I can see why someone might claim that the public are partly responsible for celebrity phone hacking - after all, if people didn't buy papers for celebrity scandal they wouldn't be chasing it. But I can't accept that there was a public appetite for private details of cases such as Milly Dowler''s murder or the 7/7 bombings. Indeed, given how worked up the tabloids get about anything related to children I'm amazed that no one realised what a spectacular own goal it would be to jeopardise the Dowler murder investigation. (That's without even considering the moral abhorrence of it.)
I don't think Murdoch is finished, simply because there are enough people in this world who'll believe whatever they're told and will start buying the inevitable Sunday Sun because 'it was the News of the World behind the hacking', completely missing that Murdoch has just sacrificed an irreparably damaged brand to save his other interests. But I think there will be genuine long-term damage and News International will not wield the same power it once did.