News Corporation and Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch, 92, on Thursday, announced he'll retire in November, and his son Lachlan will take over as the sole executive in charge of his powerful global media empire. The 92-year-old will then become chairman emeritus of the media powerhouse which he built from a small local newspaper business in Australia 70 years ago.
Murdoch named Lachlan, 52, the operating heir to his business empire in 2019, when he sold his vast entertainment holdings to the Walt Disney Company. With the retirement, the son who shared the title co-executive chairman with his father until Thursday morning, becomes the executive chairman and chief executive.
In his statement to employees on Thursday, Murdoch wrote: “We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years -- I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. 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 92-year-old whose media businesses include influential right-leaning outlets like Sunday Times, Fox News and New York Post, also took a shot at mainstream media outlets in his statement. He writes that “most of the media” was “in cahoots’’ with “elites” who have “open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.”
“The battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense.” Murdoch writes. He said that while Lachlan was “absolutely committed to the cause,” he planed to remain “involved every day in the contest of ideas.”
Lachlan's annointment as dad's chosen successor reportedly caused a rift with his younger brother James, 50, who is more left-leaning than their father and Lachlan himself.
James and his far-left wife Kathryn are opposed to the editorial direction of some of the family's media outlets especially Fox News and Sky News Australia. The couple had advocated for a left-leaning Fox News. The younger son reportedly lost the family power struggle to his brother Lachlan -- after Murdoch chose him as his successor.
However left-wing media outlets and talking heads who are obsessed with the family, have been playing up the rift between the brothers.
Under the terms of the trust that controls the family’s stake in the empire, each of Murdoch’s four eldest children -- Lachlan, Elisabeth, James and Prudence -- will have an equal vote on its future following his death.
Left-wing media activists, talking heads, bureaucrats and politicians all hope that James, now a major tech and media investor, will seek to rally his two sisters to vote with him to wrest control of the company away from Lachlan. But it is unclear whether he will succeed. Prudence and Elisabeth, now the executive chair of the Sister entertainment studio, have kept their views of the family business private.
Murdoch's creation of Fox Broadcasting broke the three-network oligopolistic hold on prime-time television and introduced the edgy programming that is now the staple of streaming. Fox News became No. 1 in cable news by catering to mostly conservative-leaning Americans who long felt ignored by a mainstream media world biased against them.
The 92-year-old's business spans three continents, serving as a counterbalance to a left-wing-dominated media landscape throughout the English-speaking world.
Lachlan is reportedly less politically inclined than his father, and has so far represented continuity for the family business interests. He has been trying to steer the companies amid the general disruption of traditional media business model by internet and social media. He acquired the ad-supported entertainment streaming service Tubi in 2020 which has since gained in value.
The 52-year-old was also in his current role overseeing Fox News in 2020, and was reportedly supportive of the network’s popular ex-host Tucker Carlson; before the conservative firebrand was fired last April, following the network's settlement of the Dominion case for over $700M in the spring.