BSkyB board backs James Murdoch, but for how long?

Unlike Rebekah Brooks, Les Hinton, Andy Coulson, John Yates and Sir Paul Stephenson, it appears that James Murdoch will not be losing his job to the phone hacking scandal - yet. Yesterday, the BSkyB chairman received the unanimous support of the company's executive board.

"There was a long discussion as you would expect at the board yesterday around governance, and that included the role of chairman," the BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch told the BBC today. "The outcome was that the board was unanimous in its support for James as chairman."

But with Murdoch junior still facing accusations that he lied to Parliament and as new phone-hacking victims continue to emerge, what have the press made of BSkyB's show of support?

Shareholders should be ashamed. The Guardian's Nils Pratley was incensed by the "extraordinary" silence from key investors in BSkyB. "Presented with an opportunity to force the broadcaster to adopt a properly independent board, the big investment houses flunked it," he said. "That's not good enough.

"What are the shareholders afraid of?" he continued. "BSkyB is easily able to stand on its own feet these days – it doesn't need a Murdoch at the top."

Support was predictable and right. "It always seemed unlikely that the BSkyB board would push James Murdoch from his position as chairman," the Independent's Stephen Foley writes today.

"The good corporate governance boat sailed when they appointed him in the first place, so they ought to stick by him now on a principle that he is innocent of any complicity in the phone hacking cover-up unless and until proved otherwise."

"Ironically," Foley adds, "[Murdoch] will probably be moderately more effective as chairman now that the News Corp bid has gone away and he doesn't have to recuse himself from half the boardroom discussions."

Murdoch isn't in the clear yet. Robert Peston's well-placed sources have come up trumps during the phone hacking scandal, and again the BBC business editor's contacts have given him an interesting angle.

"One member of the board told me that the decision to back Mr Murdoch could not be seen as being forever," he blogged this morning. "If evidence were to emerge that damaged the credibility of Mr Murdoch then the board would have to reconsider whether he needed to stand down." According to Peston's source, Murdoch is still on "probation". ·