‘I was just weak’: How an avoidant Rupert Murdoch could have warded off family fight

In this week’s On Background, new court files show Rupert Murdoch has lost his appetite for confrontation, the ABC misses its spellcheck and independent media outlets get into a stoush.

Much to do, little to say

For decades, observers believed the Murdoch children were battling for their father’s favour. But it turns out the patriarch was the one holding up a final decision on who would take over the family’s media empire, including the Herald Sun, Australian, Daily Telegraph, Fox News and New York Post.

It took Rupert Murdoch until the ripe old age of 92 to finally decide something must be done about succession, partially prompted by an email exchange with his second wife, Anna dePeytser, in January 2023.

DePeytser, who died this year, was the mother of Lachlan, James and Elisabeth Murdoch.

In the email chain released last month by a US court, DePeytser agreed Lachlan would “ensure the future” of News Corp and Fox by, in part, keeping the assets’ fate out of the hands of James, his wife, Kathryn, and what she described as their “woke friends”.

That gave Murdoch snr something of an epiphany. “I realised it was something I should have done before,” he said on the stand at the trial over the fate of the family’s media empire. “I guess I’m bad at personal confrontations.”

It was quite the admission for the corporate raider who had no issues sidelining unionised British printing press staff before sacking them in the 1980s, or taking control of the Wall Street Journal via a hostile takeover in 2007. He had long played games with his family too, forcing Elisabeth to sack her own brother over the News of the World hacking scandal in 2011 and then, four years later, making Lachlan inform James (again), that he would be reporting to him under a new structure.

But his freshly avoidant approach to his fractious family history was central to the theatre that played out in a secret courtroom in Reno, Nevada, two years ago.

Last month, the Washoe County court unsealed about 19,000 pages of documents relating to the trial, including the affidavits of Rupert, Lachlan and Lachlan’s siblings. Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch’s bid to seize control without paying a penny ultimately failed in court. They got their way eventually, but at the small cost of $5 billion Lachlan had to pay to buy his siblings out.

Murdoch snr’s deposition revealed that the long legal battle that pitted his children against each other and their own father had probably been avoidable and exacerbated by his own newfound aversion to conflict.

“I guess my weakness and my avoiding confrontation occurred,” Murdoch snr said. “There had been too much in the past, people resigning, and so I was just weak.”

Case in point: the media mogul broke off his fourth marriage with the model and actress Jerry Hall via a rather bloodless email saying he had “much to do”.

Family chessboard

Rupert Murdoch’s aversion to direct conflict created an opening for Lachlan Murdoch and his lieutenant Siobhan McKenna.

“She doesn’t mind conflict. In fact, she thrives on conflict, whereas [Lachlan] doesn’t,” a former close colleague told this masthead for a Good Weekend profile last year. “Part of their relationship is he’s able to rely on her to take care of things.”

Lachlan and Rupert wanted to recombine News and Fox in 2022 to effectively sideline the latter’s “best friend” and CEO, Robert Thomson, without having to have the tough chat themselves, according to former News executive Jesse Angelo. Angelo, of course, is a close friend of James Murdoch, who was on the opposite side of the dispute.

After Murdoch snr spent Christmas at News UK boss Rebekah Brooks’ house in 2022, she drafted him a letter to send to his children, informing them of his desire to back Lachlan all the way. When Murdoch snr got around to putting it in his own words, he opted against sending it.

“The more I thought about it, the less I thought it would have any effect,” Murdoch said. Weeks later, he received that email from his second wife, DePeytser.

McKenna was on hand to help out the elder Murdoch when he finally decided to address the succession headache. She accompanied him to meet with his third wife, Wendi Deng, in 2023 to convince her of Project Family Harmony – the scheme to ensure Lachlan took over News Corp and Fox News – wrote notes for his meeting with his two youngest daughters, Chloe and Grace, and penned him talking points for the fractious last-minute meetings with Elisabeth and the eldest Murdoch child, Prue.

But Murdoch’s avoidance caught up with him. He put off discussions with Elisabeth and Prue until December 4, 2023, two days before “day zero” – the day of the special meeting where family members would vote on whether to effectively back Lachlan or not.

Murdoch said he had no hard evidence to suggest they wouldn’t back the plan, and that he thought they all knew he wanted Lachlan to be his successor.

In fact, McKenna’s plan blindsided his other children. “I don’t think you realise how much you’ve hurt and insulted Elisabeth and I,” Prue wrote to him after hearing of the plans to alter the family trust for the first time. He had written back and replied: “Nonsense.”

The blindside did nothing but confirm the trio of dissenting children would be a united front from day zero onwards.

Did Rupert consider bringing the latter two in earlier, a move which may have helped get them on side, he was asked in the hearing? “No, certainly not.”

Get it rrright!

More often than not, the ABC’s news output is under scrutiny. That is unless you’re watching from the Top End, where its nightly bulletin managed to get the spelling of the territory it was broadcasting from wrong on no fewer than nine occasions.

Pictures show the local ABC News bulletin going to air in the Northern ‘Terrritory’ for quite some time before the error was picked up. We’ve all been there.

Kudos to our friends over at Media Watch, which shared the reader tip with its Reddit community.

We should, however, give Aunty some credit. It is the last remaining broadcaster putting to air a local news bulletin in the NT, after Nine axed its own in January last year.

Age inappropriate

Pour one out for the (literal) child who is missing out on the big prize for winning the NRL Super Coach fantasy league this year, after the competition said it discovered the nationwide leader heading into the final round did not meet minimum age requirements.

Finishing first nationally comes with a cash prize of $50,000, and Super Coach’s terms and conditions state entrants must be at least 13. So to the pre-teen and their parents, better luck next year.

Shot, chaser

With Australia having a fairly concentrated traditional media industry, one would think the independent sector would be keen on sticking together. Not always, it seems.

Back in July, Crikey published an opinion piece by academic, comedian and commentator (and husband of this masthead’s columnist Kylie Moore-Gilbert) Sami Shah that took a swing at fellow independent outlet The Shot, describing the website as effectively antisemitic.

Shah’s piece argued Australian media outlets had used the Royal Commission into Antisemitism to confirm their own pre-existing approaches to the subject. In doing so, he picked two then-recent headlines the left-leaning outlet had published which he said were “practically demonstrations of antisemitism”.

Shah also described The Shot as “an attempt at a satirical website for people who found Facebook comments insufficiently moderated”. But he even wrote a piece for the outlet in 2021, so he must have liked that idea at some point.

The Shot’s editor, Dave Milner, must have been stewing over the article, because this week he finally responded, arguing Shah’s writing showed he had not bothered to read the contents of the pieces he referenced. Shah lacked respect, Milner went on, as he boasted The Shot had done “more serious analysis and investigative reporting on this depravity than Crikey has”, with a fraction of the resources.

As Milner pointed out, there has been plenty of past collaboration between the two independent outlets. Crikey’s reader editor, Crystal Andrews, is a regular guest on The Shot’s podcast, while its contributors Rachel Withers, Tina Quinn and Michael Bradley have also appeared on it this year alone.

“Needless to say that moment has passed us by,” Milner wrote.

Approached for comment, Shah said: “I’ve pissed off the Taliban, I’ve pissed off One Nation, I’ve pissed off ISIS, the Pakistani government, and pro-Israel people in the past. I am pretty sure I can handle The Shot.”

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