The Murdoch family distrust

In a family feud that would put Game of Thrones to shame, a legal fight has broken out over control of the Murdoch media empire.

As 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch, owner of ubiquitous “democratic cancer” News Corp, approaches his final days, his son Lachlan has been tapped to take over the family business. Upon Rupert’s retirement in September 2023, it was announced that Lachlan would be his successor and it seemed as simple as that.

But under terms of the family trust established following Rupert’s divorce from one of many wives, Anna, each of Lachlan’s siblings at that time – Prudence, Elisabeth and James – was entitled to an equal say in the company’s future.

A few years ago, according to the author of The Successor, Paddy Manning, Lachlan was offered the chance to buy out his siblings to the tune of $3 billion along with his business partner, James Packer.

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However, as reported by Manning in ABC News:

‘Of his three siblings with a voting stake in the trust, half-sister Prudence was uninterested, older sister Liz was out of the business, and his younger brother James was bitterly estranged from their father. What threat could they pose?’

The multi-billion dollar bid was withdrawn in what is now most likely a regrettable decision on the part of Lachlan, as a courtroom drama has escalated in which Prudence, Elisabeth and James are fighting for their rights to their father's company.

Rupert Murdoch stabbed the backs of his children and amended the family trust, taking away voting rights and giving Lachlan control of the family business without interference from his siblings. It was ruled in June that Rupert could make the changes so long as it was in his heirs’ best interests. Murdoch also argued that the amendment would prevent his children from turning flagship outlet Fox News into something more politically moderate, retaining its conservative RWNJ direction.

James Murdoch has been critical of the U.S. media for “propagating lies” and also condemned former President Donald Trump on several occasions, going against Fox News' agenda to promote Trump and see him take on a second term in November. Naturally, this goes against Rupert's agenda as well, which inspired him to screw over his own children.

Joe Peyronnin, a veteran network news executive who was president of Fox News in the mid-1990s, said:

“If they were to change the direction and move [Fox News] into the direction of a CNN format, or go down the middle, it will lose its identity, lose viewers and lose revenues. I say that as someone who is a journalist and who would love to see that change. They have been the single most divisive entity in the last 30 years in politics. If there was no Fox News, we’d still have mud fights, but it wouldn’t be like today.”

The 'anger-tainer' steps down: Rupert Murdoch’s non-retirement

While Rupert Murdoch has announced his stepping down as the head of News Corp, his empire still continues to be a blight on journalism.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp operates 170 newspaper and magazine titles in Australia and dominates around two-thirds of the news media market — in other words, way too much. Murdoch's influence over Australian politics was described by former PM Kevin Rudd as a “cancer on democracy”, prompting him to launch a national petition to establish a royal commission into the Murdoch empire.

But controversy isn't new to the Murdoch family. Lachlan Murdoch’s grandfather was Keith Murdoch, who upon a boat sailing to Britain, stole from actual war correspondents who had got off the ship near Gallipoli, reporting on the British High Command’s atrocious conduct of that campaign and shopped it everywhere shamelessly under his own name.

Keith was dutifully lauded and rewarded for his plagiarism, being given the post of chief editor of the Melbourne Herald in 1921. With this position, Murdoch eventually found the Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 1935 and the rest, as they say, is history. Horrible history, at that.

It's no surprise that an empire built on a foundation of lies is now imploding in a family civil war. It's unclear as to what the outcome of this trial will be or how it will affect Australian news media. Should Lachlan gain control of the company, Fox News and all of News Corp's other subsidiaries will likely keep peddling Right-wing propaganda and remaining the most powerful conservative news outlet in the U.S.

But should Lachlan's siblings come out on top, they could possibly help steer News Corp in a new direction, which would be a monumental step in terms of news media saturation and a potential big win for independent media such as yours truly. Time will tell.

Money isn’t everything, IA opines, and if you are in court fighting your kids at 93, rather than taking up shuffleboard on a Caribbean cruise, then it could just be you ain’t doin’ it right.

On the other hand, you might just be a word that rhymes with “blunt”.