September 17, 2024 • 20 mins
The most powerful media family in the world are facing off in a secret courtroom battle in the U.S.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch wants his son Lachlan to have control over the vast media empire’s future, but his other children are trying to block that from happening.
In today’s TDA deep dive, we look at who Lachlan Murdoch is, why his family are engaged in a real-life succession drama, and why it matters for democracy.
Hosts: Harry Sekulich and Zara Seidler
Producer: Orla Maher
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the daily This is the Daily.
Ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome
to the Daily Ours. It's Wednesday, the eighteenth of September.
I'm Harry, I'm Zara. You may have never heard of
(00:22):
Lochlan Murdoch. He's the son of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian
born media mogul who is arguably one of the most
powerful men in the world. Rupert wants Lachland to be
the successor in control of his vast global media empire
and is currently fighting to make that happen in a
US court. In today's deep Dive, will take a look
at the real life succession drama playing out in America
(00:45):
and how much do we really know about Lachlan Murdoch,
the man in line to inherit the biggest media empire
in the world. The First Sarah. What's making headlines.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Australia has negotiated a new free trade agreement with the
United Arab Emirates. Trade Minister Don Farrell announced the agreement yesterday,
which he said will save money by reducing tariffs taxes
applied by the UAE on Australian goods. It imports like meat, dairy,
seafood and steel. Farrell said the deal will mean quote
more higher paying jobs, more opportunities for our businesses, and
(01:21):
cheaper bills for Australian households. The Australian Council of Trade
Unions had previously flagged concerns over the treatment of workers
in the UAE, saying it quote strongly believes the government
should not give preferential market access to countries with poor
labor rights practices.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield, has criticized
the recent killing of a Turkish American activist, aishanaw Skiegi
in the West Bank. Greenfield said, quote this horrific tragedy
should never have happened. She demanded access to Israel's investigation
into the matter, adding quote her death, like that of
(02:00):
so many others over the past year, was tragic and unnecessary.
The Israeli Defense Forces expressed deep regret and said its
preliminary investigation had found it was quote highly likely that
she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDA fire.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
US Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles has filed an appeal of
the decision by the Court of arbitration for sport or
CIS to strip her of the bronze medal she won
at this year's Olympics. At one of Charles's events at
the Paris Olympics this year, her coach requested her score
be reevaluated, leading to her winning the bronze over two
athletes from Romania. Those athletes then in turn lodged an
(02:42):
appeal with CIS, arguing Charles's coach asked for a reevaluation
outside of the allowed time. The CIS then ruled that
Charles had to give back her medal. In a statement,
Charles's lawyers alleged to the CIS didn't accept video evidence
from her showing the reevaluation requests was filed on time,
and that a member of the panel that stripped her
of her medal was a lawyer for Romanian gymnasts. The
(03:05):
appeal has been filed in the Supreme Court of Switzerland,
where COAS is based.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And Today's Good News. For the first time ever, five
female authors have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The
prize is awarded to an English language novel voted the
best of the year by an expert panel. To be eligible,
authors can be from any country, but their books must
have been published in the UK and Ireland. This year's
shortlist features six authors, five of whom are women, the
(03:34):
most ever nominated in one year. They include Australian author
Charlotte Wood, who wrote the novel's Stoneyard devotional What is
the first Australian to make the shortlist since twenty fourteen.
The last women to win the Booker were Bernardine Everisto
and Margaret Atwood, who jointly won in twenty nineteen for
their books Girl Woman, Other and The Testaments respectively. Will
(03:56):
be back with the Deep Dive after this.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Quick break, now, Harry. If we could pay the incredible
royalties that were required to play the Succession theme song,
I would do it. Put my own money.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I'm just imagining the tune. It's happening up here, maybe.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not out here, but I'm so sorry for anyone that
had to listen to that this morning. Anyway. All that
to say that we are talking about a real life
succession scenario playing out and you don't have to have
seen the television show to understand this story. But if
people haven't been following or haven't been reading about the
Murdochs and you know, we are in media, we do
(04:38):
have a bias towards caring about these sorts of stories.
