Sean Hoare, the former News of the World show-business reporter who was the first named journalist to allege that Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead.

Now, News Corp. is considering elevating chief operating officer Chase Carey to CEO to succeed Rupert Murdoch, people with knowledge of the situation said. Murdoch's stint yesterday in front of Parliament was termed a debacle by insiders. 

SCOTLAND YARD CHIEF RESIGNS AMIDST GROWING MURDOCH MEDIA SCANDAL 

London's Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson resigned Sunday amid a phone-hacking and police-bribery scandal that has tarnished the police in Britain's capital. Britain's top cop resignation was the latest casualty of the phone-hacking scandal engulfing British public life. Stephenson quit just hours after Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally intercepting phone calls and bribing the police.

Stephenson said that if he stayed, the outcome of a public inquiry into the News Corp. phone-hacking would likely "reaffirm my personal integrity." He said he chose to step down to avoid conflicts with preparations for security at the Olympic Games in London next year.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron, under huge political pressure over the intensifying phone hacking scandal, said Monday that Parliament should delay its summer break so he can brief lawmakers.

Now Labour Party opposition leader MP Ed Miliband [pictured below] has demanded the breakup of Murdoch's U.K. media empire in a dramatic intervention in the row over the phone hacking and alleged cop bribery scandal. 

Bloomberg News reports that Murdoch is struggling to control the destiny of the company he began building six decades ago.

WSJ'S WORST EDITORIAL MOMENT IN HISTORY? 

But how did The Wall Street Journal, led by Murdoch's hand-picked managing editor, Robert Thomson, follow up on the resignation of its publisher and the arrest of Brooks? With some standard news stories -- and a flame-throwing editorial that the Journal hopes will singe critics but could boomerang in a backdraft.

The WSJ editorial took aim -- not at the major players in the News of the World scandal -- but rather pointed fingers at news outlets like U.K.'s The Guardian and the BBC for hypocrisy and pushing their own agenda in covering the scandal. The editorial also asserts that Scotland Yard's inaction in investigating any wrongdoing is worse than the alleged acts themselves. Further, the editorial staunchly defends and praises recently resigned publisher and CEO of the Journal, Les Hinton, who was at the helm of News Corp.'s British paper division during the time of the alleged hacking. Minutes after Brooks announced her resignation as chief executive of News International -- among the most stunning reversals in Murdoch's monumental career as a media baron -- the plaintive words of a former staffer at the now-shut News of the World were posted on Twitter: "It feels a bit like we've been sacrificed for nothing."

"It was the kind of place you get out of and you never want to go back again." That's how one former reporter describes the News of the World newsroom under editor Brooks, the ferociously ambitious flaming red-haired executive who ran Britain's top-selling Sunday tabloid from 2000-03. News Corp. is moving toward the denouement of a drama that started 13 days ago with the revelation that News of the World hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002.

Apparently, News Corp. is attempting to do on U.S. soil what it failed to accomplish in London: contain the damage of a scandal over dubious reporting tactics at one of its British tabloids. As the past week went on, many people wondered whether fallout from News Corp.'s phone-hacking disaster would cross the Atlantic to the United States, the company's headquarters. Now more engulfed than ever in a virulent phone-hacking scandal, it appears that Murdoch's days amid the upper echelons of the media elite may be numbered.

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