Speaker 1: Confident of victory, are there any ongoing settlementar.
Speaker 2: So on that day, James and his wife Catherine, and
Speaker 2: his sisters all pulled up at the courthouse in Reno, Nevada.
Speaker 3: That day is Monday, sixteenth of September twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: and it's the first day of the court case that
Speaker 3: would decide the future of the Murdoch media empire.
Speaker 2: They walked up. About thirty minutes later, Rupert and Lachlan
Speaker 2: and their team pulled up. They had actually coordinated with
Speaker 2: each other to ensure that they didn't arrive at the
Speaker 2: same time, because they didn't want the cameras there to
Speaker 2: capture the hostility that now defined their family.
Speaker 3: Exactly what happened when Rupert Murdoch and his four children
Speaker 3: entered that courtroom in Nevada was a tightly guarded secret.
Speaker 3: But now one of the people in the room is
Speaker 3: for the first time giving their account of the case
Speaker 3: and how it tore apart their family.
Speaker 2: The thing that James remembers most from that first day
Speaker 2: in the courthouse was he got to the courtroom and
Speaker 2: he told me that he was surprised by how emotional
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 3: In a rare interview, James Murdock has spoken at length
Speaker 3: to journalist Mackay Coppins.
Speaker 2: He said, he just looked across the court room at
Speaker 2: his father and his brother, and these are men that
Speaker 2: he had known, you know, his whole life, whom he
Speaker 2: had loved, he'd shared all these memories with, and they
Speaker 2: were now completely estranged from one another, involved in this
Speaker 2: bitter legal battle. And he said the question he just
Speaker 2: kept asking himself and has continued to ask himself since, says,
Speaker 2: how did we let it come to this? And I
Speaker 2: think that that's still a question he hasn't been able
Speaker 2: to answer.
Speaker 3: From Schwarz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM Today,
Speaker 3: staff writer at The Atlantic, McKay Coppins, and why James
Speaker 3: Murdoch wanted to lay his story there and the bit
Speaker 3: of details that set the stage for the battle over
Speaker 3: the Murdoch Empire. It's Monday, February twenty four and this
Speaker 3: is part one of our two part interview. So McKay,
Speaker 3: to begin with, could you tell me a bit about
Speaker 3: how your relationship with James Murdoch began and why it
Speaker 3: was that you think he chose to speak with you
Speaker 3: at length.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I approached him early last year, almost on
Speaker 2: kind of a lark. You know, there had been a
Speaker 2: lot of interest in sort of the future of the
Speaker 2: Murdoch media empire once Rupert stepped back and decided to retire.
Speaker 2: And I just kind of had this sense that James,
Speaker 2: who is Rupert's youngest son and had spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time working in the family business, but had it's
Speaker 2: sort of been exiled from it, might have an interesting
Speaker 2: story to tell. I didn't know I might never met him.
Speaker 2: I reached out and found myself sitting across from him
Speaker 2: in New York and learned shortly thereafter that his family
Speaker 2: was in the midst of this kind of bitter meltdown,
Speaker 2: and it was happening in secret. A secretive quote batt alone.
Speaker 3: The future of Rupid Middok's media empire is underway in
Speaker 3: the US side of Nevada.
Speaker 2: Nor The Murdoch, who is ninety three years old, is
Speaker 2: seeking to update his family trust, which controls a major
Speaker 2: portion of the Fox News empire. Well. His goal is
Speaker 2: to ensure that his eldest son, Lachlan, will take over
Speaker 2: the media business after his death. The family feud Pitts
Speaker 2: Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan against the three other siblings, James, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: and Prudence, his eldest child. And I think that James
Speaker 2: saw this as a real betrayal and because of it,
Speaker 2: he sort of felt liberated for the first time time
Speaker 2: to share his story and kind of talk about what
Speaker 2: he had seen behind the scenes that the family media businesses.
