Rupert Murdoch loses battle to control succession to his media empire | Hacker News Reader

Rupert Murdoch loses battle to control succession to his media empire

theguardian.com

44 pointsrntn27 comments

Two minutes before loading HN, I was thinking about how sad I am that my mother gets her "news" from Fox. I hope his empire crumbles. He's single-handedly done more harm to the USA than any other person during my lifetime.

Couldn’t upvote this more.

> The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you’re not careful.

—Steve Jobs, in a 2010 conversation with Rupert Murdoch.

Wow, that raises my opinion of Jobs dramatically, not that I had anything much against him before.

It is so true, basically every one of my parents stupid, racist, bigoted ideas are parroted from a Murdoch related program or publication.

I mean, there is a market for it, that's why it's profitable to sell lies but, yeah, the world would be a LOT better without that crap in it.

I just can’t believe he isn’t dead yet.

> Two minutes before loading HN, I was thinking about how sad I am that my mother gets her "news" from Fox.

If it's any consolation, if you can get them to switch stations they can be 'deprogrammed':

* https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730725

* https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jrw26 (PDF available)

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727272...

Interview with study co-author:

* https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/04/16/media-changing-vi...

    When Rupert dies, his votes effectively expire, and his four oldest children have an equal say in the management of the empire.

    This created the possibility that the three more politically moderate siblings Prudence, Elisabeth and James might gang up to roll Lachlan.

    As one sharemarket analyst told me when I wrote The Successor, my 2022 biography of Lachlan, “it’s fair to assume that the day Rupert dies is the day Lachlan gets fired”.

~ Paddy Manning, independent journalist, author of The Successor: The high-stakes life of Lachlan Murdoch (2022)

https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/12/10/rupert-murdoch-lachlan-...

If Fox News moves to the center, will its audience move along with it? Or will they just migrate to competing outlets such as Newsmax?

Rupert Murdoch grew up in media, his father had a newspaper and (along with other adventures) tilted hard at the British Government over censorship of war news in WWI.

With that as his launchpad he expanded from Australia to the UK and mastered the art of eating Fleet Street's lunch (stealing eyeballs from establishment newspapers).

Recently, when Fox finally (temporarily) stopped supporting Trump following his defeat by Biden, the NewsMax crowd had a red hot go at stealing eyeballs from Fox and being the edgy outsiders. They weren't real good at it.

But this isn't about Rupert, it's about his kids .. and in many ways their talents remain to be seen.

If Fox moves to the centre, will it be successful? That depends on the hands on the tiller.

If someone goes up against Fox media will it be Newsmax and Ted Turner's ghost or will it be Lachlan Murdoch hellbent on sticking it to James?

These are, IMHO, more interesting questions.

Never underestimate the drama of siblings ripping into each other .. now add several billion dollars in to the mix.

> If Fox News moves to the center, will its audience move along with it? Or will they just migrate to competing outlets such as Newsmax?

There have been studies that have shown that changing channels cause people to change their views:

* https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730725

* https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jrw26 (PDF available)

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727272...

Interview with study co-author:

* https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/04/16/media-changing-vi...

So if the shift is gradual, then there could be a shift over time on viewers' part.

Fox News plays an important role in setting the Overton window. They act like a mainstream news channel, presenting themselves as just to the right of center. Then viewers consume NewsMax, thinking of them as only slightly more extreme, even though an objective view would present them as being utterly crazy-pants.

If Fox News were to disappear, there would be an enormous gap between the other mainstream media and the far-right ones.

I don't know what would happen to its viewership, but they'd be presented with a starker choice than they expect. They're used to thinking of themselves as fairly moderate, while being regularly presented with extreme opinions.

Those opinions have drifted consistently further from reality, and I suspect that the viewers would rather continue that path than follow Fox News to a more moderate place. But that may be unnecessarily cynical.

It’s fine to have a conservative leaning news channel. It’s not fine to spend so much of the time spreading lies.

Can we please please please stop labeling this political movement aiming to tear down our country's institutions as "conservative" ? It paints the agenda as some safe status quo option when it is actually plainly radical (ie the complete opposite of conservative).

Realizing this pervasive mischaracterization also neatly explains the tone policing dynamic of contemporary college campuses. That isn't some "hyper" form of liberalism, but rather a straightforward conservative dynamic of keeping the ranks in line. The confusion comes from what college administrators are trying to conserve - the social mores they fought for and won as liberals a generation+ ago.

And lest you think I'm just coming from left field here, Moldbug (upstream of much of today's "alt right") made a similar judgement when he rejected the approach of conservatism as doomed and labeled his own philosophy as reactionary.

There are faaar better hills to die on, however correct you may be.

I didn't sign myself up to die on a hill by writing a comment. If one person finds my framing useful, I've succeeded. It's obviously too late to change much of what's coming down the line, but getting our intellectual/memetic house in order is one of the first steps to reconstruction.

Maybe just learn to pronounce it with a very strong Australian accent. If you're missing the point, the first syllable rhymes with punt.

The only reason to have created a trust was to minimize taxes (whether in estate planning or in life). That attempt now cost him control over the future of his life’s work. I wonder if he reflects on this at all.

A less-radical Fox & co would be a boon to the US.

>Robert Thompson, a media scholar based at Syracuse University, said even after the court loss, the Murdochs may stick with their empire’s right wing-pleasing business model.

Maybe, but Rupert is worried enough about it to stab 3 of his children in the back.

Succession ended a couple seasons too early

Reply on news.ycombinator.com