James Murdoch, youngest of the three children of Rupert Murdoch and his second wife Anna, announced his resignation on 31 July 2020 from the Board of Directors at News Corp, the publishing arm of the Murdoch family’s global media empire, thereby severing his last remaining corporate links with the family business. In his announcement, he referred to disagreements over “editorial content” and other “strategic decisions”. His announcement wasn’t entirely unexpected, as these disagreements had been festering for some time. His resignation came as the inevitable culmination of allegedly widening political differences between James and his father Rupert and older brother Lachlan on various issues, including, in particular, that of climate change.
However, nothing is likely to change within the Murdoch empire following James Murdoch’s departure. So long as Rupert Murdoch remains in charge at both News Corp and Fox Corp, and given that his designated heir, Lachlan, shares his politically conservative views, the messages coming out of Murdoch’s many newspapers and television stations are expected to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. The senior Murdochs’ support for small government, deregulated markets, private enterprise, low taxes, climate change scepticism, and other neo-liberal issues, alongside a strong antipathy to socialism and Communism, will undoubtedly continue unabated. In particular, the Fox News TV channel can be relied upon to provide President Trump with its vigorous and unswerving support in the run-up to the US Presidential election, even as James and his climate activist wife Kathryn have recently come out in favour of Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden.
The Murdoch empire remains uniquely influential in the 21st century, as demonstrated by the power and success of its support for divisive politicians, such as Donald Trump, and for divisive electoral issues, such as Brexit. To fully understand the extent of Murdoch’s power, it is necessary to take a lesson in history and to try to identify the forces that have driven Rupert Murdoch so effectively over the past six decades.
Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne in 1931, the only son of (Sir) Keith Murdoch and (Dame) Elisabeth Murdoch. His father had started out as a journalist with the Melbourne Age in 1903. Keith Murdoch made his name in 1915, while working as a correspondent for the Melbourne Herald, with his critical 8,000-word letter from Gallipoli, addressed to Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. The “Gallipoli letter” first drew the world’s attention to the disastrous conditions facing ANZAC troops serving with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Turkey and to the heavy casualties amongst their ranks, leading to the recall of General Sir Ian Hamilton, the Force commander . Backed by his reputation as a war reporter, Keith Murdoch ascended the journalistic ladder once back in Australia to become editor-in-chief of the Melbourne Herald, as well as managing director of the Melbourne Herald group of newspapers, thereby sowing the seeds of the publishing mini-empire that Rupert was to eventually inherit, albeit in a depleted form, following Sir Keith’s untimely death in 1952.
Rupert was reading PPE (Politics Philosophy and Economics) at Worcester College, Oxford, when he lost his father. Sir Keith’s trustees had to sell off his shares in the Brisbane Courier Mail to pay off the debts of his estate. As he had owned little in the way of shares in the Melbourne Herald, only the Adelaide News and Sunday Mail were left for Rupert to inherit. Rupert was to learn from the mistakes of his father, who seems to have been more of a journalist than a businessman. While in Adelaide, then the third-largest city in Australia, he soon displayed ruthlessly aggressive instincts and an unremitting drive to gain control and to expand voraciously. He eventually took over his rivals and ended up owning all of Adelaide’s newspapers, along with the printing presses where they were produced. At the same time, Rupert also wisely diversified, setting up the Southern Television Corporation, which was to be granted the licence to run what became the highly successful Channel 9. It was only a matter of time before he turned his attentions to Perth (Sunday Times) and to Sydney (Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph), where he successfully took on the Packer, Fairfax and Norton family publishing dynasties. He didn’t neglect small-town Australia either, coming to own newspapers in such remote outposts as Alice Springs, Darwin and Mount Isa. He finally completed his takeover of Australia with the launch in Canberra, in July 1964, of Australia’s first national newspaper, The Australian.
The far-away island of Australia was never going to be able to contain Rupert’s ambitions for long. By the end of the 1960s, he had set his sights on the “mother country”, targeting an apparently receptive British market. At first, he wrested control of the News of the World, a highly successful Sunday newspaper, from the editor, Sir William Carr. His next acquisition, the ailing Sun newspaper, was then re-launched as a weekdays’ tabloid version of the News of the World, starting on Monday, November 17 1969. The rest, as they say, is history. With its combination of hard-hitting nationalistic headlines, sensationalist stories, and topless Page 3 girls (from November 1970 onwards), Murdoch was providing exactly the kind of scandal and titillation that the British public seemed to have been so eagerly craving. Sales rocketed, and The Sun soon became Britain’s top-selling newspaper with its winning formula of sex, sport and crime. Murdoch then further consolidated his position with the British establishment by moving into the mainstream broadsheet market as owner of The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981.
