The Times has admonished its under-fire parent company, News International, in a leader column following James Murdoch's second testimony before parliament. The paper has robustly reported the hacking affair since the summer. In a leader on Friday, the Times says NI's covert surveillance of its critics was disgraceful and slammed the newspaper group's "victim under attack" reflex. But the paper did reserve some outbound fire for one NI critic: Tom Watson MP. The leader says that Watson's mafia reference undermined his own credibility and casually smeared the integrity of thousands of others. It ends on a note of contrition: "The lesson is clear: the company should always be its harshest critic and its own most assiduous investigator. A powerful organisation with a victim complex has the capacity to do great damage, not least to itself."
