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LONDON Over 60 years, Rupert Murdoch built a media empire using his properties and their profits not just to break down the doors to the British establishment, but also to control it.

So Tuesday's scathing declaration by a British parliamentary committee that Murdoch is "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company" may mark the moment when the once-tamed establishment lost its fear of the country's most powerful media titan.

The report was Parliament's response to the illegal phone-hacking scandal that began at the Murdoch-owned tabloid News of the World and led to the arrests of several senior lieutenants across the global sprawl of his News Corp.

The committee said Murdoch "turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness" to the phone hacking that was rampant at his newspapers, shredding the defense mounted by the company that its senior executives were unaware of the possibly criminal shenanigans of reporters.

It alleged that Murdoch's son James showed poor leadership in failing to get to the bottom of the hacking. And it accused three senior executives at News Corp. and the now-defunct News of the World, including Les Hinton, one of Murdoch's closest associates, of misleading Parliament about the pervasiveness of snooping into cellphones.

The damning assessment of corporate character was a blow to Murdoch, who is seeing his closest lieutenants discredited and his family control of News Corp assailed.

"Just think of it as part of a tide, an ever-increasing, unstoppable, inevitable tidal wave," said Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff. "It just accrues. Every piece of news is worse than the last piece of news. It's something that they can't get out from under. They can't stop it. And it has their name on it."

In addition to tarnishing Murdoch's reputation, the committee's findings may have implications for his business interests.

Questioning his fitness to lead a company could have bearing on his almost 40% controlling stake in British Sky Broadcasting. British regulatory authorities are charged with determining whether major stakeholders such as Murdoch are "fit and proper" owners of mass media in Britain, and the agency overseeing BSkyB said it would take the parliamentary committee's findings into consideration in its review of Murdoch's ownership.

And the report swiftly added to pressure on Murdoch's U.S. properties. A Washington-based ethics group called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke 27 Murdoch-owned television licenses, citing the British parliamentary report as evidence the Murdochs fall short of the necessary good character standards to be entrusted with a broadcast license.

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Report questions Rupert Murdoch's fitness to lead News Corp.