Rivalries and rumours: How the new order of the Murdoch dynasty is playing out

Rivalries and rumours: How the new order of the Murdoch dynasty is playing out

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Christmas is a time when families get together if they can - and, until this year, the Murdochs were no different. With members of the media dynasty spread across the globe, full family gatherings were rare, although in 2008, according to biographer Michael Wolff, the Murdochs spent the festive season together on a flotilla of private yachts.

But more often in recent years it was Rupert - for many decades the most influential media titan in the world - and his daughter Elisabeth who would make time for each other.

She would certainly have room this year to host her father at the luxurious home she has renovated on the edge of the Cotswolds. But after a bruising closed-court battle in Nevada that became public and an eventual agreement that shut Elisabeth and two of her siblings out of the family firm for good, relations are likely still too strained for even the Murdoch family peacemaker to suggest communal tree-decorating.

Rupert's eldest child by his second wife, Elisabeth is the co-founder and executive chairman of the production company, Sister, which is behind hit television series, including Black Doves, The Split and This is Going To Hurt. In my experience, she is generous, intelligent and hard-working.

Friends are fiercely loyal and protective of her privacy. Nobody I have spoken to has a bad word to say about her. Many acknowledge, though, that it has been an incredibly testing year on the family front - even if Elisabeth, her younger brother, James, and elder half-sister, Prudence, are each around a billion dollars richer.

Money doesn't compensate for a father who, in his mid-90s, decided to rip his family apart because he believed it was in the interests of his business. The Murdochs have never been a traditional family - one reason why their story is said to have inspired the power struggles and backstabbing in the acclaimed TV drama, Succession. But this time, the schism feels more permanent. And as one person put it to me, the TV show concluded too early by killing off Logan Roy: there was more drama to come.

James Murdoch's relationship with his father and older brother Lachlan appears irreconcilable. Earlier this year, he described his dad as a "misogynist" in an interview in US magazine The Atlantic, and referred to some of Rupert's behaviour in the courtroom fight as "twisted".

He is known to feel betrayed and angered by Rupert's decision to force him, Elisabeth and Prudence formally to cut ties with Fox Corp and News Corp. Driven by fears over the more liberal direction they might want the companies to take after his death, the media mogul tried to change the terms of a trust that gave his four oldest children equal control when he dies.

Lachlan, who Rupert had already chosen to run the business, is now - definitively - the only one who will take the reins after his father's demise.

Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch actually lost the first round of their court fight. The trust had been set up in 1999, when Rupert divorced Anna, the mother of Lachlan, Elisabeth and James.

The judge ruled that changing it was in bad faith. But behind the scenes, the warring sides eventually came to an agreement. James, Elisabeth and Prudence agreed to sell their shares. They have accepted terms that include not being allowed to buy any equity in the family company in future.

"It's a sad ending," Claire Atkinson, whose biography of Rupert Murdoch will come out next year, told us on The Media Show.

These kids worked in the business, they grew up in the business, and the press release said, 'You can't buy shares in this company,' and effectively said, 'Don't let the door hit you on the way out.'

She also told me: "This break is extremely permanent. It feels like James and Rupert will never patch up their differences."

Lachlan Murdoch has been quoted as saying that the resolution is "good news for investors" and "gives us clarity about our strategy going forward".

Ironically, his successful leadership of Fox Corp, where he's been CEO since 2019 (he became chairman of Fox and also News Corp in 2023 when his father became chairman emeritus), made the deal more costly.

Fox Corp has seen its share price double under Lachlan and the Trump presidency has brought a ratings bonanza. It raised the amount he had to pay his siblings to get them out - a presumably unwelcome side effect.

Despite the payout, Atkinson says, "There is a fracture in the company and a fracture in the family."

So where do the Murdochs go from here, privately and corporately?

Elisabeth and her half-sister Prudence are said to be concentrating on moving on.

Their father turned 94 in March, with the court battle in full swing. The sisters are mindful that he won't be around forever and I am told they are hoping at some point to repair the rift.

However much they have felt betrayed by him (and there is no doubt, they have felt it, very painfully), there's an understanding of the dwindling number of years he has left.

But Christmas may still be too soon for reconciliation. Lachlan hosted his annual party for the Australian elite at his harbour-side Sydney home earlier this month. Fox Corp may operate out of the US, but he is said to prefer the laid-back nature of Australian life, even if the trade-off is business calls in the middle of the night because of the time difference, as well as a lot of flights.