Speaker 2: Inside the Murdoch family, he had always been taught, you know,
Speaker 2: never to talk about the family, never air the dirty laundry,
Speaker 2: certainly not to a reporter like me. But he felt
Speaker 2: like he had a story to tell and his side
Speaker 2: of the story had never truly been represented, and I
Speaker 2: think that's why he decided to talk.
Speaker 3: And I want to talk more about that court case
Speaker 3: Rupert's attempt to change the family trust. But first I'm
Speaker 3: just curious, over the course of the time that you
Speaker 3: spent with James, how would you describe his personality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's an interesting guy. So inside the Murdoch family,
Speaker 2: he's always been sort of stereotyped. I think all families
Speaker 2: sort of stereotype their children in different ways. Right, you're
Speaker 2: assigned roles to play. He's always been a bit of
Speaker 2: a black sheep. He's been the rebel. As a kid,
Speaker 2: he was the one who, you know, asked contrarian quest
Speaker 2: at the dinner table and got piercings and tattoos and
Speaker 2: got in trouble at school. But he's also very smart,
Speaker 2: and I caught him at an interesting moment because I
Speaker 2: think that he was given everything that it was happening
Speaker 2: to his family, reassessing these memories he had and these
Speaker 2: experiences he'd had, so he could be pretty introspective. He
Speaker 2: could also be pretty sad. I think that he is
Speaker 2: really struggling with what's happened to his family, his estrangement
Speaker 2: from his father and his older brother, and there were
Speaker 2: times when he was quite emotional. There were times when
Speaker 2: he was very angry. Most of the time, he was
Speaker 2: just kind of trying to process his life in this
Speaker 2: very famous and kind of dysfunctional family.
Speaker 3: And it's James's older brother, Laughlin, who has become Rupert's
Speaker 3: chosen successor, but that wasn't always necessarily the case. Can
Speaker 3: you tell me a bit about what James said to
Speaker 3: you about the time in which he have been considered
Speaker 3: the potential successor when he was deeply involved in the
Speaker 3: family business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well, James joined the family business in
Speaker 2: his twenties and for a while James and Lachlan were
Speaker 2: both working there. Lachlan was always the favorite. He was
Speaker 2: kind of more, you know, charismatic and emulative of his dad.
Speaker 2: He kind of seemed like, in some way as a
Speaker 2: mini Rupert. My father's remarkable and what is achieved.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: The I work as hard as I can, to do
Speaker 2: as much as I can and take one challenge at
Speaker 2: a time. And he was always the logical successor. He
Speaker 2: was the oldest brother. Rupert was grooming him. But in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five Lachlan quit and moved back to
Speaker 2: Australia and decided he didn't want to have anything to
Speaker 2: do with the family business.
Speaker 3: Once considered first among equals, today thirty three year old
Speaker 3: Lachlan Murdock is no longer heir apparent to the seventy
Speaker 3: billion dollar news corporation empire.
Speaker 2: And that made James the kind of de fault successor.
Speaker 2: James ended up working in the family companies for twenty years.
Speaker 2: He was an executive at news Corp, News International, twenty
Speaker 2: first Century Fox and was groomed as the successor, but
Speaker 2: it was always uncomfortable what James told me is that
Speaker 2: he and Rupert really did not share a vision for
Speaker 2: what these companies should be. Rupert liked to run things
Speaker 2: in this kind of reckless way. He was a you know,
Speaker 2: he's a gambler. He surrounded himself with these aggressive deputies
Speaker 2: who he told to kind of, you know, risk everything,
Speaker 2: act like pirates, you know, move fast and break things.
Speaker 2: That that was kind of Rupert's mentality. James really believed
Speaker 2: that a good company should have a strong internal culture,
Speaker 2: and he was immersed in management theory, and he wanted
Speaker 2: these companies to be run in the appropriate, proper way.
