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James Murdock who currently sits on the board of Directors Of Tesla and very strong environmentalist as well as other issues took hard shots at how Fox News is promoting everything he is against. He believes in climate change has invested heavily into companies that develop green energy products as well as serves on the board at Tesla. It's possible that Elon offered him a greater roll within the company such as an operation VP. Ether way the statements he made a very good chance he will not be going back.
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The younger son has quit the family firm, but the question of who eventually inherits Rupert’s media empire remains a cliffhanger
Published onSun 2 Aug 2020 04.00 EDT
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The unfolding story of the Murdoch family empire is often likened to a television soap opera: there is plenty of jetsetting, wheeler-dealing, power-broking and personal intrigue.
Yet Rupert Murdoch’s dominance of the media scene in Britain, America and Australia has been established for such a long time now that, if it were a fiction, fresh plotlines would be in danger of running out. We have already seen sibling rivalry, feuds, treachery, marital discord and public moral outrage.
But the “writers’ room” churning out scripts for “The Murdochs” in a backroom somewhere has pulled off another triumph this weekend. James Murdoch, the media magnate’s younger son, has walked away from the business that has shaped his life and out of the control of his 89-year-old Melbourne-born father.
Citing differences over the editorial lines taken by the newspapers in the family’s News Corp conglomerate, which include the Wall Street Journal and New York Post and the Australian, as well as the Times and the Sun in Britain, the youngest of Murdoch’s three children by Anna Maria Torv, his second wife, announced that he would no longer sit on the board of directors.
“My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” read an official statement from the 47-year-old.
Yet if the appeal of such a long-running family drama rests on its ability to surprise the audience, then the latest twist in the Murdoch fortunes lacks real shock value. James’s dislike of his father’s view on climate change – in short, that we don’t need to worry unduly – has become increasingly evident, as have his own leanings towards progressive politics.
From left, Sarah Snook, Matthew Macfadyen, Hiam Abbass, Alan Ruck, and J Smith-Cameron in Succession, thought to be based in part on the Murdochs. Photograph: Peter Kramer/AP
For veteran media expert Roy Greenslade, who has charted every turn in the patriarch’s career, this weekend’s episode was no bolt from the blue. “It has been obvious for a couple of years that James has been unhappy about his father’s – and therefore the company’s – stance on climate change,” he said. “He and his wife have been vocal critics of Rupert’s belief that the change is not the result of human activity.”
The bushfires that ravaged Australia at the beginning of the year are ostensibly at the centre of James’s decision. In January, he and his wife, Kathryn, an environmental campaigner, issued a statement expressing disappointment at coverage by Fox News and other News Corp outlets.
An anonymous former colleague described how her initial scepticism about James’s talents proved unfounded. Speaking this weekend from LA, she said: “My hope is that James will now use his resources to create antidotes to Fox News,” adding that his faith that he could change the views of his father and brother may well have just run out.
James’s views on American politics are also a factor. The most liberal Murdoch donated to Unite America and to the Anti-Defamation League, both liberal causes. He has given cash to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, while, in contrast, the family’s broadcast news outlet helped to elect the current incumbent. “James has also been anything but a fan of Donald Trump and of his cable TV cheerleader, Fox News,” said Greenslade.
The outspoken conservative news channel was founded in 1996, when Murdoch was at a peak of his influence. It became front-page material itself four years ago when its former boss, the late Roger Ailes, was alleged to have assaulted more than 20 women. It has since earned heavy criticism for misleading messages on the threat posed by Covid-19.
Murdoch Senior now presides over a reduced Fox Corporation, which recently sold much of its TV and film interests to Disney, and also over News Corps’s national and regional newspapers and wire services. His elder son, Lachlan, 48, is now co-chairman of News Corp and last year was named executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corp.
“The resignation of James now clears the path for Lachlan to inherit the leadership of News Corp after Rupert’s death and, just possibly, before it. But, given the state of the newspaper industry, it is unlikely to be a welcome inheritance,” said Greenslade.