How would you introduce someone like Rupert Murdoch at a party,
for example.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, first of all, I'd say, this is my mate Rupert.
He's ninety three years old, he was born in Australia
and he is the most influential media mogul in the world.
He owns more than one hundred news titles, including dozens
based in Australia, in the UK and in the US.
And it's very likely you've watched some of them, So
(05:07):
think Fox News or Sky News here in Australia, or
you've seen some of his news outlets so the Daily Telegraphed,
The Australian or News dot com dot Au online, So
it's very likely that you've come across one of his
news platforms before. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I mean, when we talk about the Australian media market,
for example, and you know us trying to build the
Daily os so often conversations around media concentration emerged because
Rupert Murdoch and News Court now owns so much of
the Australian media market. Almost every newspaper, every radio station,
every TV station, at some point, whether or not it
(05:43):
is now has been touched by Rupert Murdoch. Why are
we speaking about him today, though? Why are we talking
about the Murdocks.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So, as we've discussed, Rupert owns a massive media empire
and Forbes estimates he's worth about twenty billion dollars US,
which is about the thirty billion in Australian dollars. And
as we know, he's also not a young man anymore,
so a lot of attention has turned to what will
happen once he passes. And so that's where we go
(06:12):
back to nineteen ninety nine where Rupert divorced his second wife,
Anna Murdoch, who he had three children with, Elizabeth, Laughlin
and James. And by that point Rupert had one other child, Prudence,
who he had from his first marriage, and he set
up what's known as an irrevocable trust to split ownership
of his businesses, shares and his money between his four
(06:34):
children when he divorced annas So that's back in the nineties,
and now the family's in court debating this trust.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Okay, And for anyone unfamiliar, which I am, what is
an irrevocable trust?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's basically a legal document setting out how Rupert Murdock's
going to divide up his assets after he dies. Okay,
irrevocable means it can't be changed, but it has changed before.
That's with the exception when Rupert had two other children,
Chloe and Grace, they were added to this trust, but
they aren't involved in this pointy aspect of the trust
(07:09):
that is being debated in courts. So that's how we
end up in Nevada, the great US state next to California,
because Rupert is trying to change the trust again. It
specifies that Prudence, Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James, his first four children,
each have equal say over the future of Rupert's vast
(07:29):
business empire.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Okay, so let me just stop you there, just to
recap where we're at. So Rupert Murdoch, I mean, he's
been married many times, but at this point had been
married twice, had four children from two wives, and so
in nineteen ninety nine, after he divorces Anna, his second wife,
he sets up this trust. And the premise of the
trust is that all of his great fortunes will be
(07:51):
passed down to all of his children and that it
can't be changed. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Ok, all right, you're coming along the journey with me,
and it is a very complicated way of handing down
your assets and fortunes. But we're talking about the Murdocks.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Here, Yeah, very unusual situation.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Absolutely, And so Rupert now wants to change this trust,
the unchangeable trust, the unchangeable trust. He's going to try
and change it because he's Rupert Murdoch. So here's what
he wants to do. Rupert wants to change the trust
so that Lachlan is in control of his business fortunes
after he dies.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay, So that's changing it from it being all four
of them to just being Lachlan.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That's right. Why, Well, Lachlan is the only one of
those four children who's still working for Rupert Murdoch for
one of his businesses. I should say. He's at a
senior position at Fox Corp and News Corp. And there
are some other theories as to why. One of them
is that he doesn't want internal conflicts within the family
(08:51):
affecting the course of the business of his businesses once
he dies. So he doesn't want any family divisions to
hurt the fourtunes of Fox Corps of News Corp. But
it's also widely reported that Lachlan and Rupert are a
bit more ideologically aligned politically aligned these days as well.
Lachlan attended his dad's last wedding and the other kids didn't,
(09:16):
So it's a bit of rumor mill, a bit of
speculation that that is some of the reasons being put
forward why this trust might be changing. And so the
other three kids aren't too happy about it. That sense,
When you've got your fingertips potentially on a vast media empire,
I think you wouldn't want it to slip away from you.