Speaker 4: As long as we can just look at a marketplace
Speaker 4: and say, if there's something that we can do a
Speaker 4: little bit better, focus on our customer a little bit more,
Speaker 4: create a choice where there wasn't one before, and we
Speaker 4: always think that's a good opportunity. And as long as
Speaker 4: we stay focused on that, we can deal.
Speaker 1: With all the noise around it.
Speaker 2: And so they always kind of clashed on things like that,
Speaker 2: and they never really saw Idaye. I think on some level,
Speaker 2: Rupert resented his son's obsession with respectability, and James always
Speaker 2: kind of was aggravated by Rupert's allergy to discipline, and
Speaker 2: so in some way they just never really saw ida.
Speaker 3: Eye after the break, the final straw in the breakdown
Speaker 3: between James and his dad.
Speaker 1: Missus chairman, thank you very much, And first of all,
Speaker 1: I would like to say as well, just how sorry
Speaker 1: I am and sorry we are to particularly the victims
Speaker 1: of illegal voicemail interceptions and to their families.
Speaker 3: As for my comments, mkay, it was of course the
Speaker 3: phone hacking scandal in the UK that really spelled the
Speaker 3: end of James's ascent. In Your Peace, James is quoted
Speaker 3: as saying that it was actually one of his sisters
Speaker 3: who conveyed the message that he was to take the
Speaker 3: fall for that. So can you tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right at the height of the phone hacking scandal,
Speaker 2: which was obviously an incredibly stressful time for James. And
Speaker 2: I actually got this not just from James, but from
Speaker 2: Liz herself. She kind of admits to it now. She
Speaker 2: said she went and met with Rupert and suggested to
Speaker 2: her father that's a member of the family was going
Speaker 2: to have to take the fall for this, that just
Speaker 2: firing kind of a lower level executive at the company
Speaker 2: wasn't going to satisfy the public outrage over this, and
Speaker 2: she made the case to Rupert in that moment that
Speaker 2: James should take the fall, that he was the most
Speaker 2: logical scapegoat, that they should announce that he was stepping
Speaker 2: down moving back to New York, and they could frame
Speaker 2: the whole thing as kind of a mea culpa on
Speaker 2: the part of the Murdocks. Rupert said, let me think
Speaker 2: about it, came back the next day and said to Liz,
Speaker 2: I think that's a good idea. We should do it,
Speaker 2: and then said go tell him. James obviously did not
Speaker 2: take well to this, said, if my dad wants to
Speaker 2: fire me, he can do it himself, threw her out
Speaker 2: of his office. But you know, that moment, I think
Speaker 2: is so indicative of the way that this family operates,
Speaker 2: because it really poisoned the relationship between Liz and James
Speaker 2: for a long time. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: Liz told me is that she really regrets. It's actually,
Speaker 2: she said, one of the greatest regrets of her life
Speaker 2: that she allowed her desire for her father's approval to
Speaker 2: poison her relationship with her brother.
Speaker 3: And it is very rare for Murdoch children to speak
Speaker 3: publicly about their family litt alone to do so critically,
Speaker 3: but James has done that a number of times now,
Speaker 3: and I think most famously for Australians that happened when
Speaker 3: he called out News Corp for their failure to link
Speaker 3: the bushfires that we had here in twenty nineteen to
Speaker 3: climate change. So how significant have these moments been in
Speaker 3: the fracturing of James's relationship with Rupert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no question that there's been kind of a
Speaker 2: succession of moments where James decided to kind of go
Speaker 2: off script, right break from the family talking points and
Speaker 2: say what he believed publicly. And it really has only
Speaker 2: happened a handful of times, but that was enough for
Speaker 2: Rupert to feel that his son was not loyal in
Speaker 2: the way that he should be. You know, at one point,
Speaker 2: after the neo Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, James put
Speaker 2: out a statement without clearing it with the company. This
Speaker 2: is when he was an executive at News Corp. And
Speaker 2: Fox said that you know that he disagreed with it,
Speaker 2: that it was you know, terrible, and that that was
Speaker 2: seen as him going off script. The bush fires episode
Speaker 2: was another one these handful of episodes kind of go
Speaker 2: against one of the Cardinal Murdoch family rules, which is
Speaker 2: that you never talk about the family outside the family.
