Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to screw three of his adult children so that the fourth can keep the toxic propaganda spewing after his death has failed bigly. At least for now.
You may recall that in August, I wrote about the real-life Murdochs’ fight over Fox News imitating art, i.e. HBO’s Succession series, which was loosely based on the Murdochs and Fox News.
The gist of the dispute was that Rupert Murdoch wanted to change the trust that controls Fox so that Lachlan Murdoch, the current chair of Fox and News Corp. can keep control after Rupert’s death. The trust currently gives equal control to Lachlan and three of his more moderate siblings, James, Prudence and Elisabeth. Lachlan and Rupert were reportedly worried that James was plotting with Elisabeth and Prudence to oust Lachlan after Rupert died and make Fox “more The Wall Street Journal editorial page and less Infowars.”
According to The New York Times, Rupert Murdoch called his effort “Project Harmony” because he hoped it would avoid a family fight after he died. But the result has been to so estrange the “moderates” that only Lachlan attended Murdoch’s wedding to his fifth wife in June.
Now, Rupert and Lachlan have lost bigly in court.
The New York Times got the scoop yesterday:
A Nevada commissioner ruled resoundingly against Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to change his family’s trust to consolidate his eldest son Lachlan’s control of his media empire and lock in Fox News’s right-wing editorial slant, according to a sealed court document obtained by The New York Times.
The commissioner, Edmund J. Gorman Jr., concluded in a decision filed on Saturday that the father and son, who is the head of Fox News and News Corp., had acted in “bad faith” in their effort to amend the irrevocable trust, which divides control of the company equally among Mr. Murdoch’s four oldest children — Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence — after his death.
The ruling was at times scathing. At one point in his 96-page opinion, Mr. Gorman characterizes the plan to change the trust as a “carefully crafted charade” to “permanently cement Lachlan Murdoch’s executive roles” inside the empire “regardless of the impacts such control would have over the companies or the beneficiaries” of the family trust.
The imitation of art was no accident, either.
More from The Times:
The proceedings revealed that Mr. Murdoch’s children had started secretly discussing the public-relations strategy for their father’s death in April 2023. Setting off these discussions was the episode of the HBO drama “Succession,” the commissioner wrote, “where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos.” The episode prompted Elisabeth’s representative to the trust, Mark Devereux, to write a “‘Succession’ memo” intended to help avoid a real-life repeat.
The battle may not be over. The Times explains that the ruling must be ratified or rejected by a district judge. “Even then, the losing party is free to challenge the determination, which could precipitate an intensive new round of litigation,” The Times said. Or Lachlan could buy out his siblings.
As it stands now, the death of 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch will probably trigger some kind of power struggle over Fox among the four siblings. But it’s not at all clear that that would result in a less-poisonous Fox News.
From Brian Stelter:
To be clear, there's no evidence of a "fire Lachlan and force Fox to the center" pitch deck on James' desk. Far from it. James has been very careful not to get ahead of himself, knowing he would need the support of both Prudence and Elisabeth to effect any change at the corporate level.
But here's the thing: Rupert's failed attempt to blow up the trust may have been just the thing to bring Prudence, Elisabeth and James together.
We can hope so!
Stay tuned!
(Photograph of Rupert Murdoch by Monika Flueckiger, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
