Author Gabriel Sherman on Murdoch’s Media Empire: ‘A Monster He No Longer Controls’
Who’d have thought there would be a fifth season of “Succession?”
Yet that’s essentially what media watchers got to watch in 2024 by way of a courtroom battle for control of Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire.
The saga pitted Rupert and his conservative eldest son, Lachlan, against the more left-leaning James, TV producer Elisabeth and eldest daughter Prudence. The family fought it out in a Nevada probate court over Rupert’s attempt to amend a family trust to cut the younger siblings out of steering the ship.
It was the drama that Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman needed to complete his latest book, “Bonfire of the Murdochs,” which tracks the 94-year-old Murdoch’s early newspaper days in Australia through amassing a portfolio that includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and the U.K.’s Sun and Times.
“He’s, on one level, an incredibly compelling figure, one of the most influential figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries,” Sherman said. But, the author caveats, “Rupert’s ability to rationalize and compartmentalize ethical and moral failings for the sake of profit, I think, is one of the most destructive things that has happened to politics around the world.”
It is an appropriate time to assess Murdoch’s legacy, as Trump’s second administration barrels through constitutional norms and takes aim at press freedoms. It was Murdoch, after all, who helped empower him.
“Many people describe Rupert as a conservative, and yes, he is, generally speaking, very much to the right,” Sherman said. “He believes in low taxes and a very minimal social safety net. But the bigger ideology that transcends politics for him is profit. Capitalism is the ultimate ideology that he subscribes to, and that is the simplest way to understand how he caved to Trump.”
Sherman sees the Murdoch media empire as a monster that has slipped from his grasp as Trump has gained power.
“His willingness to indulge Trump and fan conspiracy theories with Fox News helped create this monster that [Murdoch] no longer controls,” Sherman said. “Murdoch is now living in a world that’s run by Trump, who he thought was an idiot and had a very low opinion of, and yet, because Rupert cares so much about money, this is the consequence of that. And unfortunately for all of us, the tragedy is now we have to live in that world.”
“A news hound at heart”
Sherman has covered Murdoch and his empire for nearly two decades, reporting groundbreaking stories in New York magazine and Vanity Fair, and writing the definitive biography of late Fox News chief Roger Ailes, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” His new book, out on Tuesday, provides an authoritative and intimate look at one of the most powerful figures in media over the past half-century, a man prone to shyness in personal interactions while holding sway with presidents and prime ministers.
“Rupert’s love of newspapers is definitely central to understanding him,” Sherman told TheWrap in a video interview from his London home last month. “I think it’s one of the things that makes him such a complicated figure. I find a lot of the things he’s done have been just extremely destructive for the culture — the spreading of misinformation from Fox News to their tabloids. But I do think that there’s also something really compelling about Rupert, that he’s a billionaire, but he does love to roll up his sleeves and share gossip and find out what’s going on in his newsrooms.”
Sherman had the idea to chronicle the Murdoch family’s journey after he wrapped up a 2023 Vanity Fair cover story on the succession saga. It was a bleak time for Murdoch, who faced Dominion Voting Systems’ billion-dollar lawsuit against Fox News over its amplifying of false claims around the 2020 election.
While the company ended up settling the case for $787.5 million, the network has persevered: Fox News just recorded another year as the No. 1 cable news network. And last week, the Murdochs expanded the New York Post’s footprint westward with the launch of California Post.
But even as Murdoch continues making news, Sherman decided to begin with his father, Sir Keith Murdoch. The elder Murdoch managed various Australian tabloids with a brash tone before his death in October 1952, and Sherman was eager to flesh out the narrative of a business-savvy son eager to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“He’s sort of a news hound at heart,” Sherman said. “It connects back to his relationship with his own father, because Rupert sees his father as sort of this legendary icon of Australian journalism. And I think part of Rupert’s love of newsrooms was a way for him to feel connected to his father.”
That isn’t to say Murdoch’s love for newspapers translates to a passion for journalism in the way most reporters consider the craft. Sherman writes about how a young, liberal-minded man who came up through London schools became politically conservative, often flouted ethics rules and had little regard for investigative journalism at the publications he took over in Australia and Britain.
“His love of journalism is not sort of the capital ‘J’ journalism that would be taught at the Columbia Journalism School or elsewhere,” Sherman said. “He sees journalism as a form of influence. He sees journalism as a weapon to be used for his political and business aims.”
“His willingness to indulge Trump and fan conspiracy theories with Fox News helped create this monster that [Murdoch] no longer controls.”
The Trump calculus
Rupert Murdoch’s political clout has spanned three continents and endures to this day.
Long before he was visiting Donald Trump at the White House, Sherman recounts how Murdoch appealed to then-Australian Prime Minister John Gorton in 1968 in pursuit of moving money out of the country to purchase the News of the World tabloid in the U.K.
Murdoch’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher’s government proved beneficial when regulators cleared his acquisition of the Times of London despite media monopoly concerns. Later, a Sun front page famously helped kill the chances of Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s victory ahead of the U.K.’s 1992 elections — only for Murdoch to have his papers support Labour leader Tony Blair in 1997.
On this side of the pond, Murdoch’s relationship with U.S. presidents has endured since childhood, when his father took him on a tour of the White House. Since then, “He’s boasted that he’s met and known every American president since Harry Truman,” Sherman said.
Enter the current White House occupant.
Murdoch initially recoiled from Trump and his populist rise in politics. But as Ailes steered Fox News to capitalize on Trump’s ascendancy, Murdoch followed suit, eventually backing Trump as he became the Republican frontrunner in 2016 and forging ties with his inner circle, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.
But Murdoch defended the network against Kushner and the Trump team’s calls to reverse its 2020 election call for Joe Biden in Arizona, which effectively started the countdown to Biden’s electoral victory. Murdoch also said in a deposition during the Dominion case that he believed the election was fair.
But even as Murdoch appeared to disavow the president through his publications during the early Biden years, and signaled support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the former president dominated the Republican primary, and Murdoch came around again ahead of the 2024 general election. He visited the White House within two weeks of Trump’s second inauguration, and he has spoken to Trump even as the president sues him and the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over a report on his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Why did Murdoch welcome Trump back into his good graces? “One word: money,” Sherman said.
Murdoch saw how audiences temporarily fled Fox News for competing outlets like Newsmax and One America News and, despite his best efforts to have his empire boost DeSantis for the 2024 election, Trump came out on top. So too must Murdoch.
The future of an empire
Can the family reunite after the succession schism?
Elisabeth wants to mend fences with her father, Sherman said, but it’s unclear whether James and Rupert can move forward. It’s a line of inquiry Sherman wants to pursue in his reporting moving forward.
Another question is how Lachlan leads the media giant, which has scaled back in recent years through the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney. That makes any opportunity for Lachlan to grow the company much harder, Sherman said. “He’s a caretaker, not a builder, although I think he would disagree with that,” he added.
Meanwhile, there are ascendant media dynasties: Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose $225.8 billion net worth has helped him and his son, Paramount CEO David Ellison, form their own media empire, which includes Paramount and a significant stake in TikTok. The two are now vying for Warner Bros. Discovery.
“In terms of the business, I think going forward, the Murdoch story now is Lachlan, because he got the crown,” Sherman said. “He’s now king of the empire.”
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