It’s a brave man to take on an unauthorised biography of one of the richest and most powerful men in global media. It’s an even braver woman to take on a review of that book, in the pages of a publication currently being sued for defamation by said mogul.
Luckily for me, award-winning writer Paddy Manning’s book, The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch, stops just before Crikey republished its article alleging the Murdochs were “unindicted co-conspirators” in the January 6 uprising in Washington, DC. Which means I can review the book without having to keep an eye on the defamation lawyers.
Manning is an excellent writer and has previously penned well-reviewed biographies of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and mining magnate Nathan Tinkler. The Successor took him more than two years to write and involved interviewing about 60 people in Australia, the US and the UK.
In it, he quotes US President Joe Biden saying that Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan’s father, is the “most dangerous man in the world”, due to his ownership of the right-wing Fox media network, widely seems to have accelerated the rise of Donald Trump.
The question of who will succeed the 91-year-old billionaire has enthralled the global business community for years — and HBO’s smash-hit television series Succession, which revolves around the rivalry between the three children of an aging mogul, is said to be based on the Murdochs. Certainly, the title of this book, which goes into the lives of Lachlan and his siblings Elisabeth and James, is an obvious nod to that series.
Although Lachlan, currently the executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation and co-chairman of News Corporation, appears to have the inside running, he may have to wait. Rupert’s mother, Dame Elisabeth, lived to 103, and Rupert is said to be convinced he will outlive his mother.
And after he dies, anything is possible. Manning interviewed an unnamed Wall Street analyst “who has covered the Murdoch business for decades and is completely au fait with the breakdown in the relationship between the brothers”. This analyst says that the siblings would join forces to defeat their brother.
It would be “fair to assume Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies”, he said.
One of the people who did speak to Manning on the record was futures trader Joe Cross, who met the young Murdoch when they both joined a “young patrons” group at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Cross’s insights help to round out a portrait of the young businessman.
He tells Manning, “When Lachlan lands in Australia, he really feels that ‘this is where I belong. I am an Australian. I might have an American accent, but I am Australian.'”
It’s often speculated that Lachlan is more right-wing than his father, in contrast with the more progressive leanings of Elisabeth and James. Manning quotes from a 2022 speech Lachlan made at the launch of a new conservative-leaning project from the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank founded by his grandfather, Sir Keith Murdoch, in 1943.
In it, he repeated familiar Fox News talking points: Hunter Biden’s laptop; Sharri Markson’s book on the Chinese origins of COVID, What Really Happened In Wuhan; and the anti-lockdown and anti-vax protests in Canberra. All he had to do was mention the “Great Replacement Theory”, which claims global elites are working to replace whites by encouraging non-white immigration, and it could have been a monologue delivered by one of the network stars, Tucker Carlson.
All of which invites the question, does Lachlan spout all this right-wing rhetoric because it’s good for business — Fox Media makes billions of dollars of revenue annually — or does he genuinely believe it?
While we wait for the Murdoch family to resolve their differences, season four of Succession, to which I am addicted, will be broadcast sometime in 2023. On a recent trip to New York, I saw a scene with Brian Cox, the Rupert character, being filmed on Park Avenue. The next day, in Brooklyn, I saw Cox in the street, still wearing the navy cashmere cable-knit jumper he wears in character in the television series. One of the pleasures of watching Succession is the reminder that money, in fact, does not make you happy.
This book by Paddy Manning is a very welcome addition to the literature on one of the world’s most newsworthy families. As Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch by Paddy Manning (Black Inc., 336pp, $34.99)
