Ex-Schools Chief Emerges as Unlikely Murdoch Ally

Joel I. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, was in a tricky position. Three weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch asked Mr. Klein, now his trusted deputy, to oversee an investigation into the phone hacking scandal that has deeply wounded the News Corporation and its chairman, something Mr. Klein was eager to avoid.

“I am trying to get as far away from this as I can,” he lamented to a friend.

He has not succeeded. Mr. Klein, who joined the News Corporation as a senior vice president in January, is not only responsible for the investigation that could uncover what company managers knew about the hacking, but he also has become one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest and most visible advisers throughout the crisis.

His seemingly contradictory roles — de facto chief of internal affairs officer and ascendant executive with Mr. Murdoch’s ear — are raising questions about how robust and objective the internal inquiry can be. When Mr. Murdoch summoned a team of top deputies and outside consultants to London to help him manage the fallout from the hacking, Mr. Klein was one of the first to arrive, moving into a temporary office 20 feet from the chairman’s.

When Mr. Murdoch and his closest advisers debated whether to accept the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, a newspaper executive at the center of the controversy, Mr. Klein pushed for her exit. When Mr. Murdoch wrote a statement to deliver to Parliament last week, Mr. Klein weighed in on the drafts.

And while the world watched Mr. Murdoch and his son James testify, Mr. Klein sat directly behind them for three hours, occasionally cleaning his rimless glasses with his tie as he looked on in support.

Mr. Klein’s dizzying journey, in under a year, from one of the nation’s foremost education reformers to the corporate consigliere for a media titan whose politics are far to the right of his own, has surprised and unsettled many friends and colleagues, who fear that he will be unable to extricate himself from a scandal that shows no sign of abating or, they say, ending well. “This was nothing he could have ever expected,” said Barbara Walters, a longtime friend of Mr. Klein’s.

But in many ways, interviews suggest, his emergence as a dominant figure within the News Corporation is consistent with a biography that combines high-minded legal and social aims — antitrust law and education — with a driving, sometimes overwhelming competitive fire.

“He has a take-no-prisoners attitude,” said Randi Weingarten, who battled Mr. Klein when she was head of the New York City teachers union. “He is a litigator. He is about winning.”

It is a sign of how delicate Mr. Klein’s position inside the News Corporation has become that he was initially against the idea of an internal review. In April, after London’s Metropolitan Police arrested three News of the World journalists on suspicion of hacking, some executives pushed for an investigation that would have the full backing of the company’s board and senior management, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions taking place at the time.

Mr. Murdoch opposed the idea outright. Standing firmly in his corner was Mr. Klein.

“There was a clear message,” said one of the people who knew of Mr. Klein’s role and requested anonymity to divulge private conversations. “Stay out. And let Joel handle it.”

Top lawyers and experts in corporate governance said the News Corporation should have hired outside legal counsel to oversee the inquiry, as dozens of companies like the American International Group and Fannie Mae have done in the past, rather than rely on an insider.

“That is not standard practice,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “You cannot be seen as objective if you are inside.”

The News Corporation says the investigative body will have true independence and the power to compel employees to cooperate. The company points to the appointment of Lord Anthony Grabiner, a prominent British lawyer who also sat behind the Murdochs during their testimony before lawmakers last week, as the body’s independent chairman. Lord Grabiner will report to Mr. Klein. Mr. Klein, in turn, will report to Viet Dinh, an independent director on the News Corporation board.

Mr. Klein declined to be interviewed for this article.

“We’ve been given a free hand,” said Lord Grabiner, who added that he and Mr. Klein never would have agreed to take on the job if they felt the committee was a sham.

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Ex-Schools Chief Emerges as Unlikely Murdoch Ally

Joel I. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, was in a tricky position. Three weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch asked Mr. Klein, now his trusted deputy, to oversee an investigation into the phone hacking scandal that has deeply wounded the News Corporation and its chairman, something Mr. Klein was eager to avoid.

