A culmination of the long-running battle over the Murdoch Empire, with the powerful Fox News’ future as a conservative kingmaker in U.S. politics hanging in the balance has played out in a Nevada courtroom as any hope of the rift between the two politically-opposed flanks of the media’s most powerful family shattered as years of bitter feelings surfaced.Patriarch Rupert Murdoch, 92, was slouched in a Manhattan conference room across from his son, James Murdoch in March 2024, the Atlantic Magazine reported on Friday, as the family’s black sheep was deposed. Questions, including: Have you ever done anything successful on your own? And does it strike you that, in your account, everything that goes wrong is always somebody else’s fault? The questions, he soon noticed, were not coming from the lawyer, really, but being texted to the counsel from his father across the table.Rupert, struggling to ensure the conservative empire he spent his life building would survive after his death, believed that James was plotting with his sisters to seize control of the family’s companies as soon as he died and turn outlets like Fox News away from the mix of conservative news and outright lying to the American public that are its hallmarks. His other son, one who he pitted against James for years, was his key to getting this to come to fruition.The Atlantic’s article details how at multiple turns over the past several decades as James built up himself into a natural successor of his father’s empire, his father thwarted and betrayed him at several turns. How he arrived and was mocked at Sky broadcasting in the U.K., then turned it “from an Aussie-inflected cowboy operation, and into a respected, high-growth company” followed his clever redirection of Star, an Asian satellite-TV company that bled $200 million since News Corp’s acquisition within two years.However, James’ steadfast belief in running a respectable company has proven no match for the designs of his father, the article declares, as he was subjected to several bait-and-switch scenarios where his brother Lachlan, who is much more aligned with his father’s conservative values and notion that his company is run by Roger Ailes-style blowhard executives and function as a “shrewd band of self-styled pirates and gamblers.”The feature article spans decades and has appearances from Rupert’s second wife, Wendy Dong, who his children believed to be a Chinese operative, (which she denies) and details the shift in James’ wife Kathryn’s relationship with his father, once warm but one that devolved into an “ideological knife fight” as a chasm formed between their values.Other family drama ensued over the years: a Murdoch Family “family constitution” — an attempt to codify the Murdoch family values — was short-lived and they are described as being at each other’s throats for years; a Zoom meeting in December to discuss the trust saw Rupert surrounded by his team of lawyers and robotically reading off a script; two separate convoys arrived at the Washoe County Courthouse in Reno for the trial to decide on the trust’s future, with Rupert and Lachlan arriving a full half hour after James and his sisters to avoid running into each other outside a courtroom setting or be exposed to the press.Detailed throughout the piece is the fatal move Rupert made in establishing a trust that would give each of his children and himself equal voting power. That move, maneuvered when News Corp. was in dire financial straits, became the reason for the Nevada trial where his and Lachlan’s scheme to wrangle control of News Corp. in Rupert’s final years fell flat. On the stand, James was moved to tears when describing a betrayal over a Disney deal that led to the end of his relationship with his brother.Ultimately, Edmund Gorman, the Nevada probate commissioner overseeing the proceedings, sided with James and his sisters. After this, when that camp made a salvo to their mogul father to spend the holidays together, he referred them to his lawyers for further discussion.Given the Nevada court’s decision, the Murdoch assets return to a holding pattern and likely will be split evenly among the four children.
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