Big Shoes

In September 2023, Rupert Murdoch, the 92 year old patriarch of the influential media family, announced he was retiring from Fox and News Corporation and handing the reigns to his eldest son Lachlan. While the news of his departure was not unexpected, it remains to be seen what influence he will continue to hold as 'chairman emeritus' or whether he will truly let go of the reins.

The Murdoch family are synonymous with a form of tabloid journalism that I find odious. In Australia, NewsCorp has a tremendous influence, with a near-monopoly on newspapers. In recent years the Murdoch family have become the news, with their involvement in the phone hacking scandal, the Roger Ailes sexual harassment scandal, the Dominion Voting Machine defamation, and their promotion of misinformation which underpinned Trumpian politics. The HBO TV show Succession, which featured a media patriarch and his adult children competing to be in charge, also fueled interest into the Murdoch family. 

At the 2023 Sydney Writers' Festival I attended a session where journalist Paddy Manning spoke about the challenges of writing an unauthorised biography and his latest book The Successor - the High Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch (2023). I didn't know much about Lachlan and wanted to see whether he would bring about a kinder, gentler NewsCorp, or continue his father's legacy of hate-filled misinformation.

The Successor is the first biography of Lachlan Murdoch. The younger Murdoch was sent to Australia as an 18 year old to get his hands dirty in the family business. After a three month stint at the Daily Mirror, he quickly took on executive roles and became publisher of The Australian national newspaper. We learn about his early days in business in the 1990s, which was fraught with questionable decisions. The 'Superleague war' in which NewsCorp backed a professional rugby league competition, against Kerry Parker's Australian Rugby League, ending in a truce a year later.   He then joined James Packer in investing in One.Tel - a start-up telecommunications company which was a costly exercise for investors, ending in administration. He also lost $150M when he ran Channel 10. Despite this, Lachlan managed to get in early on the move to online media. He recognised the potential of digital advertising and invested $10M in REA Group, the online real estate company, which is worth billions today. 

Outside of his Newscorp interests, Lachlan founded a private investment company Illyria, which backed all sorts of eclectic programs from an Indian cricket team to Nova radio stations. The amount of money he spent on companies, yachts, homes and holidays is staggering. 

When Lachlan returns to the US in 2019, and takes up the CEO position at Fox, The Successor gets particularly interesting. Here we learn how Lachlan would give interviews and speeches promoting journalistic freedom and balanced reporting, but behind the scenes he was pushing the conservative commentary by Laura Ingram, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. As Lachlan and his father promoted the rise of Trump, divisions within the family grew. His younger brother James fell out of step with the family, angered with Fox's disinformation campaigns regarding climate change. 

We learn little about Lachlan as a person in The Successor. We know that he loves adventure and sports, that he has been married for over two decades to Sarah O'Hare with whom he shares three children, and that he has expensive tastes in property and luxury yachts. He is close friends with former Australian Prime Minster Tony Abbott, whom he has appointed to the board of Fox Corporation. 

But through the choices Lachlan has made at Fox, we are left with an understanding that he is far more conservative than his father. He seems intent to put profits over people and a willingness to promote racism, anti-semitism and sexism if it improves ratings. Murdoch allowed the promotion of racist commentary (such as Tucker Carlson's espousing of the white nationalist great replacement theory), the defamatory comments about Dominion voting machines, and failed to denounce Trump's January 6th riots. Fox 'News' has been instrumental in sowing the seeds of disinformation which has furthered the deep divisions in America. With Lachlan now at the helm, I reckon these divisions will get a lot worse.

Manning's biography of Lachlan Murdoch is a fascinating peek inside this influential family. The glimmer of hope left behind is that Murdoch's three eldest siblings have enough shares to roll him as Executive Chair and CEO, and bring about a more centrist news organisation. While this is unlikely to occur during their father's lifetime, it will be interesting to see what happens once he passes.

Women's Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist

The inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist has been revealed! This is a new annual prize to celebrate non-fiction written by women. The Winner will receive £30,000. 

As this is the first year of the prize, there has been much speculation about who would appear on the Longlist. (I had my fingers crossed for Anna Funder's Wifedom and am so pleased it made the list!). Sixteen works of non-fiction were longlisted.

The 2024 longlist is as follows:

Alice Albinia - The Britannias: An Island Quest

Albinia explores Britain's islands - from Shetland to Thanet to St Kilda to Iona.  Along the way she discovers matriarchies and mythology and how these islands impacted the mainland. Albinia is an award winning author best known for Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River and Cwen which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Grace Blakeley - Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom

Exposing the falsehoods of the free market, journalist Blakeley explores the rise of vulture capitalism - in which economies have benefited corporations and the wealthy, creating a widening gap between rich and poor. Well researched, Blakely provides examples from Boeing, Exxon, Amazon and other corporations to show how capitalism has gone wrong.

