During an interview for a story published by The Atlantic in February, James Murdoch regarded his father as a “misogynist” and described Fox News as a “menace” to U.S. democracy.
es they would want to see at the fam- ily’s news outlets. “But I got glimpses of their think-
Prudence Murdoch
ing,” Coppins explained. “Once, over dinner in Washington, Kath- ryn 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 corpo- rate and editorial governance, not political orientation. Fox News, he thought, could still report from a conservative perspective without, say, giving a platform to unqualifi ed doctors to spread medical misinfor- mation during a pandemic, or mis- representing an oil-company shill as an expert on climate change.” However, in a January 2023
Elizabeth Murdoch
story about the Murdoch family, the Financial Times reported that James Murdoch, “who was over- looked for the succession, is scornful of Fox News, largely estranged from Lachlan, and has told friends he is determined to reorientate the busi- ness, with or without his brother.” 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 amplifi ed election disinformation, leaving “a substantial portion” of the public believing “a falsehood.” “The damage is profound,”
Lachlan Murdoch
James Murdoch, without mention- ing Fox News directly, told the out- let. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so. Those outlets that prop-
agate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrol- lable 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 manip- ulated by Dominion Voting Sys- tems, a company that makes voting machines. At the same time Rupert Mur-
doch 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 cover- age,” which downplayed climate change as a precipitating factor in fi res sweeping across Australia. In 2010, a year in which Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World Brit- ish tabloid had for years been sys- tematically hacking into the phones of British royals, politicians, and others, James Murdoch was demot- ed 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, Harp- erCollins, and a large collection of newspapers and television outlets in Australia and Britain. HBO’s Succession is loosely based on the Murdoch family.
APRIL 2025 | NEWSMAX 33
RUPERT MURDOCH/AMANDA EDWARDS/WIREIMAGE / PRUDENCE MURDOCH/AP IMAGES / ELIZABETH MURDOCH/MAX MUMBY/INDIGO/GETTY IMAGES / LACHLAN MURDOCH/JON KOPALOFF/WIREIMAGE / JAMES MURDOCH/STEPHEN LOVEKIN/ARTNEWS/PENSKE MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES
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