Rupert Murdoch is retiring from the Fox and News Corp. boards, the companies announced Thursday morning, making his son Lachlan Murdoch the sole executive in charge of the powerful global media empire he built from a small local newspaper concern in Australia 70 years ago.
The elder Murdoch will become chair emeritus of the two businesses, the companies said.
Murdoch, 92, had shown no intention of stepping down or even slowing down — including after he named Lachlan Murdoch as the operating heir to his business empire in 2019, when he sold his vast entertainment holdings to The Walt Disney Co.
Though the move places the Murdoch family companies more firmly under Lachlan Murdoch’s control, a bruising succession battle may still loom. Upon Rupert Murdoch’s death, his four adult children would have to work out his ultimate successor among themselves, based on a plan he put into place nearly two decades ago.
Murdoch has made his wishes clear regardless in elevating Lachlan Murdoch. And, even now, he will continue to offer counsel in his emeritus role, Lachlan Murdoch said in a company release. In his own statement to employees, the elder Murdoch indicated that he would do so actively and regularly.
“We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years — I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them,” he wrote. “I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest, and reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas and advice.” The announcement was nonetheless potentially epochal, signaling at least the formal end to an active career during which Murdoch built the most important and politically influential media empire on the planet. His companies, infused with a brand of right-wing populism, have amassed the power to shape, and at times make or break, presidents and prime ministers.
He built that empire across three continents, helping to shift norms and tastes in journalism, politics and popular culture throughout the English-speaking world. Exhibiting what critics and admirers equally described as a pirate’s sensibility, he acted with a willingness to move fast and break things — before that became trendy.
Those tactics also drew legal trouble and a steady stream of condemnation from opponents and even onetime allies, especially after stars of his Fox News Channel embraced former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies — leading to a $787.5 million legal settlement with Dominion Voting, the company at the center of so much of it. Other, related lawsuits are still pending, including one seeking $2.7 billion in damages.
Lachlan Murdoch, although striking a different image than his father — with tattoos and trademark leather boots — has so far represented continuity for the family companies. Although he has taken a more aggressive stance in entering the streaming sphere — acquiring ad-supported entertainment streaming service Tubi in 2020, which has since gained in value — he has maintained the positioning of the companies’ more stridently conservative outlets.
He was in his current role overseeing Fox News in 2020 and had been initially supportive of the network’s far-right firebrand Tucker Carlson. He was also credited inside the company with forcing Carlson from the Fox lineup after the Dominion settlement in the spring. But there is no indication the younger Murdoch will change the network’s overall course and hard-right approach in the lead-up to another presidential campaign that may well have Trump atop the Republican ticket.
Under the terms of the trust that controls the family’s stake in the empire, each of Murdoch’s four eldest children — Lachlan Murdoch, Elisabeth Murdoch, James Murdoch and Prudence Murdoch — will have an equal vote on its future following his death; until then, Murdoch holds the controlling vote.
Rupert Murdoch’s retirement in a sense formalizes the arrangement he had already put in place after the Disney sale, which made Lachlan Murdoch the day-to-day executive in charge of the two companies at the heart of the Murdoch empire — Fox Corp. and News Corp.
To wit, the younger Murdoch’s titles — executive chair and CEO — remain effectively unchanged, barring the small tweak of losing the “co-” he once shared with his father, who maintained similar titles until Thursday morning.
Murdoch’s move to anoint Lachlan Murdoch as his chosen successor was followed by a lasting rift with his younger son James Murdoch, who is more left-leaning than his father and brother and had been an advocate, for instance, of a less strident and rock-ribbed version of Fox News.
He and his wife, Kathryn, have criticized climate change denialism at the family-controlled outlets. James Murdoch appeared to be at least partly referencing Fox News when he linked the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to “outlets that propagate lies to their audience,” in an interview with The Financial Times, blaming them for unleashing “insidious and uncontrollable forces.” People close to James Murdoch, now a major tech and media investor, have over the years raised the possibility that he would seek to rally his two sisters to vote with him to wrest control of the company away from Lachlan Murdoch.
But it is unclear whether he would have the votes or ultimately the will or the interest to force that sort of bruising family fight. Elisabeth Murdoch, now the executive chair of the Sister entertainment studio, and Prudence Murdoch have kept their views of the family company private. — The New York Times
Here is a look at some crucial moments from his decades-long career under the spotlight:
ROOTS
The son of a famous war correspondent in Australia, Rupert Murdoch took over his father's newspaper business in the early 1950s and set about turning it into a global media empire.
He took up residence in the United States in 1974 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985, based in New York City.
EARLY INTEREST IN MEDIA
Murdoch's first brush with journalism was at college. His experience as an editor of the Daily Express in London is thought to have shaped his future as he embarked on popularizing tabloid-like journalism.
MARRIAGES
Murdoch and former San Francisco police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith called off their engagement in April. That would have been the billionaire' s fifth marriage.
He reportedly ended his fourth marriage to actress and model Jerry Hall via an email. Their divorce was finalized last year.
NEWS OF THE WORLD SCANDAL
Murdoch's News of the World, Britain's one-time biggest selling weekly newspaper, hit the streets for the last time on July 10, 2011, succumbing to a phone hacking scandal that sent tremors through the British political establishment.
Accusations that telephone hacking at the newspaper stretched from celebrities to missing children, relatives of those killed in the 2005 bomb attacks on London's transport network and families of soldiers killed in action triggered a huge public outcry.
SPLIT OF THE MURDOCH EMPIRE
Bowing to pressure from shareholders, Murdoch separated News Corp's publishing and entertainment assets in 2013. Almost a decade later, he would consider reuniting those firms but the plans were abandoned later.
POLITICS
"The Murdoch dynasty draws no lines among politics, money and power; they all work together seamlessly in service of the overarching goal of imperial expansion," a piece from the New York Times magazine wrote of Murdoch's family in 2019.
Though several of his companies are known for their conservative tilt, he initially urged Michael Bloomberg to run for president against Donald Trump.
Murdoch reportedly has an unflattering opinion of the former president and has also criticized Fox News anchors for siding with Trump.
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