Speaker 1: Confident of victory, are there any ongoing settlementar So on
Speaker 1: that day, James and his wife Catherine, and his sisters
Speaker 1: all pulled up at the courthouse in Reno, Nevada.
Speaker 2: That day is Monday, sixteenth of September twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: and it's the first day of the court case that
Speaker 2: would decide the future of the Murdoch media empire.
Speaker 1: They walked up. About thirty minutes later, Rupert and Lachlan
Speaker 1: and their team pulled up. They had actually coordinated with
Speaker 1: each other to ensure that they didn't arrive at the
Speaker 1: same time, because they didn't want the cameras there to
Speaker 1: capture the hostility that now defined their family.
Speaker 2: Exactly what happened when Rupert Murdoch and his four children
Speaker 2: entered that courtroom in Nevada was a tightly guarded secret.
Speaker 2: But now one of the people in the room is
Speaker 2: for the first time giving their account of the case
Speaker 2: and how it tore apart their family.
Speaker 1: The thing that James remembers most from that first day
Speaker 1: in the courthouse was he got to the court room
Speaker 1: and he told me that he was surprised by how
Speaker 1: emotional he was.
Speaker 2: In a rare interview, James Murdock has spoken at length
Speaker 2: to journalist Mackay Coppins.
Speaker 1: He said, he, you know, just looked across the court
Speaker 1: room at his father and his brother, and these are
Speaker 1: men that he had known, you know, his whole life,
Speaker 1: whom he had loved, he'd shared all these memories with,
Speaker 1: and they were now completely estranged from one another, involved
Speaker 1: in this bitter legal battle. And he said, the question
Speaker 1: he just kept asking himself and has continued to ask
Speaker 1: himself since, says, how did we let it come to this?
Speaker 1: And I think that that's still a question he hasn't
Speaker 1: been able to answer.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven.
Speaker 3: Am Today staff writer at the Atlanta Tick McKay Coffins
Speaker 3: on why James Murdoch wanted to lay his story there
Speaker 3: and the bit of details that set the stage for
Speaker 3: the battle over the Murdock Empire.
Speaker 2: It's Wednesday, January eighth, and this is part one of
Speaker 2: our two part interview that we originally published in February
Speaker 2: last year. So McKay, to begin with, could you tell
Speaker 2: me a bit about how your relationship with James Murdoch
Speaker 2: began and why it was that you think he chose
Speaker 2: to speak with you at length.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I approached him early last year, almost on
Speaker 1: kind of a lark. You know, there had been a
Speaker 1: lot of interest in sort of the future of the
Speaker 1: Murdoch media empire once Rupert stepped back and decided to retire.
Speaker 1: And I just kind of had this sense that James,
Speaker 1: who is Rupert's youngest son and had spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time working in the family business, but had said
Speaker 1: and it's sort of been exiled from it, might have
Speaker 1: an interesting story to tell. I didn't know I might
Speaker 1: never met him. I reached out and found myself sitting
Speaker 1: across from him in New York and learned shortly thereafter
Speaker 1: that his family was in the midst of this kind
Speaker 1: of bitter meltdown, and it was happening in secret. A
Speaker 1: secretive quote batt alone.
Speaker 2: The future of Rupid Medok's media empire is underway in
Speaker 2: the US side of Nevada, North.
Speaker 4: Murdoch, who is ninety three years old, is seeking to
Speaker 4: update his family trust, which controls a major portion of
Speaker 4: the Fox News empire.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: His goal is to ensure that his eldest son, Lachlan,
Speaker 4: will take over the media business after his death. The
Speaker 4: family feud Pitts Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan against
Speaker 4: the three other siblings, James, Elizabeth, and Prudence, his eldest child.
Speaker 1: And I think that James saw this as a real
Speaker 1: betrayal and because of it, he sort of felt liberated
Speaker 1: for the first time time to share his story and
Speaker 1: kind of talk about what he had seen behind the
Speaker 1: scenes that the family media businesses. Inside the Murdoch family,
Speaker 1: he had always been taught, you know, never to talk
Speaker 1: about the family, never air the dirty laundry, certainly not
Speaker 1: to a reporter like me. But he felt like he
Speaker 1: had a story to tell and his side of the
Speaker 1: story had never truly been represented, and I think that's
Speaker 1: why he decided to talk.
Speaker 2: And I want to talk more about that court case
Speaker 2: Rupert's attempt to change the family trust. But first I'm
Speaker 2: just curious, over the course of the time that you
Speaker 2: spent with James, how would you describe his personality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an interesting guy. So inside the Murdoch family,
Speaker 1: he's always been sort of stereotyped. I think all families
Speaker 1: sort of stereotype their children in different ways. Right, you're
Speaker 1: assigned roles to play. He's always been a bit of
Speaker 1: a black sheep. He's been the rebel as a kid.
