The Murdoch’s might very well be the closest thing Australia has to royalty, and, just like royalty, what goes on when the doors are closed has always been a closely held secret. That is until now.
Often maligned as the black sheep of the family, James, the youngest son of the union between Rupert and Anna Murdoch, has broken ranks and a cardinal rule: Never go against the family.
Over the past year, the 52-year-old and his wife, Kathryn, have been speaking exclusively to The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins about the turmoil within their family over the future of Murdoch’s conservative media empire.
In the article, McKay writes that over the past year, James and Kathryn “told me about the mind games at a Murdoch family-counselling retreat, and all the ways that Rupert had devised to pit his sons against each other.
Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch.
“They detailed the cynical deliberations that had led the family’s news outlets to support Brexit and Donald Trump, and the machinations that various family members had undertaken to get one another fired or subpoenaed or humiliated in the press,” he said.
James and his sisters, Elisabeth and Prudence, were blindsided in November 2023 when they discovered their father’s plans to dismantle the family trust, overriding previous agreements to secure Lachlan’s sole control of Fox and News Corp.
Although Rupert and Lachlan lost the legal fight in December, they have since appealed the ruling.
The long-standing power struggle between James and older brother Lachlan, just 15 months apart, is also explored. McKay reports their sisters were never considered serious successors. James directly attributes this to their father’s views: “He is a misogynist,” he said of Rupert. “He doesn’t believe his adult daughters are capable of making decisions.”
James also viewed sweeping reforms as essential to rescue the family’s media empire from what he saw as Rupert’s reckless leadership.
“If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings, a good culture wouldn’t do that,” he told McKay. When asked if The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page could be a model for a more responsible Fox News, James winced and replied, “I hope we can do better than that.”
James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn.
Meanwhile, his wife, Kathryn, expressed doubts about whether Fox News was even salvageable. “It doesn’t have a clear purpose in the ecosystem anymore,” she said.
McKay said James even addressed the constant speculation about which family members might secretly have leaked information to Succession writers.
He goes on to write that, “James and Kathryn, thought his sister Liz was responsible. Liz swore she wasn’t, though for a while she was convinced that her ex-husband [Matthew Freud, a PR executive and great-grandson of Sigmund] was talking with the writers – and in fact she later learned that he’d repeatedly offered his services, but the showrunner, Jesse Armstrong, had declined. Armstrong told me that he and his writers simply drew on press reports.”
Pictured: Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch.