Another top News Corp exec, Hinton, resigns

NEW YORK (AP) — Les Hinton, the chief executive of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, resigned on Friday, becoming the latest News Corp. executive casualty in the phone-hacking and bribery scandal in Britain.

Hinton served as executive chairman of News International, the British unit that oversaw News Corp.'s U.K. tabloid newspapers at the heart of the scandal for 12 years. A member of the board of The Associated Press, Hinton became head of Dow Jones in December 2007.

Hinton said in a statement that he was “ignorant of what apparently happened” but felt it was proper to resign. He apologized for the hurt caused by the actions of journalists who worked for the now-shuttered tabloid, News of the World.

Hinton, who had been with the company for 52 years, maintained that when he testified before a government committee in 2007 and 2009, he believed that the misconduct was limited to former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman.

“I told the Committee there had never been any evidence delivered to me that suggested the conduct had spread beyond one journalist,” he said in a statement. “If others had evidence that wrongdoing went further, I was not told about it.”

The resignation came the same day that News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, also resigned over the scandal.

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