And so that's why they're currently in court. They're trying
(09:38):
to guarantee that they'll still have some control over the
businesses once Rupert dies. And I think it's just important
to note here that we wouldn't even really know about
what's going on in this Nevada court if it wasn't
for the enterprising journalists at the New York Times their team,
because they were the ones that managed to get their
(09:59):
hands on this sealed court document. Because otherwise it's all
happening behind closed doors. We don't really know what's happening
in that courtroom.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, So Rupert Murdoch is really fighting for Lachlan to
be his successor. And this isn't just a normal family story,
and you know, you and I were speaking about this
off Mike. This is about the future of not just
Australian media, like the world's media, and the way we
get our information and who wins elections and who loses elections,
(10:29):
and to understand the gravity of it, I really feel
like the world needs to understand a bit more about
Lochlan Murdock because he is this notoriously quite private figure,
isn't he.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We don't actually know a huge amount about him. We
rely on sources that are close to him, yeah, acquaintances
that are talking out and friends, but we don't hear
much from Lochlan Murdock himself.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I didn't even know that he had an American accent.
I don't read about him. Yeah, I don't think I've
read about him, and I had never listened to an
interview with him. I've never met him. And so when
I was watching the ABC's Australian story, I was so
shocked by how deep his American accent is, and it
just made me realize how little I actually do know
about him.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And some of those interviews were from when he was
a bit younger as well, and I think as he's
gotten older, he's been a bit more reluctant to do interviews.
I think a lot of the family don't tend to
do those sit down interviews very often. So I think
to understand who Lochlan Murdock is got to go back
to his roots. So he was born in London. He's
(11:31):
the eldest boy in the family. He lived in Australia
in his twenties and he was working quiet senior posts
across his dad's businesses and that's where he met his wife, Sarah,
who we might know from Australia's Next Top Model. Correct,
so deep in my brain that finale. So Lachlan didn't
(11:52):
have a very smooth run in his early years, and
it was partly because of rugby league in Australia. So
the big rival media family in Australia, the Packers, they
had the TV rights to broadcast rugby league, and how
did Rupert and Lachlan want to overcome that because they
also wanted the rights. They set up their own competition.
(12:15):
So there were two competitions that occurred in nineteen ninety six,
nineteen ninety seven, and it only really lasted a short
amount of time. It was really expensive and there was
a really bitter fallout from it. Lachlan was also involved
in the great rise and collapse of a telecommunications company
called OneTel, which fell apart in two thousand and one,
(12:38):
but it was a big thing in the late nineties
and that was put down to poor corporate management. But
he is credited with investing in real estate Australia in
the early two thousand so this is when the Internet
was first coming to life and developing into what we
know the Internet to be today. This was like a
digital real estate advertising company. It was quite a novel
(13:01):
idea at the time, but it's absolutely skyrocketed in value since,
so the investment's very much paid off for Lachlan overtime.
Lachlan actually left the family business in two thousand and
five and he went off on his own and he
set up an investment firm and lived in Sydney for
quite some years.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So the early part of Lochlan Murdoch's career had many
kind of inflection points. Interestingly, it overlapped quite a bit
with James Packer, who, as you said, is the son
of another media mogul, But it really was defined by
Lachlan Murdock emerging from his father's shadow and trying to
get out there and propel the business forward. You said
(13:42):
he left the company in two thousand and five. What
brought him back to.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It, Well, he came back in twenty fourteen, I think,
at a time where the Murdocks were in a bit
of strife. So his brother James was overseeing the UK
arm of the Murdoch media business was called News International
at the time, it's now News UK. And that's when
the whole News of the World scandal broke out. For
(14:08):
anyone who's unfamiliar with that, that's when the News of
the World, an old tabloid newspaper, was found to be
hacking the phones of certain celebrities and then also some
victims of crime. So there was a really really horrific
case involving a girl who had disappeared and who later
was found had been murdered. The journalists had managed to
(14:32):
hack hto her phone and so it was a massive story.
The Murdocks actually had to front to parliamentary inquiry in
the UK and that was really pinned on James, and
so that's when we get Lachlan coming back into the fold.