“I am trying to get as far away from this as I can,” he lamented to a friend.

He has not succeeded. Mr. Klein, who joined the News Corporation as a senior vice president in January, is not only responsible for the investigation that could uncover what company managers knew about the hacking, but he also has become one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest and most visible advisers throughout the crisis.

His seemingly contradictory roles — de facto chief of internal affairs officer and ascendant executive with Mr. Murdoch’s ear — are raising questions about how robust and objective the internal inquiry can be. When Mr. Murdoch summoned a team of top deputies and outside consultants to London to help him manage the fallout from the hacking, Mr. Klein was one of the first to arrive, moving into a temporary office 20 feet from the chairman’s.

When Mr. Murdoch and his closest advisers debated whether to accept the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, a newspaper executive at the center of the controversy, Mr. Klein pushed for her exit. When Mr. Murdoch wrote a statement to deliver to Parliament last week, Mr. Klein weighed in on the drafts.

And while the world watched Mr. Murdoch and his son James testify, Mr. Klein sat directly behind them for three hours, occasionally cleaning his rimless glasses with his tie as he looked on in support.

Mr. Klein’s dizzying journey, in under a year, from one of the nation’s foremost education reformers to the corporate consigliere for a media titan whose politics are far to the right of his own, has surprised and unsettled many friends and colleagues, who fear that he will be unable to extricate himself from a scandal that shows no sign of abating or, they say, ending well. “This was nothing he could have ever expected,” said Barbara Walters, a longtime friend of Mr. Klein’s.

But in many ways, interviews suggest, his emergence as a dominant figure within the News Corporation is consistent with a biography that combines high-minded legal and social aims — antitrust law and education — with a driving, sometimes overwhelming competitive fire.

“He has a take-no-prisoners attitude,” said Randi Weingarten, who battled Mr. Klein when she was head of the New York City teachers union. “He is a litigator. He is about winning.”

It is a sign of how delicate Mr. Klein’s position inside the News Corporation has become that he was initially against the idea of an internal review. In April, after London’s Metropolitan Police arrested three News of the World journalists on suspicion of hacking, some executives pushed for an investigation that would have the full backing of the company’s board and senior management, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions taking place at the time.

Mr. Murdoch opposed the idea outright. Standing firmly in his corner was Mr. Klein.

“There was a clear message,” said one of the people who knew of Mr. Klein’s role and requested anonymity to divulge private conversations. “Stay out. And let Joel handle it.”

Top lawyers and experts in corporate governance said the News Corporation should have hired outside legal counsel to oversee the inquiry, as dozens of companies like the American International Group and Fannie Mae have done in the past, rather than rely on an insider.

“That is not standard practice,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “You cannot be seen as objective if you are inside.”

The News Corporation says the investigative body will have true independence and the power to compel employees to cooperate. The company points to the appointment of Lord Anthony Grabiner, a prominent British lawyer who also sat behind the Murdochs during their testimony before lawmakers last week, as the body’s independent chairman. Lord Grabiner will report to Mr. Klein. Mr. Klein, in turn, will report to Viet Dinh, an independent director on the News Corporation board.

Mr. Klein declined to be interviewed for this article.

“We’ve been given a free hand,” said Lord Grabiner, who added that he and Mr. Klein never would have agreed to take on the job if they felt the committee was a sham.

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Union Chief Faults School Reform From ‘On High’

“Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom,” Ms. Weingarten told a crowd of about 2,000 here in kicking off the national conference held every two years by the union, which has 1.5 million members.

In the past year, particularly in Wisconsin and New Jersey, governors and some state lawmakers have castigated teachers’ unions and schools’ performance while slashing budgets and pushing newer education strategies like charter schools and more rigorous teacher evaluation.

Ms. Weingarten, who has long opposed the cuts — both budgetary and rhetorical — made to teachers, told her audience that the current debate on education “has been hijacked by a group of self-styled reformers” from “on high” who want to blame educators’ benefits and job security for states’ notorious budget problems. Calling the union gathering “an affirmation,” she countered that change to the education system should instead come through greater community support for teachers themselves and recognition for the commitment to children they already demonstrate.

The speech, preceded by a youth chorus singing “Money (That’s What I Want)” and ending with Dionne Warwick’s “Say a Little Prayer,” was a formalization of the points Ms. Weingarten has made in editorials and on television as states’ budget crises have landed at the schoolhouse door. It played well with union members like Dan Fray, an eighth-grade social studies teacher in Toledo, Ohio, where State Senate Bill 5 limited the collective-bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers earlier this year.

“We didn’t become teachers for the pay or the benefits or the schedule, and no one’s looking for a pat on the back for staying late to help kids,” Mr. Fray said. “But what’s happened in Ohio and Indiana and Wisconsin and elsewhere is the vilification of the schoolteacher.”

Ms. Weingarten’s speech followed impassioned comments from Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat of the District of Columbia, who said, “There is no way to be for our children and against teachers.”

Ms. Weingarten did offer conciliatory remarks, acknowledging the success of some charter schools while still expressing fear that they siphon talent and money from established school systems. She implored her members to avoid a “circle the wagons” approach to public skepticism of their value, saying that could cut teachers off from the communities with which they should connect more intimately.

The area in which teachers’ economic and ideological concerns appeared to converge was longevity in the classroom. Ms. Weingarten criticized an environment that discourages people from making education a life’s calling, noting that one-third of teachers leave after three years, and one-half leave after five. That is before they have a chance to reach their potential, she said — and, some detractors would counter, the comfort of tenure that can breed complacency and underperformance.

“I’m not saying that teaching needs to be the only job someone holds in a society where people have multiple careers,” Ms. Weingarten said. “But unless we move teaching from a service project to a sustainable profession, it will exact a huge cost on our schools, our children’s achievement and our progress as a nation.”

Ms. Weingarten did not address two notable subjects: the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, and recent revelations of cheating among teachers in Atlanta and elsewhere to improve students’ test scores, which are often tied to funding.

In an interview afterward, Ms. Weingarten condemned the Atlanta situation but pointed to the role of the local teachers’ unions in helping uncover it. The cheating itself, she said, was a byproduct of when “targets become more important than learning” and of a teaching climate that in many areas has become “intimidating, fearful and retaliatory.”

“A new reality is what we’re fighting for,” she had told her audience an hour earlier. “One in which we improve the profession of teaching for teachers and outcomes for students.”

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Judge Backs Appointment of New Chief for Schools

The appointment of Cathleen P. Black as the next New York City schools chancellor was upheld on Wednesday by a judge in Albany, clearing the way for her to start as scheduled next week.

Justice Gerald W. Connolly of State Supreme Court in Albany dismissed three lawsuits that sought to overturn her appointment, finding in a 25-page ruling that the state education commissioner was within his authority to excuse Ms. Black from the academic credentials normally required for the post.

Justice Connolly wrote that the decision by David M. Steiner, the education commissioner, “fully weighs the qualifications of Ms. Black, including the alleged deficiencies in her background and experience, in light of the unique nature of the district, and reaches a conclusion based on a careful consideration of all the relevant factors.”

In oral arguments last week, lawyers representing some New York City public school parents said that Mr. Steiner was wrong to excuse her lack of a master’s degree and that a compromise to place a strong academic deputy at her side could not legally compensate for her lack of experience in teaching and academics.

The state and city defended the appointment, citing her successful 40-year career in publishing, during which she managed large organizations and budgets, most recently as the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg came under wide criticism for the secretive search that led to her appointment, and for his decision to choose a chancellor without education credentials.

“Cathie has been working hard and is ready to hit the ground running on Monday, her first official day on the job,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement.

The plaintiffs said they were disappointed in the result, and Eric J. Snyder, who brought one of the suits on behalf of his two school-age children, said he planned to appeal.

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