Tell me it ain’t so, Joel!

Tell me I can take the word of Joel Klein that when I turn on Fox News or subscribe to The Daily iPad app or buy the Post or The Wall Street Journal, I am not supporting a corporation whose top brass condoned hacking the phone of a teen murder victim.

Tell me I am not supporting executives who also knew about hacking the phones of fallen soldiers and bribing cops and stealing particulars from the medical records of an afflicted baby.

Tell me who in the Murdoch empire knew what and when.

Tell me, and I will try very hard to believe you because the name Joel Klein still means something to me.

I know you love fancy parties and you are a little overimpressed by wealth, but I always figured that at your core, when it got down to it, you were a decent guy. You really did seem to have the kids’ interests at heart during the eight years you ran the city’s schools.

I do have to admit I was a little shocked when you announced last November that you were stepping down in the midst of a school year to sign on with Murdoch.

I wondered if you had been swept up in all the hype about the new Murdoch, the Murdoch who was Steve Jobs’ buddy, who was working with Apple to revolutionize the news business and change the world as we know it with the astonishing new iPad.

“I’ve long admired News Corp.’s entrepreneurial spirit and Rupert Murdoch’s fearless commitment to innovation,” you said when announcing your departure. “I am excited for the opportunity to be part of this team.”

In recent days, it came to light that the Murdoch team included a Brit newspaper called News of the World that hacked and deleted the voice-mail messages of a missing 13 year-old named Milly Dowler. The hacking caused her family to believe she was still alive when she had, in fact, been murdered.

And that revelation was followed by word that the paper had also hacked the phones of families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your new boss announced that you, the eminent Joel Klein, would be conducting an internal investigation and “provide important oversight and guidance.”

In the meantime, Murdoch sought to dampen the public outcry by shutting down News of the World.

He continued to use the word “innocent” to describe Rebekah Brooks, who was the paper’s editor during some of the most despicable hacking.

The problem became harder to contain yesterday with reports that other Murdoch entities, The Sun and The Sunday Times, had employed ruses to obtain confidential banking and personal information about former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Brooks had gone on to become editor of The Sun, and she reportedly telephoned Brown in 2006 to say the paper had learned his 4-month-old son had cystic fibrosis. Brooks is said to have cited details that could only have come from the child’s medical files.

Brown and his wife had not yet confirmed the diagnosis. They were still grieving the loss of their first child to a brain hemorrhage. That did not stop Brooks.

“Brown’s Baby Has Cystic Fibrosis,” read the Sun’s online headline.

Brooks is now the chief of all Murdoch’s Brit newspapers. He continues to stand by her.

And I figure I am standing by Murdoch every time I watch one of his TV shows or buy one of his papers.

Tell me he’s just being blindly loyal, Joel.

Tell me he didn’t know.

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