Because Rupert was looking at the job that James was doing.
Things were sort of not going too well. And then
Lachlan makes a great return and the two brothers become
(14:56):
co chairs of the entertainment b Meth twenty first Century five.
So they co chaired the company until twenty nineteen before
it was sold to Disney. And so this is where
things get a bit interesting and the brothers really diverge
in their parts because Lachlan had a really significant rise
through the ranks of the Murdoch family business through Fox,
(15:20):
and it culminated last year when Rupert announced that he
was stepping down as the chair of the main two companies,
so that's Fox Corp. And News Corp, and that he'd
be replaced by Lachlan. But what happened to James, you
might ask. He stepped away from the family business in
twenty twenty, and he cited some issues that he was having.
(15:43):
He didn't go into the details of why. But since
then he's made a pretty startling move from Murdoch, which
was he criticized the media coverage of the twenty twenty
US election. Now he didn't specifically speak about his dad
or Lachlan. He didn't name them, but he did say
that the media was responsible for platforming some views spread
(16:05):
by former President Donald Trump after he lost to Joe Biden,
saying that the election was reached that there had been
voter fraud. So James was very critical of the way
that the media had handled those allegations. Fox News actually
ended up having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
to settle defamation claims after allowing some of Trump's supporters
(16:27):
to spread false claims of election interference and fraud, and
James's criticism really didn't go down too well. He reportedly
was iced out by the rest of the family after that.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And I think this goes to why it's so fascinating,
because we are talking about really competing ideologies here. You know,
on the one hand, we have James Murdoch, who has
criticized the way that platforms like Fox News dealt with
the twenty twenty election result. And on the other hand
we have Lachlan who we know mirrors if not is
sits to the right of his And so with this
(17:02):
succession plan, we have the kind of possible future direction
and political leaning and ideological leaning that comes with it.
So can you go into a bit of that, like
why is it so important to be talking about this?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, you touched on some of the reasons why they're
but I think it is important to note that when
we talk about the Murdocks, sometimes the news and the
news industry more broadly gets a little bit obsessed with
itself and speaks a bit inwardly. But we've got to
remember news is how we make sense of the world
and what's going on around us. And when you have
(17:39):
a family that controls such a vast portion of the
news media industry, then they are going to shape how
people millions of people are making sense of life around them.
And so that's why I think the influence of the
Murdocks can't really be overstated. There's a hugely consequential election
(18:00):
happening later this year in the US. I don't have
to tell you that, Zara.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Because we've spoken about podcasts on exactly, but it is
so important how that's going to play out, the outcome
of that election, what happens afterwards.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
We saw what happened on January sixth, after the twenty
twenty election loss for Donald Trump, so the news and
the media have such a huge role to play in
that space, and so whoever becomes the new Rupert Murdoch
effectively is going to have such a vast control and
decision making power that we probably could never quite imagine
(18:38):
for ourselves. So when we think about who Lochlan Murdock
is and how powerful he could become, it's just so
interesting to think that we actually really don't know that
much about him.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, Harry, I want to end with a question for you.
We have spoken at length in this podcast about how
important Rupert Murdock is and by extension, how important his
children are. Do you think that their influence is waning
at all as we see this decentralization of media across the.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
World thanks to a little thing called social media. I
would say that legacy news definitely doesn't quite have the
power and reach that it once did. But news organizations
are on these platforms as well, and they do have
the capacity to shape the narrative, so to speak, and
(19:29):
they also have a responsibility to tell the truth and
to find the truth. And that sounds very lofty, but
it's a really important part of democracy, it's a really
important part of society and behind those courtroom doors in
Nevada where there's no media because they can't have any
access to what's going on. The fate of the biggest
(19:51):
news and media business in the English speaking world is
hanging in the balance.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Harry will certainly be keeping a close eye on this one.
Thank you for ex and breaking down all the family
politics and brought her politics when it comes to this story.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Oas.
