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Rupert Murdoch
Status
Born in 1931 (age –). Living in New York.
Criminal status: No personal criminal convictions; News of the World employees convicted of criminal phone hacking of private individuals; Fox Corp faces ongoing civil litigation over election misinformation and a Newsmax antitrust lawsuit alleging Fox abused monopoly power
Summary
Rupert Murdoch controls one of the world's most powerful media empires spanning the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. His major properties include Fox News and the Wall Street Journal in the US, The Times and The Sun in the UK, and approximately 65% of Australian newspaper circulation through News Corp subsidiaries.
Murdoch's media properties have systematically shaped election outcomes in multiple democracies, spread documented misinformation about elections and climate science, and engaged in criminal surveillance of private citizens. In December 2024, a Nevada probate commissioner ruled Murdoch operated in "bad faith" when attempting to restructure the family trust to lock in Lachlan's control. A September 2025 family succession agreement eventually resolved the dispute by buying out three siblings, ensuring Lachlan controls Fox Corp and News Corp through 2050 with Fox News editorial direction explicitly preserved.
Business Relationships
Suzanne Scott (Fox News CEO) — Collaborated with Murdoch to allow continued broadcast of false 2020 election fraud claims despite Murdoch's private acknowledgment that the claims were unfounded.
Ownership
Approximately 39% ownership stake in News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Sun, and major Australian newspapers. Dual-class share structure provides approximately 40% voting control despite minority economic stake.
Fox Corporation holds Fox News, Fox Sports, and Fox Broadcasting. Editorial control flows directly through Murdoch's personal directives to newsroom leadership.
A 2025 family trust restructuring places Lachlan Murdoch in sole control of both companies through 2050. The trust dissolves the prior multi-sibling arrangement after three of Murdoch's four older children relinquished their governance claims. A Nevada Supreme Court ruling ordered the underlying family trust court files unsealed after a nearly two-year legal fight, with a Reno probate commissioner ordering attorneys in June 2026 to begin preparing redacted documents for public release.
Family & Heirs
Lachlan Murdoch (son) assumed operational leadership of Fox Corp and News Corp after the September 2025 succession agreement.
James Murdoch (son) previously served as chief executive and chairman of News International and resigned following the phone hacking scandal. He has since distanced himself from the family media operations.
Elisabeth Murdoch (daughter) pursues philanthropic activities outside the media empire. Prudence MacLeod (daughter) is the eldest child from Murdoch's first marriage.
All four older children received approximately USD1.1 billion each in stock in exchange for relinquishing governance claims.
Evidence
1986-01-24 - 😈 - Murdoch dismissed 5,500 print workers at Wapping without redundancy pay or unfair dismissal recourse, replacing union workforce overnight
2009-12-08 - 😈 - Leaked Fox News email reveals managing editor ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science after accurate UN climate report aired
2011-03-04 - 😇 - News Corp achieved carbon-neutral status across all global operations, first major media company to do so
2011-07-10 - 😈 - News of the World closed after 168 years when phone hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler and 2005 London bombing families was exposed
2012-05-02 - 😈 - UK Parliament committee ruled Murdoch not fit to lead a major global company and guilty of wilful blindness to phone hacking
2013-06-18 - 😇 - Murdoch donated USD50,000 through News Corp Foundation to fund Stony Brook University's Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
2019-08-13 - 😈 - Public Citizen analysis found 86% of Fox News climate segments denied or cast doubt on the climate crisis in first half of 2019
2022-05-30 - 😈 - News Corp Australia controls approximately 65% of newspaper circulation and ran coordinated editorial campaigns to support conservative candidates
2023-02-27 - 😈 - Murdoch admitted in Dominion deposition that Fox News hosts endorsed false 2020 election fraud claims and he could have stopped them but did not
2023-04-18 - 😈 - Fox News settled Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit for USD787.5 million, with Fox acknowledging the court finding that certain claims were false
2023-04-27 - 😈 - Australian regulator ACMA found Sky News climate coverage false, ordered compulsory staff training after 80 complaints from former PM Kevin Rudd
2025-01-09 - 😈 - New York appeals court ruled Fox Corporation must face Smartmatic USD2.7 billion defamation trial over false 2020 election claims
2025-05-14 - 😈 - Smartmatic court filings accused Murdoch personally of willfully deleting text messages relevant to the USD2.7 billion Fox defamation case
2025-11-19 - 😈 - MEAA union launched an audit into News Corp Australia over alleged systemic staff overtime underpayment dating back a decade
2026-05-28 - 😈 - Trump's amended defamation lawsuit alleges Murdoch personally told him he would 'handle' the WSJ Epstein-letter story on a phone call, then let it run
Analysis
Murdoch's conduct demonstrates how concentrated media ownership enables antidemocratic power at scale. His primary business model is not profit through content quality but influence through editorial control of public discourse across three democracies.
