News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks leaves the office of The News of The World overnight. Credit:Getty Mr Cameron last night defended his decision to hire Mr Coulson as his media adviser. ''I made the decision, my decision alone, to give him a second chance . . . but the second chance didn't work,'' he said. ''People will judge me for that.'' But he said that mistakes had been made by all politicians. They had failed, he said, to stop and ask whether media organisations were behaving properly and politicians should now ''stop, frankly, trying to curry favour with the media''. Up to 4000 people had been targeted for hacking by the paper's former private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, police said. They are also investigating documents indicating the paper spent £100,000 in payments to five police officers. The paper had initially claimed that the breaches were confined to a single rogue reporter but Rupert Murdoch's son James, chairman of News Corp's British arm News International, yesterday issued a humiliating mea culpa and apology over the company's multiple failures.

Former media adviser Andy Coulson at Downing Street before his arrest. Credit:Getty Images He announced the closure in a letter in which he said the behaviour of which the paper had been accused ''was inhuman and has no place in our company''. ''The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account, but it failed when it came to itself,'' the letter said. News Corp Chairman James Murdoch. Credit:AP The closure of the paper was greeted by politicians and phone-hack victims as a cynical ploy to protect Mr Murdoch's bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB. Ownership of BSkyB would make him Britain's dominant media proprietor, but there have been calls to examine whether he is a ''fit and proper person'' to hold the licence.

Labour MP Tom Watson said: ''Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. [It was closed by the] revulsion of families up and down the land. It was going to lose all its readers and it had no advertisers left. They had no choice.'' Rupert Murdoch. Credit:AP Most of the paper's advertisers said they were pulling their accounts because they no longer wanted their names associated with the newspaper. James Murdoch admitted the paper had made statements to Parliament ''without being in the full possession of the facts. This was wrong.'' The judicial inquiry into the scandal will look at the conduct of the original police investigation, which stopped with the conviction in 2007 of Mulcaire and royal reporter Clive Goodman. Police failed to inform thousands of potential targets that they might have been hacked. A second inquiry will look at the future of the media and its regulation.

Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith welcomed the paper's demise, saying it had become ''toxic on every level''. ''It is an organisation which has corrupted our political system; it has made it impossible for people to have faith in our police,'' he said. ''I think it weakened parliament systematically over the years.'' It is expected that the News of the World will be replaced by a new paper from the Murdoch stable, the Sun on Sunday. The domain name was registered this week by an unknown party. Labour wants a freeze on approval for the BSkyB bid, arguing that the full scale of the wrongdoing and the causes of the failure of corporate governance at News could not be known until two planned inquiries are complete. Mr Cameron has faced tough questions over his friendship with Ms Brooks. He said yesterday it had been reported that she offered her resignation over this hacking scandal and ''I would have taken it''.

He hired Mr Coulson, Ms Brooks's deputy during the hacking period, as his communications adviser, but Mr Coulson resigned in January, saying continuing controversy had made his job impossible. Mr Coulson was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and on suspicion of corruption allegations. A number of suited men, thought to be police officers, entered Mr Coulson's south London home soon after with large plastic crates. Goodman was last night rearrested in connection with alleged payments to Metropolitan police officers. Labour MP Chris Bryant, told The Independent he thought the News of the World's closure was to protect Ms Brooks. He added to Labour leader Ed Miliband's calls for Ms Brooks to step down.

Loading News International owns nearly 40 per cent of British newspapers. With AGENCIES