‘FIT AND PROPER’

BSkyB Can Keep Broadcast License

Although regulators criticize James Murdoch.

British Sky Broadcasting, the satellite TV network partially owned by Rupert Murdoch, has been declared “fit and proper” by regulators and the broadcaster can retain its broadcast license. The Office of Communications led the inquiry into BSkyB after the scandal broke involving Murdoch-owned media outposts hacking people’s phones—at the same time Murdoch was promoting a $12 billion bid to acquire full control of the network. Though the ruling Thursday cleared BSkyB of any wrongdoing connected to the scandal, the regulators found that Murdoch’s son James— Rupert’s onetime heir apparent— “fell short” in his handling of the ordeal and in his “attitude toward the possibility of wrongdoing in the companies for which he was responsible.”