James Murdoch, Rupert’s younger son and the chief operating officer of News International, appeared today before the House of Commons’ Select Committee on Culture, Media, and Sport, to answer questions, for the second time, about the phone-hacking scandal. In July, Murdoch had acquitted himself smoothly, deflecting the committee members’ questions with impenetrable management-speak, and generally refusing to be riled. (It was his stepmother, Wendi, who smacked the man who accosted Rupert with a custard pie.) But in September, Colin Myler and Tom Crone, two former News of the World executives, told the members of Parliament that James Murdoch had misled them, and that he knew in 2008 that phone-hacking was a widespread practice at News of the World. Recalled to the committee today, Murdoch made an equally composed witness, playing the earnest technocratic foil to an assemblage of—he would have us believe—hunched and lumpy cynics. He positioned himself as a reformer, bent on redeeming a company that, he admitted, “had a tendency to react to criticism or allegations as hostile, or commercially or politically motivated,” but was now “humbled” and “very sorry.” The optics, as Murdoch might call them, were good. The only problem was, his testimony wasn’t believable.

Murdoch admits that he signed off on paying a million-pound settlement to the soccer executive Gordon Taylor in the summer of 2008. (I wrote about his lawyer, whom News International hired a private investigator to trail, in July.) Murdoch says that he approved the deal because Myler and Crone advised him that the company would lose the case in court, but that they never showed him—and he never asked for—the documents explaining why. Think of it as the V.I.P. Defense: I’m so important that no one shows me anything important.

A few observations:

One of James Murdoch’s talking points was that News International is such a large and complex corporation that a million-pound settlement wasn’t a matter particularly worthy of his attention. (He undermined his point by admitting that Tom Crone was only authorized to approve payments of up to ten thousand pounds.) He spoke once of the “din and clamor” of the place, and, again, of the “noise and clamor.” Working at News International is apparently like working in a coal mine. Murdoch spoke much of the benefit of hindsight—“If I knew then what I know today.” As the M.P. Paul Farrelly pointed out, it seems highly likely that Murdoch would have known what he knows today if he’d asked a few simple and seemingly obvious questions. In what was probably the hearing’s most fruitful line of questioning, Farrelly said, “Are you always so incurious with all the other businesses that you run?” Tom Watson, the Labour M.P. who has crusaded against phone-hacking, questioned Murdoch aggressively. Here’s a synopsis:

“Did you mislead this committee?”

“No, I did not.”

“If you didn’t, who did?”

Murdoch replied that he had been consistent in his testimony.

“So was it Mr. Crone?”

[Yes, in the conservatory, with the candlestick!]

“I believe their testimony was misleading,” Murdoch finally admitted.

Watson continued in a theatrical vein: “You’re familiar with the word ‘mafia’?”

“Yes, Mister Watson.”

[Wait, this is “Donnie Brasco,” not “Sherlock Holmes”!]

“Have you ever heard the term ‘omerta,’ the mafia term they use for the code of silence?”

“Ah, I’m not an aficionado of such things.”

Watson asked Murdoch if he agreed that News International could be described as “a group of people who are bound together by secrecy who together pursue their group’s business objectives with no regard for the law, using intimidation, corruption and general criminality.”

“I frankly think that’s offensive….”

“Mr Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise.”

Murdoch, ultimately, is in a bind: when asked why, as he insists, he blindly followed Myler and Crone’s advice to approve a huge settlement with Taylor, he points to their experience and credentials. At the same time, he says that the committee should believe him, not them, because they are not credible. If Myler and Crone’s word was good enough for Murdoch, shouldn’t it be good enough for the committee?

Photograph by Oli Scarff/Getty Images.