MURDOCH DEALS WITH HACKING SCANDAL THE WAY FELLOW PLUTOCRATS HAVE DEALT WITH THE RECESSION

You know -- by using the situation as an excuse to carry out cutbacks, screw ordinary workers, and protect the people at the top. That's what governments all over the world are doing now in the recession; that's what corporations have done, by using the downturn as an excuse to get "lean and mean" and demand more work from fewer workers -- and that's what Murdoch's doing in response to his scandal.

Yeah, I know it looks as if he's taking a big hit:

Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury Over Hacking

The media titan Rupert Murdoch abandoned his defiance of popular and Parliamentary pressure on Thursday, sacrificing the mass-circulation British tabloid News of the World in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire from fallout as the phone hacking scandal turned yet more disturbing....

But read on and you see he's just engaging in the sort of cost-cutting he was already considering:

The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun, another News International paper, might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers' operations as a way to save money, and the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered on Tuesday.

(Emphasis added.)

And just as most corporate responses to the recession have protected the biggest of corporate bigwigs, former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who's now an upper-level Murdoch corporate honcho even though all this happened on her watch, is keeping her job, as Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and others have noted:

"Some people are losing their jobs, but one person who is keeping her job is the person who was editor of News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler episode," Mr. Miliband said, referring to the case of the 13-year old. On Monday, lawyers for her family said the paper hacked her phone after she was abducted in 2002, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that confused police investigators and created false hope that she might still be alive....

"The staff at the News of the World have lost their jobs to save one person and her 2.5 million pound job," said one reporter at the paper, speaking of Ms. Brooks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm future job prospects.

"If she had gone at the start of the week, we'd all still be employed," the reporter said. "I hope she’s worth it for Rupert." ...

Remind you of how we ordinary schlubs have been treated in the recession, and how our betters have been spared? It should.

****

HOWEVER: If the scandal hits The Sun as well -- authorities are now looking into phone-hacking allegations at that paper -- then Murdoch and Brooks could be in serious trouble. But remember, this is an era of near-absolute lack of accountability for the powerful, so don't be sure they won't worm their way out of this, too.