( CNN ) -- Prue Murdoch , the daughter of Rupert by his first marriage , once told me that her abiding memory of her father over the breakfast table was not of his beaming face , but of the back page of a newspaper . One doubts if James Murdoch even remembers that . Judging by his evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into the `` industrial-scale '' hacking of innocent parties ' phones by the News of the World and The Sun -- over which he presided , as executive chairman of their publisher , News International -- he appears to have suffered so bad a case of amnesia that it 's a miracle he even remembered his own name . That his inquisitors , competitors and shareholders have struggled to believe his evidence is an understatement . Nonetheless , it still came as a surprise when James resigned from his position Wednesday , congratulating himself on the successful launch of the new Sun on Sunday last weekend . Coming so soon after the closure of the News of the World -- in apparent contrition for its despicable and illegal snooping , but in fact because advertisers had withdrawn their support -- the publication of the new Sunday rag has been widely perceived as an act of breathtaking cynicism . Pundits have even wondered if it was the Murdochs ' plan all along to cut costs by replacing two papers with one leaner , seven-day operation . But that 's another story . Today 's questions are : Why did James go now ; and how has his departure played in Parliament , in the press and with the public ? To the first , the quick answer is that his I-don't-know-nuthin ' stance was becoming untenable . Even the News of the World 's ex-lawyer has pointed the finger at him , and it can only be a matter of time until hard proof of his complicity in either the hacking or its coverup becomes apparent . At another level , it can be seen as a PR move : Let the parliamentarians think they 've got a scalp ; and let the public and shareholders think there 's a new broom in New International 's Augean stable . If so , it has certainly impressed the money men : News International 's share price rose 2 % on the news , and there is speculation that the company is being primed for a sale . Many politicians are also happy . Against all the academic research , it is generally believed that the press has a huge effect on the public 's voting intentions . And since the Murdoch press generally leans to the right , while its tormentors lean leftward , they are counting James ' resignation as a victory for the common man . While the Conservative Party has been rather muted on the subject , Labour 's deputy leader Harriet Harman has weighed in with veiled demands for James ' arrest and prosecution . But what of the common man ? The truth is , he probably does n't give a flying fig . A friend of mine who works in the popular press tells me that she recently commissioned some research into the attitudes of 1,000 former readers of the News of the World . `` If the paper was still being published , they would still be buying it , '' she said . `` Ninety-five percent of them either did n't know or did n't care about the methods by which the paper got its stories . `` They can feel sympathy for the parents of Milly Dowler [ the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was hacked by News of the World investigators ] , as they can for Charlotte Church [ the celebrity singer and another phone hacking victim ] . But at the end of the day , their interest in a story will always outweigh any qualms about how it was obtained . '' True , the public 's interest in the James Murdoch story has hardly been piqued . Most papers have made very little of it . Maybe that 's because they have their own misdemeanors to conceal ; maybe because , in such a close-knit profession , it limits job prospects to attack the son of a major employer ; maybe because of an unspoken convention among the press barons that they do n't attack each other . But one suspects that our editors know what their readers really care about . Today , that 's the death of Monkees frontman Davy Jones . And ai n't that a shame ? The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tim Willis .
James Murdoch resigned as the chairman of News International on Wednesday . Tim Willis : His I-don't-know-nuthin ' stance was becoming untenable in the hacking scandal . Willis : Politicians are happy about the resignation and count it as a victory for the public . He says the public has far more interest in the death of Davy Jones than Murdoch news .