Rupert Murdoch goes to war with his children over his media empire

An elderly billionaire goes to war with his adult children over the future of his media empire. His only ally is his eldest son, crowned leader of his father’s enterprise after years of jostling with his siblings.

In choosing a successor, the patriarch spurns three of his other children, who remain threats: when he dies, they will each have just as much power as the eldest son to shape his companies, potentially against the rightwing ideologies that have guided them for decades.

Away from the public eye, he makes a dramatic move. To deliver control to his eldest son, the mogul quietly launches an extraordinary bid to alter the trust set to hand the other three influence upon his death. But they stand ready to fight.

This may sound akin to HBO’s Succession, but it’s life imitating art – which was, in turn, imitating life.

Rupert Murdoch, 93, the billionaire owner of News Corp and Fox Corporation who helped inspire the show, is trying to give his eldest son, Lachlan, full control of his media outlets upon his death. While his other adult children – James, Elisabeth and Prudence – will still receive equal shares of company profits, this would leave them with no say over the companies upon his death.

This battle is in fact bigger than anything featured on Succession, according to Robert Thompson, a media scholar based at Syracuse University. “This is arguably the single most influential media outlet in all of the English-speaking world,” he said of News Corp and Fox. “How this turns out has a real, significant impact on real people living on planet Earth.”

News Corp owns more than a hundred major and local newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the US, as well as the Times and the Sun in the UK. Meanwhile, Fox is the parent of Fox News, the leading conservative cable network in the US, with millions of viewers.

The Murdochs’ legal fight played out in secret for months – until Wednesday, when it burst into the open. The New York Times reported on a decision from a Nevada probate commissioner, which is under seal, that Murdoch can rewrite his family’s irrevocable trust if he can prove the change is being made in good faith and benefits his heirs.

The ruling sets the stage for a high-profile trial over the future of his vast array of media interests, with Murdoch and his three children slated to duke it out in court in September.

Both sides, according to the Times, have bulked up on high-profile lawyers. William Barr, the former US attorney general, is helping Murdoch rewrite the trust, and he has also hired Adam Streisand, a trial lawyer who previously worked on estate cases involving Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.

The feuding appears to have taken its toll on the family. When Rupert married his fifth wife in California last month, Lachlan was said to have been the only one of his four eldest children in attendance. The other two also reportedly steered clear.

With Lachlan as his father’s successor, Fox News and News Corp will continue to be a conservative force. But under the trust’s current structure, the three other siblings, who are deemed more politically moderate, can push back.

Murdoch is seemingly keen to avoid this prospect. Conservatism has been the backbone of his empire since its inception. It has proved to be remarkably profitable.

Though Murdoch had successfully formed relationships with powerful conservative figures in Australia and the UK, it was not until Donald Trump’s ascendancy that he had close ties to the White House. Though Fox was initially dismissive of Trump, the network soon turned into his most powerful megaphone. In turn, Murdoch had direct access to a commander-in-chief.

Not all of Murdoch’s children were happy about this. During Trump’s presidency, Elisabeth, Prudence and James started to drift away from their father’s politics.

When Roger Ailes, the longtime Fox CEO, left the company in 2016 off the back of multiple sexual harassment allegations, James reportedly believed he could push the network in a new direction, bringing in an experienced executive who was less of an ideologue. Instead, the elder Murdoch took over as chair himself.

In the summer of 2020, James – once a senior executive at News Corp – announced he was resigning from the board over “disagreements over certain editorial content”. He and his wife, Kathryn, were particularly vocal about the climate crisis and seemed to resent Fox News and News Corp’s climate denialism.

“We’ve been arguing about politics since I was a teenager,” James told the Times in 2020, about his father. In 2020, James and his wife donated more than $600,000 to Biden’s campaign.

Murdoch eventually crowned Lachlan as his successor. While Lachlan does not speak publicly about his personal political views, reports have said they usually lean more conservative than his father’s. And while Lachlan appears less interested than his father in political influence, he cares about profit. And Trump has been profitable.

After Trump lost in 2020, his relationship with the network soured. Fox News was reporting that Joe Biden had won the election, despite Trump’s rampant claims of interference. “Very sad to watch this happen,” Trump tweeted at the time. “But they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose.”

What’s good for the ratings is good for Fox’s business, and what’s good for the business is what’s good for Murdoch’s heirs – what the judge is looking for when granting Murdoch the ability to change the irrevocable trust.

“It really is, can you prove what’s in the best interest of the business? Can you prove that something else is in the best interest of the business?” said Zachary Kramer, dean of Elon University School of Law, and an expert in trust and estate law. “What Rupert Murdoch’s position is going to be is: ‘We want to make decisions that are going to be in the best interest of the business, because if the business succeeds, the beneficiaries do better.’”

James, Elisabeth and Prudence can argue that supporting Trump hasn’t been all that good for the network. In 2021, Dominion sued the network for $1.6bn in a defamation suit after Trump allies at the network said the voting-equipment company had been involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election.

Fox News ended up settling with Dominion for $787.5m, although it was pocket change compared to the $14.9bn in revenue the wider company made during its 2023 fiscal year.

Over the last year, relations between Trump and Fox seem to have thawed. Trump calls into shows more frequently, and the channel hosted a town hall with him earlier in the year.

The Murdoch family’s influence has shifted in recent years. There are new media players like Newsmax, and other influential billionaires are courting Trump, like Elon Musk, owner of X, who is pumping millions into Trump’s campaign.

Murdoch himself was seen largely on the sidelines at this month’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee. “There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican party, you had to bend the knee to him or to others,” Donald Trump Jr said at one event at the convention. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”