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.