Murdoch isn't going anywhere

The News Corp. CEO said on a conference call that he's still in charge - along with COO Chase Carey - and that he's committed to clearing up the phone-hacking scandal, which involved only "one small corner" of the company. Frankly, he didn't have to say much - Wall Street shows very little interest in the uproar (it's only about ethics, after all), and besides, the last couple of volatile weeks have taken the News Corp. shenanigans way off the front page. From All Things Digital:

No, he wasn't going anywhere soon, and if he did, COO Chase Carey would run the ship, he told a reporter who asked about James Murdoch's chances to succeed his father. Yes, he was committed to "total transparency" when it came to making sure there were no other News of the World scandals brewing in his empire. But he didn't want to say anything else about it. And no, his board of directors was not jam-packed with his cronies, he told a reporter who asked about that. It would be interesting, in a setting that allowed for follow-up questions, to follow up with some of those questions, but today's format wasn't going to allow that.

Earnings were pretty good, although they were dampened by the fire sale of MySpace. The Bev Hills-based social-networking site, which News Corp. bought for $580 million, was recently unloaded for $35 million.