Speaker 2: And James's willingness to do that even just a handful
Speaker 2: of times and now in pretty, you know, great detail
Speaker 2: with me, I think shows why he and his father
Speaker 2: were probably never destined to be able to work together
Speaker 2: in running the family business.
Speaker 3: And do you think that when he does do this,
Speaker 3: do you think that this is born out of a
Speaker 3: sense of guilt or a genuine desire to try and
Speaker 3: affect change.
Speaker 2: You know, he told me about early twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 2: he and his brother were kind of running Fox together,
Speaker 2: the Fox Corporation together, that Donald Trump was elected and
Speaker 2: issued hi travel ban for predominantly Muslim countries, and James
Speaker 2: wanted to issue a company wide memo stating clearly that
Speaker 2: they opposed this policy, reassuring their Muslim employees that they
Speaker 2: had their backs, and his brother Lachlin said that he
Speaker 2: wouldn't go along with that. They ended up kind of
Speaker 2: arm wrestling over every line in the statement. It got
Speaker 2: watered down, and I think that James really felt in
Speaker 2: that moment he was being forced to censor himself and
Speaker 2: bite his tongue in a way that he had kind
Speaker 2: of been forced to do over and over and over
Speaker 2: throughout his life. He just doesn't share his father's politics.
Speaker 2: In many ways, he doesn't share his father's worldview. And
Speaker 2: part of the reason he is now speaking out is, yes,
Speaker 2: he wants to give his side of the story. Yes
Speaker 2: he wants to set the record straight. But I think
Speaker 2: there's also an element of almost kind of atonement in
Speaker 2: all of this. He might disagree with that characterization, but
Speaker 2: I think he does feel like he owes it to
Speaker 2: the world to kind of tell the truth about what
Speaker 2: he saw, and you know, obviously, as a journalist, I
Speaker 2: think that's a good thing.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with part two with McKay coppins on
Speaker 3: the mind games and manipulations of the family court trial
Speaker 3: and the future of the Murdock media.
Speaker 2: Empire, and the lawyer kind of spent multiple hours just
Speaker 2: firing these questions at James that were really kind of
Speaker 2: disdainful and withering. They were questions like, have you ever
Speaker 2: done anything successful on your own? And why don't you
Speaker 2: take responsibility for your actions? And why didn't you call
Speaker 2: your father on his ninetieth birthday? And things like that.
Speaker 3: You can find that in your feed now. Also in
Speaker 3: the news today, the federal government has announced an eight
Speaker 3: point five billion dollar injection into medicare over four years.
Speaker 3: The funds will be used to triple the incentive to
Speaker 3: doctors to provide near universal bulk billing for patients, as
Speaker 3: well as for four hundred nursing scholarships in two thousand
Speaker 3: new GP trainees a year. Labour says nine out of
Speaker 3: ten GP visits will be free from out of pocket
Speaker 3: expenses by twenty thirty. The coalition says it will not
Speaker 3: stand in the way of the reforms and Treasurer Jim
Speaker 3: Chalmers will meet with his US counterpart, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant,
Speaker 3: in Washington this week as the Australian government tries to
Speaker 3: negotiate exemptions from tariffs on seal and aluminum exports to
Speaker 3: the US. President Trump has said previously that he would
Speaker 3: consider exempting Australia from the twenty five percent tariffs, which
Speaker 3: are due to take effect next month. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 3: This is seven AM and tomorrow Daniel James will be
Speaker 3: bringing you an interview with the Minister for Indigenous Australians
Speaker 3: Melandariye McCarthy about why so many closed the gap. Targets
Speaker 3: are going backwards.