The most influential media mogul in the English-speaking world of the past century is retiring. At the age of 92, Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of newspaper conglomerate News Corp and its television company Fox Corporation. He thus leaves the day-to-day management of the empire to his eldest son.
Lachlan Murdoch (52) thanked his father in a press release on Thursday “for his vision, pioneering spirit, determination and lasting legacy.”
“Our businesses are in good health, as am I,” Murdoch said in a message to staff. He got engaged last spring, but a (fifth) marriage did not happen. Speculation about Murdoch’s health has increased in recent years, sometimes it was actually borderline. In the summer of 2022, he was admitted with breathing problems after a serious Covid infection, as shown in an extensive article in Vanity Fair last spring. Murdoch has faced death before, in 2018, when he had an unfortunate slip on his yacht. He broke his back.
Father’s legacy
His last year as CEO was overshadowed by the crisis at Fox News as a result of the lies the channel pumped out in an attempt to please the hardened Trump supporters. Fox Corp, owner of the right-wing cable channel, settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $780 million (750 million euros) last May. This voting machine manufacturer had filed a lawsuit because of the conspiracy theories that presenters knowingly spread about Dominion’s involvement in Donald Trump’s election defeat in November 2020. Released internal correspondence provided insight into the channel’s cynical working methods.
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Murdoch inherited his first newspaper, TheNewsfrom his father’s estate in 1952. He was then 21. With this title he built his company from Adelaide, Australia, and became an influential factor with the founding of the first national newspaper, TheAustralian. In the late 1960s he focused on the United Kingdom, where he took over TheSun and News of the World full focus on the lower abdomen. After deregulation of the newspaper market thanks to the Murdoch-friendly Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he also got the established broadsheet The Times in hands.
In the US, his most influential medium is Fox News. But the crown jewel for Murdoch as a newspaper tycoon was still The Wall Street Journal, which he acquired in 2007. He already had the tabloid New York Post. He sold a large part of his entertainment branch, film studio 20th Century Fox, to Disney in 2019, for more than 70 billion dollars.
Murdoch’s news company spans three continents, with his media providing tailwinds to right-wing conservative forces in particular. Although his friendship with and support for the then promising Tony Blair, Labor leader and British Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, is illustrative of the lucrative opportunism. Murdoch also initially did not like Donald Trump; he once called his candidacy “an embarrassment to the US” in a tweet. But as Trump became more popular, the ties between the president and Fox News became increasingly close.
Argued with second son
Rupert has fallen out with his second son James, reportedly because of the substantive course of Fox News in particular. Lachlan’s political views are more in line with those of his father, and he has always advocated the editorial independence of presenters and opinion makers.
Rupert Murdoch then experienced the most humiliating moment of his career News of the World closed its doors in 2011. The Guardian had revealed how private investigators and journalists had not only eavesdropped on celebrities, but also hacked into the voicemail of a missing and, as it turned out, murdered teenage girl. Murdoch said sorry, but passed the buck to the newspaper’s leadership. And to his son James.
In his final years he was frequently compared to the paterfamilias in the HBO series based on his family and empire Succession. Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, died in the final season while fighting a bitter business conflict with his children. Roy had never retired.