We would love to hear from you. If you had
any thoughts about this story. Who do you think should
be the successor to Rupert Murdock? You can leave a
comment on Spotify. There's a little question box and we
(20:19):
look forward to reading your answers. We'll be back again tomorrow,
but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Calcoton woman from Gadighl Country.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
both past and present,
Already and this is the daily This is the Daily.
Ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome
to the Daily Ours. It's Wednesday, the eighteenth of September.
I'm Harry, I'm Zara. You may have never heard of
(00:22):
Lochlan Murdoch. He's the son of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian
born media mogul who is arguably one of the most
powerful men in the world. Rupert wants Lachland to be
the successor in control of his vast global media empire
and is currently fighting to make that happen in a
US court. In today's deep Dive, will take a look
at the real life succession drama playing out in America
(00:45):
and how much do we really know about Lachlan Murdoch,
the man in line to inherit the biggest media empire
in the world. The First Sarah. What's making headlines.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Australia has negotiated a new free trade agreement with the
United Arab Emirates. Trade Minister Don Farrell announced the agreement yesterday,
which he said will save money by reducing tariffs taxes
applied by the UAE on Australian goods. It imports like meat, dairy,
seafood and steel. Farrell said the deal will mean quote
more higher paying jobs, more opportunities for our businesses, and
(01:21):
cheaper bills for Australian households. The Australian Council of Trade
Unions had previously flagged concerns over the treatment of workers
in the UAE, saying it quote strongly believes the government
should not give preferential market access to countries with poor
labor rights practices.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield, has criticized
the recent killing of a Turkish American activist, aishanaw Skiegi
in the West Bank. Greenfield said, quote this horrific tragedy
should never have happened. She demanded access to Israel's investigation
into the matter, adding quote her death, like that of
(02:00):
so many others over the past year, was tragic and unnecessary.
The Israeli Defense Forces expressed deep regret and said its
preliminary investigation had found it was quote highly likely that
she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDA fire.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
US Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles has filed an appeal of
the decision by the Court of arbitration for sport or
CIS to strip her of the bronze medal she won
at this year's Olympics. At one of Charles's events at
the Paris Olympics this year, her coach requested her score
be reevaluated, leading to her winning the bronze over two
athletes from Romania. Those athletes then in turn lodged an
(02:42):
appeal with CIS, arguing Charles's coach asked for a reevaluation
outside of the allowed time. The CIS then ruled that
Charles had to give back her medal. In a statement,
Charles's lawyers alleged to the CIS didn't accept video evidence
from her showing the reevaluation requests was filed on time,
and that a member of the panel that stripped her
of her medal was a lawyer for Romanian gymnasts. The
(03:05):
appeal has been filed in the Supreme Court of Switzerland,
where COAS is based.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And Today's Good News. For the first time ever, five
female authors have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The
prize is awarded to an English language novel voted the
best of the year by an expert panel. To be eligible,
authors can be from any country, but their books must
have been published in the UK and Ireland. This year's
shortlist features six authors, five of whom are women, the
(03:34):
most ever nominated in one year. They include Australian author
Charlotte Wood, who wrote the novel's Stoneyard devotional What is
the first Australian to make the shortlist since twenty fourteen.
The last women to win the Booker were Bernardine Everisto
and Margaret Atwood, who jointly won in twenty nineteen for
their books Girl Woman, Other and The Testaments respectively. Will
(03:56):
be back with the Deep Dive after this.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Quick break, now, Harry. If we could pay the incredible
royalties that were required to play the Succession theme song,
I would do it. Put my own money.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I'm just imagining the tune. It's happening up here, maybe.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not out here, but I'm so sorry for anyone that
had to listen to that this morning. Anyway. All that
to say that we are talking about a real life
succession scenario playing out and you don't have to have
seen the television show to understand this story. But if
people haven't been following or haven't been reading about the
Murdochs and you know, we are in media, we do
(04:38):
have a bias towards caring about these sorts of stories.
How would you introduce someone like Rupert Murdoch at a party,
for example.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Well, first of all, I'd say, this is my mate Rupert.
He's ninety three years old, he was born in Australia
and he is the most influential media mogul in the world.