Atkinson says he is popular and well-liked within the business. "The difficulty that Lachlan has is that he's been in charge for years, but everybody is always going to project that every decision is Rupert's. He's never going to want to say, 'Hey, that's me,' and so I think it's a little hard to come out from Dad's shadow."

At the same time, Rodney Benson, professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University, says that while Rupert remains a presence in the company "what's really unique about Lachlan's approach, or what will be unique about his approach, won't fully emerge".

Fox News is the financial cash cow, which may explain Rupert Murdoch's concerns that his children might have wanted to change its political affiliations.

Under Lachlan, there's been a successful strategy to expand into digital and streaming, most notably the ad-supported video-on-demand service, Tubi.

In September, US President Donald Trump said Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were expected to be part of a group of investors trying to buy TikTok in the US. On Thursday, TikTok parent company ByteDance announced to staff that it had signed an agreement to sell a portion of TikTok to a group of mostly US based investors. Lachlan and Rupert were not named as part of the deal.

Presenting the Fox Corporation's results for July to September, Lachlan said Tubi had achieved rapid revenue growth and growth in view time, confirming its position as the top premium advertising-based video-on-demand platform in the US.

And I'm happy to say Tubi reached profitability this past quarter," he added. "It's a great milestone.

He also said Fox News had maintained strong ratings throughout the quarter, cementing its status as the most-watched cable network in prime time, and leading to the highest advertising revenue for July-September quarter in Fox's history.

Rupert Murdoch's 70-year career saw him as "both an interventionist editor-in-chief figure and a political kingmaker", according to Paddy Manning, an investigative journalist who wrote The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch. But he adds, "Lachlan is less of the journalist and powerbroker than his father, and more of a businessman.

If you look at the signature deals that Lachlan has made over his career, they have not been designed to increase his political influence. From digital real estate to sports betting to commercial radio to Tubi, Lachlan's investment decisions are focused on the bottom line, not burnishing his political credentials.

But Prof Benson suggests the significant debt the Murdoch businesses have taken on as part of the settlement with Lachlan's siblings increases pressure to make profit, and therefore to pursue "politically sensationalistic… outrage journalism".

"The proven way to be profitable in cable/streaming news is not by becoming more centrist and civil, it's by becoming more extreme, more polarising, and more willing to stir outrage," he says.

Rupert has had a hotline to major political figures for decades. In September he was on President Trump's guestlist for the state banquet at Windsor Castle. I'm told he spent nearly two weeks in London and was in the News UK office most days.

While Lachlan now runs the company, his father is still very much involved. Rupert's been described to me, at 94, as still "the sharpest person in the room" and a "phenomenon who loves papers and has ink in his veins". His voice may be a little softer, but he is mentally as strong and influential as ever, I'm told.

At one point the editor of the Times introduced Rupert to a slightly startled young journalist on the newsdesk and asked him to show the boss the paper's recently launched Live app and what it showed around reader engagement on specific stories.

Rupert also spoke to Fraser Nelson, the former Spectator editor now Times columnist, who usually sits at the open plan table in the office. They discussed the company's pivot to video and the work Nelson had been trialling around short form video. Rupert also wanted to talk to his paper's new star about whether Nigel Farage would end up in government.

Three months on from the family trust dispute settlement, Mr Manning claims that the Murdochs are "deeply divided".

"While Lachlan works closely with his father, I understand he remains estranged from his elder siblings," he alleges.

Rupert Murdoch and his children Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence were all approached for comment.

Presciently, Anna Murdoch - Lachlan, James and Elisabeth's mother - predicted much of the fallout back in the 1980s.

In her novel Family Business, Anna, a journalist and author, wrote about the rise of a fictional newspaper dynasty and explored sibling rivalry, jealousy and how parental power can negatively impact family relationships. The plot of the book, published while her children were in their teens, follows how a newspaper owner's children are shaped by a parent who turns them into competitors in a power struggle.

A decade after it was published - by which time the pair had divorced and Rupert had married third wife Wendy Deng - Anna gave an interview to an Australian women's magazine, during which she was asked which of her children would be best suited to take over from her ex-husband.

Actually I'd like none of them to," she said. "I think they're all so good that they could do whatever they wanted really. But I think there's going to be a lot of heartbreak and hardship with this [succession]. There's been such a lot of pressure that they needn't have had at their age.

The family trust, agreed between Rupert and Anna as part of their divorce settlement, was her way of safeguarding her children's futures, by ensuring they had equality after Rupert's death. But that blew up - through a court fight in Nevada and a settlement.

And with that, relations with three of his six children may have blown up too - perhaps for good.

Top picture credits: Getty Images and Reuters

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Source: BBC
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