This article is an instalment in a series, Project Harmony, on Rupert Murdoch’s secret plan threatening to blow up his family.
When I decided to write a book about media moguls and their abuse of power — it’s called The Men Who Killed the News and is published next week — I thought this was a largely completed story about a largely faded era.
Today, that assumption was turned on its ear by the revelation in The New York Times that Rupert Murdoch is taking three of his children to court to attempt to prevent them from taking over his media empire when (or if) he dies.
Despite the existence of an “irrevocable” family agreement that hands legal control to his four eldest children when he enters the great newsroom in the sky, Murdoch has now decided he wants only one of those children — Lachlan — to run the family business and preserve its editorial excellence. He is taking the other three to court to try to unwind the agreement and boot them out.
At 93, and still meddling relentlessly in the democracies of the US, UK and Australia, Murdoch has been, still is, the most incorrigible manipulator of power in the long history of media moguldom. Robert Maxwell died mysteriously at sea; Conrad Black landed in jail; Beaverbrook orchestrated a king’s abdication; Rothermere and Hearst promoted Hitler for a decade, Elon Musk trashes Twitter for ideological purposes.
But Rupert Murdoch remains the mogul’s mogul, a brutal practitioner of the darkest arts of making money at all costs by exploiting the trust placed in journalism by democratic societies — the “loophole in democracy” as I describe it in my book.
Those dark arts now include an ensuing legal battle against three of his children, in public, in order to ensure that Lachlan keeps control of News Corp and Fox News to protect “the strategic direction at both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content”, as the NYT quotes the court’s decision in a case now unfolding in a Nevada court.
All this would merely be gossip fodder, a Succession-style soap opera, were it not for the civic consequences of the pollution of three great democracies by the 100-year Murdoch dynasty. A dynasty that began with Rupert’s father, Keith, and is being manipulated in a US court to continue with his chosen son, Lachlan.
It was Keith Murdoch who set the template that, a century later, is perpetuated and enhanced by the faux journalism of Fox News and other parts of the News Corp empire. It was a template captured in a scene during a meeting with then Australian prime minister Joseph Lyons in Keith Murdoch’s office in the 1930s that was witnessed and later described by a former Melbourne Herald copyboy who served his boss tea:
Murdoch was still shouting and JA Lyons was standing before the desk. I put the tea down on the big desk and went out through the door. As I went through it I turned and there, with his hat in his hand, like a man seeking a job, stood the prime minister before Murdoch’s desk. As I shut the door, I heard the leader of the nation say: ‘Yes, sir.’
What does Rupert’s secret plan say about media consolidation? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