And inheritance is the key. As fans of the hit TV show Succession will understand, when you have a family business on this scale, the question of legacy dominates. Playwright Lucy Prebble, currently working on the third season of the drama said to be inspired by the Murdochs, was aware of odd resonances this weekend. “Although this is obviously a spoiler, there are uncanny echoes with the end of season 2 and Kendall’s public stand against his father,” she said.
Bertie Carvel as the young Murdoch in James Graham’s play Ink. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Murdoch started to build his news empire, entering the British media market in the late 1960s, after acquiring a stable of Australian titles. This period inspired another recent dramatic hit, James Graham’s West End and Broadway play, Ink, now being turned into a film. “I want something loud … less hoity-toity and artsy fartsy and fancy pantsy … Margins, bottom lines, the figures are what counts,” Graham has a thrusting, 38-year-old Murdoch explain to the editor of the Sun, urging it to conquer the Daily Mirror.
By 1973, Murdoch was financially victorious, expanding into America and founding News Corporation, one of the largest media groups in the world, seven years later. He is currently thought to be worth $17bn.
Murdoch’s great age has heightened speculation about future leadership. Last year, David Dimbleby gave a lengthy overview in his podcast The Sun King. Murdoch was, Dimbleby said, “an enigma” with a “risk-taking, buccaneering approach to newsgathering and the use of that power to influence public attitudes”.
Last month the BBC television documentary series, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, presented the story so far to a wider audience. Its focus was the perceived battle between Anna’s three children, with Elisabeth, 51, described as her father’s probable favourite, and perhaps the most suited to filling his shoes.
“In the usual sexist way, a lot of the rivalry has involved the brothers,” said Simon Bunney, assistant producer of the documentary. “While James’s criticisms of Fox News are clearly genuine, there is a question about his posture on politics. He is politically closer to people like David Cameron and George Osborne than he is to the left.”
Researchers also detected that James’s ambitions were thwarted during the Disney purchase of the Murdoch film businesses. “It had clearly been difficult for him to recover from the phone-hacking scandal in Britain that resulted in the closure of the News of the World, but to some extent he had managed that. With his techy interests, he was thought to be keen to work more with TV and film,” said Bunney.
James was not the first child to step outside the fold, of course. Elisabeth pulled away in 2001, becoming a successful independent television executive after working under her father at BSkyB during the 1990s. Her second marriage, to PR guru Matthew Freud, great-grandson of Sigmund, also brought her inside another more famous dynasty, but a liberal one, and created new barriers.
Murdoch’s third wife Wendi with their daughters Chloe and Grace. Photograph: John Shearer/Getty Images
She publicly raised an eyebrow when her father left her mother to marry a former office intern, Wendi Deng, the woman who went on to give Murdoch his two youngest children, teenagers Grace and Chloe. Elisabeth, who is now the executive chairman of a production company, also has a third, lower-profile elder half-sister. Journalist Prudence Murdoch, 62, is the daughter of her father’s first wife, Patricia Booker,
Since Murdoch’s wedding to Deng in 1999, Elisabeth has stood in attendance, bouquet in hand, for the latest of her father’s brides: this time Mick Jagger’s ex-wife, Jerry Hall, the former model.
Curiosity about the personal lives of this family inevitably drives public interest, but it is their father’s impact on news coverage and on international politics that still makes them important to monitor.
Britain’s Murdoch newspapers are credited by many with giving Tony Blair the chance to lead Britain through the late 1990s, and in turn, they are judged responsible for shifting public opinion away from Gordon Brown to David Cameron.
It was under Cameron’s premiership that Murdoch had his infamous “humblest day”, giving testimony to the Leveson inquiry into press abuses carried out by his British newspapers.
As the head of the family approaches his 90th birthday next March, there is still scope for further drama, with minor characters ready to step into the frame. Perhaps daughters Chloe, Grace, or even Prudence, will emerge as players. Deng, however, with her alleged romantic hankering for Tony Blair, and her lively defence of her elderly husband during a parliamentary committee session, is surely worthy of her own spin-off series.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...e-of-james-laid-bare-the-murdoch-family-rifts
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