He owns more than one hundred news titles, including dozens
based in Australia, in the UK and in the US.
And it's very likely you've watched some of them, So
(05:07):
think Fox News or Sky News here in Australia, or
you've seen some of his news outlets so the Daily Telegraphed,
The Australian or News dot com dot Au online, So
it's very likely that you've come across one of his
news platforms before. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I mean, when we talk about the Australian media market,
for example, and you know us trying to build the
Daily os so often conversations around media concentration emerged because
Rupert Murdoch and News Court now owns so much of
the Australian media market. Almost every newspaper, every radio station,
every TV station, at some point, whether or not it
(05:43):
is now has been touched by Rupert Murdoch. Why are
we speaking about him today, though? Why are we talking
about the Murdocks.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So, as we've discussed, Rupert owns a massive media empire
and Forbes estimates he's worth about twenty billion dollars US,
which is about the thirty billion in Australian dollars. And
as we know, he's also not a young man anymore,
so a lot of attention has turned to what will
happen once he passes. And so that's where we go
(06:12):
back to nineteen ninety nine where Rupert divorced his second wife,
Anna Murdoch, who he had three children with, Elizabeth, Laughlin
and James. And by that point Rupert had one other child, Prudence,
who he had from his first marriage, and he set
up what's known as an irrevocable trust to split ownership
of his businesses, shares and his money between his four
(06:34):
children when he divorced annas So that's back in the nineties,
and now the family's in court debating this trust.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Okay, And for anyone unfamiliar, which I am, what is
an irrevocable trust?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's basically a legal document setting out how Rupert Murdock's
going to divide up his assets after he dies. Okay,
irrevocable means it can't be changed, but it has changed before.
That's with the exception when Rupert had two other children,
Chloe and Grace, they were added to this trust, but
they aren't involved in this pointy aspect of the trust
(07:09):
that is being debated in courts. So that's how we
end up in Nevada, the great US state next to California,
because Rupert is trying to change the trust again. It
specifies that Prudence, Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James, his first four children,
each have equal say over the future of Rupert's vast
(07:29):
business empire.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Okay, so let me just stop you there, just to
recap where we're at. So Rupert Murdoch, I mean, he's
been married many times, but at this point had been
married twice, had four children from two wives, and so
in nineteen ninety nine, after he divorces Anna, his second wife,
he sets up this trust. And the premise of the
trust is that all of his great fortunes will be
(07:51):
passed down to all of his children and that it
can't be changed. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Ok, all right, you're coming along the journey with me,
and it is a very complicated way of handing down
your assets and fortunes. But we're talking about the Murdocks.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Here, Yeah, very unusual situation.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Absolutely, And so Rupert now wants to change this trust,
the unchangeable trust, the unchangeable trust. He's going to try
and change it because he's Rupert Murdoch. So here's what
he wants to do. Rupert wants to change the trust
so that Lachlan is in control of his business fortunes
after he dies.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay, So that's changing it from it being all four
of them to just being Lachlan.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That's right. Why, Well, Lachlan is the only one of
those four children who's still working for Rupert Murdoch for
one of his businesses. I should say. He's at a
senior position at Fox Corp and News Corp. And there
are some other theories as to why. One of them
is that he doesn't want internal conflicts within the family
(08:51):
affecting the course of the business of his businesses once
he dies. So he doesn't want any family divisions to
hurt the fourtunes of Fox Corps of News Corp. But
it's also widely reported that Lachlan and Rupert are a
bit more ideologically aligned politically aligned these days as well.
Lachlan attended his dad's last wedding and the other kids didn't,
(09:16):
So it's a bit of rumor mill, a bit of
speculation that that is some of the reasons being put
forward why this trust might be changing. And so the
other three kids aren't too happy about it. That sense,
When you've got your fingertips potentially on a vast media empire,
I think you wouldn't want it to slip away from you.
