Fox News Heir Vows to Radically Change Network
by Charlie McCarthy, NewsMax, February 18, 2025Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's desired plan for succession would have left oldest son Lachlan in control of Fox News and News Corp.
But a recent court ruling and family in-fighting will likely leave his news empire in control of his left-leaning children who have vowed to radically change the network, according to press reports out last week.
Last year a Nevada court ruled the 93-year-old billionaire could not change his family trust after Murdoch sought to give his elder son, Lachlan, 52, control over his public companies. Lachlan is a Republican who is said to hold his father's conservative views.
After the Nevada ruling, all four of Murdoch's adult children will retain equal voting power over their father's empire after he dies.
The decision will likely mean Fox News, long considered a conservative voice among U.S. media, ultimately embraces a more moderate or liberal voice.
Last week The New York Times reported on the tumultuous family legal case still underway.
The Times reported the elder Murdoch was motivated to change the family trust fearing this his children James, Prudence, and Elisabeth all had expressed concerns about the editorial positions of the family's news outlets.
The Murdoch offsprings' rebellion against the father's wishes appears to be led by James Murdoch.
James was one of 88 corporate leaders who signed an open letter in September endorsing the Democrat presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. During the 2020 election, James and his wife spent a reported $20 million to defeat Donald Trump in his reelection bid.
Last September, a secret trial brought Rupert Murdoch and his four oldest children to a courtroom in Reno, Nevada, where the trust was incorporated.
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Nevada Commissioner Edmund J. Gorman Jr. ruled Rupert and Lachlan had acted in "bad faith" in their effort to amend the irrevocable trust, the Times reported. The patriarch is appealing the ruling, but an overturn is unlikely.
Gorman's decision means Lachlan, currently the head of Fox News and News Corp., would be outnumbered by his brother and sisters if James wants to change Fox News' slant.
During an interview for a story published by The Atlantic on Friday, James Murdoch regarded his father as a "misogynist" and described Fox News as a "menace" to U.S. democracy.
"If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings … a good culture wouldn't do that," James Murdoch told The Atlantic.
The Atlantic's McKay Coppins wrote that James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn Murdoch usually were "cautious when I asked about changes they would want to see at the family's news outlets.
"But I got glimpses of their thinking," Coppins wrote. "Once, over dinner in Washington, Kathryn told me she wasn't sure if Fox News could still be reformed. 'It doesn't have a clear purpose in the ecosystem anymore.'
"The one thing James has said consistently is that any reforms he might seek would focus on corporate and editorial governance, not political orientation. Fox News, he thought, could still report from a conservative perspective without, say, giving a platform to unqualified doctors to spread medical misinformation during a pandemic, or misrepresenting an oil-company shill as an expert on climate change."
However, in a January 2023 story about the Murdoch family, the Financial Times reported that James Murdoch, "who was overlooked for the succession, is scornful of Fox News, largely estranged from Lachlan, and has told friends he is determined to re-orientate the business, with or without his brother."
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In January 2021, after being asked whether Fox News had played a role in the Capitol attack, James Murdoch told the Financial Times that U.S. media groups had amplified election disinformation, leaving "a substantial portion" of the public believing "a falsehood."
"The damage is profound," James Murdoch, without mentioning Fox News directly, told the outlet. "The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years."
Fox paid $787 million to settle a defamation case after it broadcast unfounded allegations the 2020 U.S. presidential vote was manipulated by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes voting machines.
At the same time Rupert Murdoch is seeking to keep Fox more conservative, Trump has been harshly critical of the network.
During the 2024 campaign Trump claimed Fox "has totally lost its way" and previously blamed the network's coverage for his 2020 election loss.
In early 2020, James and Kathryn Murdoch publicly criticized "some of the News Corp. and Fox coverage," which played down climate change as a precipitating factor in fires sweeping across Australia.
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In 2010, a year in which Rupert Murdoch's News of the World British tabloid had for years been systematically hacking into the phones of British royals, politicians, and others, James Murdoch was demoted beneath Lachlan Murdoch after Rupert split News Corp. in two, spinning off his movie and TV assets into a separate company, 21st Century Fox.
The Murdoch editorial empire includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, HarperCollins, and a large collection of newspapers and television outlets in Australia and Britain.
HBO's "Succession" is loosely based on the Murdoch family.
