Growing Up Murdoch

Inside the family fight that will determine the future of conservative media

- MCKAY COPPINS

James Murdoch was seated at a conference table in a Manhattan law office in March 2024 when he realized he was witnessing the final dissolution of his family.

Three months earlier, his father, Rupert, had told James and his sisters that he was rewriting the family trust to grant his elder son, Lachlan, full control of the Murdoch empire after his death, rather than splitting it equally among his four oldest children.

The amendment was part of a secret plan that the patriarch's allies had code-named "Project Family Harmony." Rupert's shocking decision was the climax of a succession battle that had pitted James and Lachlan, born just 15 months apart, against each other essentially their entire lives. (Their older sisters, Prudence and Elisabeth, had never been serious contenders to run the business: "He is a misogynist," James said of his father.) Rupert believed that he had no choice but to take aggressive action. He was 92 years old, and was certain that James was plotting with his sisters to seize control of the family's companies as soon as he died, after which they would defang his conservative media empire and destroy his life's work.

He was right that his younger son did not share his vision for the family business. James had come to see Fox News as a blight on his family's name and a menace to American democracy. He believed that drastic changes were needed to save the companies from the consequences of his father's reckless mismanagement. ("If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings," he would tell me, "a good culture wouldn't do that.") Determined to retain a voice in the business, James and his older sisters had moved to block Rupert from changing the trust.