And so that's why they're currently in court. They're trying
(09:38):
to guarantee that they'll still have some control over the
businesses once Rupert dies. And I think it's just important
to note here that we wouldn't even really know about
what's going on in this Nevada court if it wasn't
for the enterprising journalists at the New York Times their team,
because they were the ones that managed to get their
(09:59):
hands on this sealed court document. Because otherwise it's all
happening behind closed doors. We don't really know what's happening
in that courtroom.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, So Rupert Murdoch is really fighting for Lachlan to
be his successor. And this isn't just a normal family story,
and you know, you and I were speaking about this
off Mike. This is about the future of not just
Australian media, like the world's media, and the way we
get our information and who wins elections and who loses elections,
(10:29):
and to understand the gravity of it, I really feel
like the world needs to understand a bit more about
Lochlan Murdock because he is this notoriously quite private figure,
isn't he.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
We don't actually know a huge amount about him. We
rely on sources that are close to him, yeah, acquaintances
that are talking out and friends, but we don't hear
much from Lochlan Murdock himself.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I didn't even know that he had an American accent.
I don't read about him. Yeah, I don't think I've
read about him, and I had never listened to an
interview with him. I've never met him. And so when
I was watching the ABC's Australian story, I was so
shocked by how deep his American accent is, and it
just made me realize how little I actually do know
about him.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And some of those interviews were from when he was
a bit younger as well, and I think as he's
gotten older, he's been a bit more reluctant to do interviews.
I think a lot of the family don't tend to
do those sit down interviews very often. So I think
to understand who Lochlan Murdock is got to go back
to his roots. So he was born in London. He's
(11:31):
the eldest boy in the family. He lived in Australia
in his twenties and he was working quiet senior posts
across his dad's businesses and that's where he met his wife, Sarah,
who we might know from Australia's Next Top Model. Correct,
so deep in my brain that finale. So Lachlan didn't
(11:52):
have a very smooth run in his early years, and
it was partly because of rugby league in Australia. So
the big rival media family in Australia, the Packers, they
had the TV rights to broadcast rugby league, and how
did Rupert and Lachlan want to overcome that because they
also wanted the rights. They set up their own competition.
(12:15):
So there were two competitions that occurred in nineteen ninety six,
nineteen ninety seven, and it only really lasted a short
amount of time. It was really expensive and there was
a really bitter fallout from it. Lachlan was also involved
in the great rise and collapse of a telecommunications company
called OneTel, which fell apart in two thousand and one,
(12:38):
but it was a big thing in the late nineties
and that was put down to poor corporate management. But
he is credited with investing in real estate Australia in
the early two thousand so this is when the Internet
was first coming to life and developing into what we
know the Internet to be today. This was like a
digital real estate advertising company. It was quite a novel
(13:01):
idea at the time, but it's absolutely skyrocketed in value since,
so the investment's very much paid off for Lachlan overtime.
Lachlan actually left the family business in two thousand and
five and he went off on his own and he
set up an investment firm and lived in Sydney for
quite some years.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So the early part of Lochlan Murdoch's career had many
kind of inflection points. Interestingly, it overlapped quite a bit
with James Packer, who, as you said, is the son
of another media mogul, But it really was defined by
Lachlan Murdock emerging from his father's shadow and trying to
get out there and propel the business forward. You said
(13:42):
he left the company in two thousand and five. What
brought him back to.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
It, Well, he came back in twenty fourteen, I think,
at a time where the Murdocks were in a bit
of strife. So his brother James was overseeing the UK
arm of the Murdoch media business was called News International
at the time, it's now News UK. And that's when
the whole News of the World scandal broke out. For
(14:08):
anyone who's unfamiliar with that, that's when the News of
the World, an old tabloid newspaper, was found to be
hacking the phones of certain celebrities and then also some
victims of crime. So there was a really really horrific
case involving a girl who had disappeared and who later
was found had been murdered. The journalists had managed to
(14:32):
hack hto her phone and so it was a massive story.
The Murdocks actually had to front to parliamentary inquiry in
the UK and that was really pinned on James, and
so that's when we get Lachlan coming back into the fold.
Because Rupert was looking at the job that James was doing.
Things were sort of not going too well. And then
Lachlan makes a great return and the two brothers become
(14:56):
co chairs of the entertainment b Meth twenty first Century five.
