We can’t imagine many Crikey readers have failed to notice Vanity Fair’s cover story this month: “Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama”.
On the off chance you’ve not had the time to catch up, here are some of the most remarkable details collected by VF’s Gabriel Sherman:
Murdoch keeps almost dying
Opening on a scene from his 21-year-old granddaughter Charlotte Freud’s wedding, where Rupert is apparently so weak from a recent bout of very serious COVID that son Lachlan has to help him stay vertical, Sherman goes on to say:
COVID was only the most recent medical emergency that sent Murdoch to the hospital. In recent years, Murdoch has suffered a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon, a source close to the mogul told me. Many of these episodes went unreported in the press, which was just how Murdoch liked it.
For me, not for thee
In just one of many examples of Fox figures’ private actions and public rhetoric not syncing up 100%, we hear that: “While Fox News hosts railed against lockdowns and pushed dubious treatments like hydroxychloroquine, [Rupert] Murdoch followed the science … [and] was one of the first people in the world to be vaccinated in December 2020.”
Succession-ception
While Murdoch told Semafor’s Max Tani during their brief casual email interview that he’d never seen the sprawling media dynasty series Succession, it clearly figures in the day-to-day considerations of News Corp figures.
One example of the manoeuvring was Gabriel Sherman claiming that one of the terms of settlement in Murdoch’s divorce from model Jerry Hall was that “Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers on Succession“.
Hall of mirrors
Speaking of Hall, Murdoch achieves the impressive feat of painting her former husband Mick Jagger as a considerate and chivalrous ex-partner:
When [Hall] settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.
The prophet Tucker Carlson
Perhaps our favourite detail of the whole thing is one of the reasons put forward for the sudden end to the mogul’s two-week engagement to dental hygienist turned QAnonish conservative radio host Ann Lesley Smith:
One source close to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith’s outspoken evangelical views. ‘She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,’ the source said.
