Elisabeth Murdoch contradicts brother James

MUMBAI: Delivering a speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Elisabeth Murdoch made a push for the media industry to embrace morality, while stressing that profit without purpose would be a recipe for disaster.

This contradicted her brother James Murdoch?s stand three years ago who at the same event had said that profit was the only guarantee of independence. "James was right that if you remove profit, then independence is massively challenged but I think that he left something out: The reason his statement sat so uncomfortably is that profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster," said Elisabeth Murdoch.

?As an industry?and indeed I would say as a global society?we have become trapped in our own rhetoric. We need to learn how to be comfortable with articulating purpose and reject the idea that money is the only effective measure of all things or that the free market is the only sorting mechanism.?

She also unlike her brother supported the BBC. James Murdoch had taken aim at the UK pubcaster for its guaranteed and growing income from the license fee paid by UK TV owners. But Elisabeth Murdoch said, "Let me put it on record that I am a current supporter of the BBC?s universal license fee".

Addressing the phone hacking issue which led to the closure of News Of the World, she said that she had told James to step back and that Rebekah Brooks should resign. "It was said within closed walls and Rebekah did resign."

?News Corp is a company that is currently asking itself some very significant and difficult questions about how some behaviours fell so far short of its values. Personally, I believe one of the biggest lessons of the past year has been the need for any organisation to discuss, affirm and institutionalise a rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose.?

She also said that she does not want to succeed her father at the company.