So they co chaired the company until twenty nineteen before
it was sold to Disney. And so this is where
things get a bit interesting and the brothers really diverge
in their parts because Lachlan had a really significant rise
through the ranks of the Murdoch family business through Fox,
(15:20):
and it culminated last year when Rupert announced that he
was stepping down as the chair of the main two companies,
so that's Fox Corp. And News Corp, and that he'd
be replaced by Lachlan. But what happened to James, you
might ask. He stepped away from the family business in
twenty twenty, and he cited some issues that he was having.
(15:43):
He didn't go into the details of why. But since
then he's made a pretty startling move from Murdoch, which
was he criticized the media coverage of the twenty twenty
US election. Now he didn't specifically speak about his dad
or Lachlan. He didn't name them, but he did say
that the media was responsible for platforming some views spread
(16:05):
by former President Donald Trump after he lost to Joe Biden,
saying that the election was reached that there had been
voter fraud. So James was very critical of the way
that the media had handled those allegations. Fox News actually
ended up having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
to settle defamation claims after allowing some of Trump's supporters
(16:27):
to spread false claims of election interference and fraud, and
James's criticism really didn't go down too well. He reportedly
was iced out by the rest of the family after that.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
And I think this goes to why it's so fascinating,
because we are talking about really competing ideologies here. You know,
on the one hand, we have James Murdoch, who has
criticized the way that platforms like Fox News dealt with
the twenty twenty election result. And on the other hand
we have Lachlan who we know mirrors if not is
sits to the right of his And so with this
(17:02):
succession plan, we have the kind of possible future direction
and political leaning and ideological leaning that comes with it.
So can you go into a bit of that, like
why is it so important to be talking about this?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, you touched on some of the reasons why they're
but I think it is important to note that when
we talk about the Murdocks, sometimes the news and the
news industry more broadly gets a little bit obsessed with
itself and speaks a bit inwardly. But we've got to
remember news is how we make sense of the world
and what's going on around us. And when you have
(17:39):
a family that controls such a vast portion of the
news media industry, then they are going to shape how
people millions of people are making sense of life around them.
And so that's why I think the influence of the
Murdocks can't really be overstated. There's a hugely consequential election
(18:00):
happening later this year in the US. I don't have
to tell you that, Zara.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Because we've spoken about podcasts on exactly, but it is
so important how that's going to play out, the outcome
of that election, what happens afterwards.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
We saw what happened on January sixth, after the twenty
twenty election loss for Donald Trump, so the news and
the media have such a huge role to play in
that space, and so whoever becomes the new Rupert Murdoch
effectively is going to have such a vast control and
decision making power that we probably could never quite imagine
(18:38):
for ourselves. So when we think about who Lochlan Murdock
is and how powerful he could become, it's just so
interesting to think that we actually really don't know that
much about him.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, Harry, I want to end with a question for you.
We have spoken at length in this podcast about how
important Rupert Murdock is and by extension, how important his
children are. Do you think that their influence is waning
at all as we see this decentralization of media across the.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
World thanks to a little thing called social media. I
would say that legacy news definitely doesn't quite have the
power and reach that it once did. But news organizations
are on these platforms as well, and they do have
the capacity to shape the narrative, so to speak, and
(19:29):
they also have a responsibility to tell the truth and
to find the truth. And that sounds very lofty, but
it's a really important part of democracy, it's a really
important part of society and behind those courtroom doors in
Nevada where there's no media because they can't have any
access to what's going on. The fate of the biggest
(19:51):
news and media business in the English speaking world is
hanging in the balance.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Harry will certainly be keeping a close eye on this one.
Thank you for ex and breaking down all the family
politics and brought her politics when it comes to this story.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Oas.
We would love to hear from you. If you had
any thoughts about this story. Who do you think should
be the successor to Rupert Murdock? You can leave a
comment on Spotify. There's a little question box and we
(20:19):
look forward to reading your answers. We'll be back again tomorrow,
but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Calcoton woman from Gadighl Country.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
both past and present,
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