be feeling a little bit smug and trying not to show it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Simon, thank you so much.

SIMON HOGGART:
You're more than welcome.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:

Simon Hoggart is a columnist for The Guardian.