The pattern spans four decades and three continents: leaked emails reveal directives to cast doubt on climate science, 86% of Fox News climate segments denied the crisis, Australian regulators found Sky News climate coverage factually false, and Murdoch-owned TalkRadio UK spread anti-climate misinformation 190 times in a single month in July 2025. Simultaneously, News Corp achieved corporate carbon neutrality in 2011 — an internal environmental commitment that contradicted what his outlets told the public for 14 more years.
The election misinformation record is documented from Murdoch's own deposition: he knew the 2020 fraud claims were false, could have stopped them, and chose not to. Fox paid USD787.5 million to settle the resulting defamation lawsuit and still faces a USD2.7 billion suit from Smartmatic. In May 2025, Smartmatic court filings accused Murdoch personally of willfully deleting text messages relevant to that case, an allegation Fox disputes.
The phone hacking record also grew this year: in January 2025, News Group Newspapers admitted for the first time that unlawful phone hacking and surveillance took place at The Sun between 1996 and 2011, settling with Prince Harry and issuing a "full and unequivocal apology" days before the case was set for trial. Until then, NGN had admitted wrongdoing only at the shuttered News of the World, never at The Sun itself.
Murdoch's record is not uniformly one-directional. In July 2025, his Wall Street Journal published a story describing a bawdy birthday letter Donald Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein, after Trump says he personally warned Murdoch not to run it. Trump sued Murdoch, News Corp, and the reporters for USD10 billion; the paper stood by the story, and a federal judge dismissed Trump's first complaint in April 2026 for failing to plausibly allege actual malice.
Trump refiled in May 2026, and the amended complaint alleges Murdoch personally told him "I will handle it" on a phone call before the story ran — a claim the Journal disputes and that remains unresolved in litigation.
Two other 2025-2026 developments extend existing patterns rather than break them. Newsmax's September 2025 federal antitrust suit accuses Fox News of using exclusionary distributor contracts and "intimidation tactics" to suppress a competing right-leaning news network, refiled in Florida in April 2026. Separately, the journalists' union MEAA opened an audit into alleged systemic overtime underpayment at News Corp Australia reaching back a decade, echoing the company's long history of tension with organized labor going back to the 1986 Wapping dismissals.
In December 2024, when Murdoch attempted to restructure the family trust to consolidate Lachlan's control, a Nevada probate commissioner found he had acted in "bad faith" — not in the interests of other family members. The September 2025 succession deal resolved the dispute by buying out three siblings, locking in the model for another generation.
Questions
How should democratic societies regulate media ownership when a single proprietor controls the majority of news consumption in multiple countries?
Does knowingly allowing false claims to broadcast — with private acknowledgment they are false — constitute a different category of harm than ordinary editorial misjudgment?
If Trump's allegation that Murdoch privately said he would "handle" the Epstein letter story is accurate, does standing by the story after publication still deserve the same credit as an unprompted act of editorial independence?
The 2011 carbon neutrality achievement shows his companies can take genuine environmental action. Why has that corporate capacity not translated into honest climate reporting in any of his outlets?
Redemption Arc
Murdoch has not shifted course. In 2025, Murdoch-owned TalkRadio UK spread anti-climate misinformation six times a day while England recorded its hottest June. The 2025 succession deal explicitly preserves the editorial approach his older children might have changed, and the newly disclosed Sun phone-hacking admission shows the company was still settling decades-old wrongdoing rather than fully closing the book on it.
The Smartmatic trial continues with USD2.7 billion at stake after Fox Corporation was ruled to face trial, and Newsmax's antitrust suit adds a new front. The same editorial practices that produced the Dominion settlement remain in place.