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Lachlan Murdoch
Status
Born in 1971 (age –). Living in Bel-Air, Los Angeles.
Criminal status: No personal convictions; Fox Corporation paid $787.5M in defamation settlement (2023) and reached $10M discrimination settlement (2018)
Summary
Lachlan Keith Murdoch is the executive chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation and chairman of News Corp, the media empire built by his father Rupert Murdoch. Through Fox News, Fox Sports, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and over 140 Australian newspapers, he oversees one of the world's most politically influential media conglomerates. In September 2025, he secured sole control of both companies after a $3.3 billion buyout of his three siblings, cementing his hold over the family empire until at least 2050.
In June 2026, Fox Corporation announced a $22 billion cash-and-stock deal to acquire streaming platform Roku, his first major strategic move since consolidating control of the company.
Business Relationships
Lachlan's most significant professional relationship is with Rupert Murdoch, who stepped down as Fox Corp chairman in September 2023 and named Lachlan his successor. Throughout the Dominion defamation case, the two communicated daily about Fox News editorial decisions and were named together as defendants in Smartmatic's ongoing lawsuit. Lachlan works closely with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, whom he consulted in the 2020-2021 election coverage period and in the April 2023 decision to fire Tucker Carlson.
Ownership
Lachlan controls Fox Corporation and News Corp through the Murdoch Family Trust, which he now holds sole voting authority over until at least 2050 following the September 2025 settlement. At Fox Corporation, he holds the combined roles of executive chairman and CEO, giving him direct authority over both the board and day-to-day operations. News Corp's holdings include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, HarperCollins, and News Corp Australia, with Lachlan holding the board chairmanship.
In June 2026, the Fox Corporation board extended his employment as executive chairman and CEO through June 2030 and raised his target annual bonus to $9 million and target annual equity award to $20 million; Lachlan recused himself from the board's discussions and vote on his own compensation package.
Family & Heirs
Lachlan is the second child and eldest son of Rupert Murdoch and his second wife, Anna Murdoch Mann. He married Sarah O'Hare in 1999, a former model and television presenter, and together they have three children: Poppy, Aidan, and Kalan. His siblings — Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch, and James Murdoch — each received approximately $1.1 billion in the 2025 family trust settlement and exited the family's media companies entirely.
Evidence
2018-05-16 - 😈 - Fox News settles racial and gender discrimination lawsuits for $10M with 18 employees under Lachlan Murdoch's co-chairmanship of 21st Century Fox
2019-03-21 - 😇 - Lachlan Murdoch gives all Fox Corp employees stock grants based on tenure at company launch: 'You're all owners'
2020-01-14 - 😈 - James Murdoch publicly slams News Corp and Fox News for 'ongoing denial' of climate change under Lachlan's leadership
2020-04-22 - 😇 - Lachlan Murdoch directs Fox Corp senior leaders to take pay cuts during COVID-19 to protect employee salaries and benefits
2020-11-24 - 😇 - Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch donate $5M to Murdoch Children's Research Institute for perpetual Fellowship in children's health research
2022-08-24 - 😈 - Lachlan Murdoch sues Australian news site Crikey for defamation over column accusing him of fueling January 6 Capitol siege
2023-02-16 - 😇 - Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch Foundation donates $1M to Qtopia Sydney, Australia's first queer museum
2023-03-01 - 😈 - Dominion filings reveal Lachlan Murdoch personally directed Fox News to cover pro-Trump rallies more favorably after 2020 election
2023-05-09 - 😈 - Fox News pays $787.5M to Dominion Voting Systems for broadcasting false election fraud claims; Lachlan Murdoch offers no apology and promises no change
2024-12-09 - 😈 - Nevada court finds Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch acted in 'bad faith' in attempt to rewrite family trust to consolidate Lachlan's sole control
2025-05-14 - 😈 - Smartmatic accuses Lachlan Murdoch and Fox Corp of willfully destroying text messages in $2.7B election defamation case
Analysis
Lachlan Murdoch's record is dominated by the editorial choices he made — and publicly defended — at Fox News. Deposition testimony in the Dominion case revealed that he personally weighed in on the tone and narrative of Fox News coverage during the 2020 election and its aftermath, directing favorable coverage of pro-Trump rallies as internal communications showed executives privately acknowledged the election fraud claims being aired were false. The $787.5M Dominion settlement — the largest defamation settlement in American media history — was called "a business decision" by Lachlan, who promised no change to Fox News' programming direction.
Beyond the election coverage, his tenure at Fox News and 21st Century Fox has been marked by a pattern of costly settlements for workplace misconduct, including $20M for sexual harassment under Roger Ailes and $10M for racial and gender discrimination. His outlets' sustained climate change denial drew a public rebuke from his own brother, and continued in 2025 when News Corp Australia's Daily Telegraph dismissed the country's first National Climate Risk Assessment as "science fiction" on its front page, based on the contrarian views of a single US-based commentator.
Fox's market dominance has also drawn a direct antitrust challenge: in September 2025, Newsmax sued Fox Corp, alleging it used exclusionary distributor contracts and intimidation tactics to illegally monopolize the right-leaning pay-TV news market.
His philanthropic giving — including a $5M commitment to children's medical research and a $1M donation to LGBTQ cultural preservation — reveals a private moral vocabulary that has not translated into the editorial direction of the media empire he controls.
Questions
Does directing a network to air content that its own CEO privately knows to be false constitute a personal ethical breach, or is it a commercial decision that differs in kind from outright fraud? How should we weigh documented philanthropic contributions against the scale of harm that a disinformation-amplifying media network can inflict on democratic institutions? Lachlan's actions after the Dominion settlement — promising no change and then attempting to silence a journalist who linked him to January 6 — raise the question of whether legal settlements function as accountability or as the cost of doing business.
Redemption Arc
The firing of Tucker Carlson in April 2023 offered a brief signal of possible course correction, but Lachlan simultaneously promised investors no change to Fox News' programming strategy. The Smartmatic lawsuit, with its fresh allegations of evidence destruction in 2025, suggests the same approach to legal exposure that characterized the Dominion era — contain, settle, move on — rather than any fundamental reckoning with the network's conduct.