Cat Bohannon - Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

Society is geared towards the male body. Women have long struggled for adequate health treatment as the medical establishment uses men as the template. In Eve, Bohannon explores how women's bodies differ from men and why women are in no way the weaker sex. Hailed as a 'sweeping revision of human history', Eve will force you to rethink evolution. Sounds intriguing!

Marianne Brookner - Intervals

Covering the period from her mother's diagnoses with multiple sclerosis until her death a decade later, Brookner explores illness, death, bereavement and patient independence. Intervals has been called a 'harrowing book that is moving and thought-provoking on the issue of assisted dying', It won the 2022 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize.

Leah Redmond Chang - Young Queens: The Intertwined Loves of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots.

In sixteenth-century Europe, three young women come of age. The Reformation brings about societal changes and the women end up ruling, their lives intertwined. Historian Leah Redmond Chang has used primary sources, such as letters written by the woman, to craft this account.  

Joya Chatterji - Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century 

This book explores the subcontinent's history from the time of the British Raj, through independence and partition. Learn the histories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh through food, culture, social structures and politics - how they are alike and how the differ. Author Chatterji is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, specialising in South Asian History.

Laura Cumming - Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death

Dutch artist Carel Fabritius is best known for his famous painting The Goldfinch (1654). The same year the painting was released, the Delft Thunderclap occurred in which 40 tonnes of gunpowder was detonated in the city of Delft, killing Fabritius. Cumming is passionate about art and shares this love with her father, Scottish artist James Cumming. In this memoir, she writes about Fabritius, her father and Dutch painting. I am intrigued by this book  

Patricia Evangelista - Some People Need Killing: A Memoir or Murder in the Philippines 

Journalist Evangelista grew up in the Philippines and spent six years reporting on Duarte's war on drugs. She covered the killings by police and vigilantes, and the terror felt by civilians caught in the cross fire. Evangelista bears witness to these crimes and sounds the alarm against complacency.

Anna Funder - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life

This book was my top non-fiction read of 2023. I am a self-proclaimed Funderaholic, so admit my bias when it comes to her work. That said, I am so pleased Wifedom is getting the recognition it deserves, and that Eileen O'Shaughnessy Blair is also being seen after so long in the shadows as George Orwell's wife. Funder is a gifted writer and a captivating storyteller. My review of Wifedom is available on this blog.

Lucy Jones - Matrescence: on the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

Science writer Jones explores motherhood and the transformation that takes place in mind and body when a child is born. Drawing on neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychoanalysis, socialogy, ecology and economics, Jones shows how patriarchal and capitalist systems neglect the maternal experience. 

Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World

I am a big fan of my compatriot Naomi Klein, having followed her work since our days at the University of Toronto. I have read many of her previous books and had the pleasure of hearing her speak at several events in Sydney. Her latest work, Doppelgänger, is about how she was continually getting mistaken for Naomi Wolf, which lead her down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and online hate. 

Noreen Masud - A Flat Place

Scottish-Pakistani author Masud loves flat landscapes and travels across the UK in search of them. She seeks solace in these serene places, after a childhood trauma of being abandoned by her father as a young teen, and relocating to Scotland from Lahore.

Tiya Miles -All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Rose, an enslaved woman in South Carolina, was separated from her nine-year-old daughter Ashley who was sold to another slave holder. Ashley took with her a small cotton bag with a few belongings. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter embroidered the sack with the family history. Historian Tina Miles explores women's history through treasures like these to document their experience of slavery.

Madhumita Murgia -  Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

London-based award-winning journalist and editor Madhumita Murgia is an expert in technology, science and health. She is AI editor for the Financial Times and Code Dependent is her first book. Murgia explores what it means to be human in a world impacted by artificial intelligence. Do we have agency? How does AI influence our behaviour. I have been exploring AI recently and am itrigued by the sound of this book.

Sarah Ogilvie - The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary

This book tells the story of the crowdsourcing that built the Oxford English Dictionary. Contributions from the public were used to compile the OED, and lexicographer Ogilvie digs into the archives to explore who they were. (This reminds me that I must finish Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words!)

Safiya Sinclair - How to Say Babylon

Born in Jamaica, author Sinclair, was raised by a Rastafarian reggae singer who forbade her to do anything that might corrupt her. Her mother tried to engage her with books and poetry but Sinclair knew she needed to leave home in order to truly live. 

While I have only read one book on this list (Funder's brilliant Wifedom), I am keen to track down the works by Bohannon, Cumming, Murgia and Blakeley. 

It is wonderful to see such a diverse range of authors and subject matters on this list. As it is the first year of this prize, it will be interesting to see how the judges approach their task. But I will continue rooting for Anna Funder and look forward to seeing how this unfolds. 

The shortlist will be announced on 27 March 2024 and the winner will be revealed on 13 June 2024. Happy reading!

Want more? Here is the video of the Longlist announcement.