America now beckoned, and the Atlantic became the next barrier for Murdoch to cross. He gained an early American foothold with his acquisitions of two newspapers, the Express and the News, in San Antonio, Texas, and followed on this conquest with his cut-price purchase of the New York Post in 1976. Murdoch even took on American citizenship in September 1985, as federal laws prohibited non-citizens from owning television stations in the US. His desire for greater control over the American media had seemingly finally overcome his love for his home nation. In the US, Rupert’s stable of television stations steadily grew and were shaped into a new network, Fox TV, with the aim of rivalling the ABC, CBS and NBC networks. In 1996, Fox Television went on to launch the Fox News channel, to provide ‘fair and balanced’ news reporting. Then, in 2007, his purchase of the Wall Street Journal, the owner of Dow Jones, gave Murdoch control over the largest provider of financial information in the country.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, Murdoch continued to expand into other territories. He took over the satellite broadcaster Satellite Television UK in 1983 and relaunched it the following year as the Sky Channel, which then merged with BSB to form British Sky Broadcasting in 1990. The new channel was able to secure the lucrative rights to broadcast Premier League football in 1996.
Closer to home, Rupert gained a foothold in Asia with his purchases in Hong Kong of the South China Morning Post in 1987 and of STAR TV in 1993. Murdoch’s business ventures not only spread across the planet but also spread his wings into many areas, other than newspapers and television. His many interests came to include magazine and book publishing, film production, airlines, and even sheep farming and wool exporting.
Rupert Murdoch has at times been criticised for his unduly overpowering influence on politicians and on political processes. His support has extended far beyond Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, with many aspiring political figures gaining immensely from the backing of Murdoch. Indeed, Murdoch’s active support was even instrumental in propelling Tony Blair to the position of British Prime Minister. It definitely seems to pay to have him on your side, as Murdoch has also helped end the political careers of many of those whom he has fallen out with, including that of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam as far back as 1975.
Newspapers are not meant to be arbiters of morals or keepers of a nation’s conscience, and are not even committed to tell the truth. There is is nothing altruistic when it comes to survival in the brutally competitive world of newspaper publishing. Newspapers have no interest in making the world a better place to live in. In the world of newspapers, all that matters are circulation numbers and advertising revenues, which in turn mean higher returns for shareholder’s investments. However, at a time when newspaper circulation continues to fall, the print media is rapidly being overtaken by television and by the Internet and it is essential to diversify. The Murdoch empire, although now somewhat depleted in size when it comes to print media, is thus still able to influence many, especially in the world’s largest democracy, through such media outlets as Fox News.
It’s now time to return to James. The one-time “rebel” of the family, a Harvard dropout, once co-owned an independent hip-hop records label before joining News Corp in 1996. He was even once groomed to take over from his father Rupert after Lachlan temporarily withdrew himself from the line of dynastic succession. At the peak of James’s career, he was chairman of BSkyB, executive chairman of News International, and chief executive of all News Corp operations in Europe and Asia, all at the same time. The News of the World had, however, become involved in embellished news “stories”, undercover sting operations and a highly damaging phone hacking scandal, and things got worse under his watch. James was to end up being criticised by the resulting Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press for apparently turning a blind eye to the many unsavoury goings on at the News of the World. Public and parliamentary outrage meant that the Sunday tabloid ceased publication on 8 July 2011 after 168 uninterrupted years, only to be replaced by the Sun on Sunday from 26 February 2012. James stood down from his chairmanships in early 2012 and was then moved to New York. It was steadily downhill thereafter for him inside News Corp, ending in his eventual exit this year.
But the Murdoch empire remains intact, with an important role to fulfil. In a deeply divided Western world, and in the face of ongoing bitter warfare between conservatives and liberals, each side needs its own standard- bearers. For the time being, the Murdoch empire can be relied upon to faithfully serve the conservative cause, so long as Rupert Murdoch remains at the helm. If the so-called “New World Order” turns out to be more than just a conspiracy, then, and only then, will the Murdoch empire cease to exist. In the meantime, you know where to look if you want the news to match and suit your conservative views.
Ashis Banerjee