The move seems to be a long time coming.
HBO’s beloved Succession may be over, but the drama surrounding the family who helped inspire it is still heating up. On Thursday, Fox News creator Rupert Murdoch announced that he’s officially stepping down and passing the keys to his massive media empire along to his son, Lachlan Murdoch.
The move means that Lachlan, 52, will now be the chairman of Fox Corporation, Fox News’s parent company, as well as News Corporation, which owns properties like The Wall Street Journal and the book publisher HarperCollins. Meanwhile, 92-year-old Rupert has made it clear that he intends to continue serving on the boards as chairman emeritus and “be involved every day in the contest of ideas.”
Rupert, who became a driving force for conservative media, is one of the most influential and divisive figures in modern news. After starting Fox News in 1996, he went on to lead his vast media business for nearly seven decades, and his impact didn’t go unnoticed by his successor.
“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted,” Lachlan said in a statement Thursday.
Could this announcement stir up a power struggle with his other siblings, with whom he shares control of the company? Here’s a deep dive into the elusive elder sibling and what his takeover means for the media at large.
Why is Rupert Murdoch stepping down?
In a letter to colleagues, Rupert didn’t specify why he was stepping back from his role as chairman of News Corp. and Fox, only stating that “the time is right for me to take on different roles.”
What we do know is that it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with his health: “Our companies are in robust health, as am I,” he said in the memo.
Despite this newfound power, Lachlan will continue to share voting rights with his siblings Prudence, Elisabeth, and James in the family trust fund, which is also the largest shareholder of both Fox and News Corp. (Each sibling has one vote, while Rupert has four.)
There’s still time, though. Lachlan doesn’t officially assume the role until November — and when he does, it won’t come easy. The Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, has faced a series of public controversies in recent months. This includes a $787.5 million settlement over a defamation lawsuit after Fox News aired unfounded claims that Dominion Voting Systems equipment was used to rig the 2020 election (and Lachlan himself was accused of playing a central role in these efforts).
This isn’t the first time Lachlan’s faced legal trouble: Last month, he was ordered to pay more than $800,000 in fees after abandoning a lawsuit against the Australian company Private Media, who called him an “unindicted co-conspirator” during the insurrection.
Who is Lachlan Murdoch’s mother?
Lachlan Murdoch is one of three kids that Rupert had with his second wife and former journalist, Anna Murdoch Mann. The pair first met when Anna interviewed Rupert for a story after she requested to interview him. Despite their whirlwind romance, they ended up divorcing in 1999. Anna opened up about the tumultuous break-up a few years later, describing him as “extremely hard, ruthless and determined.”
While Rupert has six kids from his various marriages, Lachlan was seen as the apple of his father’s eye. “It was no secret to those close to the family that Murdoch had always favored Lachlan,” according to a New York Times Magazine article on the family in 2019.
Why was Lachlan chosen to take over?
Although his siblings, Elisabeth and James, were also seen as frontrunners, Lachlan’s ascension has been all but guaranteed after the decades he’s spent in key roles. Before taking over his current position as the executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp., he landed his first job within the media conglomerate when he was just 18 years old. By age 34, he was the third most powerful executive for News Corp, controlling several Fox TV franchises.
But Lachlan abruptly resigned in 2005 and returned to his family’s Australia, where he started Illyria Pty, a private investment company, whose acquisitions included a network of various Australian radio stations. (This move is believed to have been spurred by a disagreement between him and his father, who sided with Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes on some programming decisions.)
He eventually returned to the family business in 2015 by sharing the title of co-chairman of 21st Century Fox with his brother, James. This stirred up talk — and potentially some sibling rivalry — about who would eventually take charge of the lucrative media dynasty. (Rupert is estimated to be worth an estimated $8.26 billion alone — by comparison, Lachlan Murdoch’s net worth is believed to be around $3 million, according to Business Insider.)
Who are Lachlan Murdoch’s wife and children?
Lachlan married Australian model Sarah O’Hare in 1998. (According to People, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were believed to have been among the 100 guests who attended their wedding.) Together, they went on to have three children: sons Kalan and Aidan, and daughter Aerin.
What are Lachlan Murdoch’s political leanings and how will they affect the network?
Rupert signaled that his son would maintain the network’s conservative bent.
“My father firmly believed in freedom, and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause,” Rupert wrote in a staff memo. “Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.”
Though Lachlan hasn’t publicly commented on his own political leanings, a longtime editor of one of Murdoch’s newspapers, The Australian, described his conservatism as “more vigorous than that of any Australian politician” and that his views were usually to the right of his father’s.
Some of Lachlan’s news judgments have also been revealing. He was the one who ultimately ruled against airing the first live hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. (Instead, the network ran commentary from its hosts, including Sean Hannity.)
It’s safe to say all eyes will be on Lachlan as he leads the news empire through the 2024 presidential election, which is already shaping up to be another contentious one.