Speaker 1: He was the one who, you know, asked contrarian question
Speaker 1: at the dinner table and got piercings and tattoos and
Speaker 1: got in trouble at school. But he's also very smart,
Speaker 1: and I caught him at an interesting moment because I
Speaker 1: think that he was given everything that it was happening
Speaker 1: to his family, reassessing these memories he had and these
Speaker 1: experiences he'd had, so he could be pretty introspective. He
Speaker 1: could also be pretty sad. I think that he is
Speaker 1: really struggling with what's happened to his family, his estrangement
Speaker 1: from his father and his older brother, and there were
Speaker 1: times when he was quite emotional. There were times when
Speaker 1: he was very angry. Most of the time, he was
Speaker 1: just kind of trying to process his life in this
Speaker 1: very famous and kind of dysfunctional family.
Speaker 2: And it's James's older brother, Laughlin, who has become Rupert's
Speaker 2: chosen successor, but that wasn't always necessarily the case. Can
Speaker 2: you tell me a bit about what James said to
Speaker 2: you about the time in which he might have been
Speaker 2: considered the potential successor when he was deeply involved in
Speaker 2: the family business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, James joined the family business in
Speaker 1: his twenties and for a while James and Lachlan were
Speaker 1: both working there. Lachlan was always the favorite. He was
Speaker 1: kind of more, you know, charismatic and emulative of his dad.
Speaker 1: He kind of seemed like, in some way as a
Speaker 1: mini Rupert. My father's remarkable and what is achieved. I
Speaker 1: think the I work as hard as I can, to
Speaker 1: do as much as I can and take one challenge
Speaker 1: at a time. And he was always the logical successor.
Speaker 1: He was the oldest brother. Rupert was grooming him. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five Lachlan quit and moved back
Speaker 1: to Australia and decided he didn't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with the family business.
Speaker 2: Once considered first among equals, today thirty three year old
Speaker 2: Lachlan Murdock is no longer heir apparent to the seventy
Speaker 2: billion dollar news corporation empire.
Speaker 1: And that made James the kind of default successor. James
Speaker 1: ended up working in the family companies for twenty years.
Speaker 1: He was an executive at news Corp, News International, twenty
Speaker 1: first Century Fox and was groomed as the successor, but
Speaker 1: it was always uncomfortable. What James told me is that
Speaker 1: he and Rupert really did not share a vision for
Speaker 1: what these companies should be. Rupert liked to run things
Speaker 1: in this kind of reckless way. He was a you know,
Speaker 1: he's a gambler. He surrounded himself with these aggressive deputies
Speaker 1: who he told to kind of, you know, risk everything,
Speaker 1: act like pirates, you know, move fast and break things.
Speaker 1: That that was kind of Rupert's mentality. James really believed
Speaker 1: that a good company should have a strong internal culture,
Speaker 1: and he was immersed in management theory, and he wanted
Speaker 1: these companies to be run in the appropriate, proper way.
Speaker 5: As long as we can just look at a marketplace
Speaker 5: and say, if there's something that we can do a
Speaker 5: little bit better, focus on our customer a little bit more,
Speaker 5: create a choice where there wasn't one before, and we
Speaker 5: always think that's a good opportunity. And as long as
Speaker 5: we stay focused on that, we can deal with all
Speaker 5: the noise around it.
Speaker 1: And so they always kind of clashed on things like that,
Speaker 1: and they never really saw Idaye. I think on some level,
Speaker 1: Rupert resented his son's obsession with respectability, and James always
Speaker 1: kind of was aggravated by Rupert's allergy to discipline, and
Speaker 1: so in some way they just never really saw ida eye.
Speaker 2: After the break the final straw in the breakdown between
Speaker 2: James and his dad.
Speaker 6: Missus chairman, thank you very much, And first of all,
Speaker 6: I would like to say as well, just how sorry
Speaker 6: I am and sorry we are to particularly the victims
Speaker 6: of illegal voicemail interceptions and to their families.
Speaker 2: As for my comments, mkay, it was of course the
Speaker 2: phone hacking scandal in the UK that really spelled the
Speaker 2: end of James's ascent. In Your Peace, James is quoted
Speaker 2: as saying that it was actually one of his sisters
Speaker 2: who conveyed the message that he was to take the
Speaker 2: fall for that. So can you tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right at the height of the phone hacking scandal,
Speaker 1: which was obviously an incredibly stressful time for James. And
Speaker 1: I actually got this not just from James, but from
Speaker 1: Liz herself. She kind of admits to it now. She
Speaker 1: said she went and met with Rupert and suggested to
Speaker 1: her father that's a member of the family was going
Speaker 1: to have to take the fall for this. That just
Speaker 1: firing kind of a lower level executive at the company
Speaker 1: wasn't going to satisfy the public outrage over this, and
Speaker 1: she made the case to Rupert in that moment that
Speaker 1: James should take the fall, that he was the most
Speaker 1: logical scapegoat, that they should announce that he was stepping
Speaker 1: down moving back to New York, and they could frame
Speaker 1: the whole thing as kind of a mea culpa on
Speaker 1: the part of the Murdocks. Rupert said, let me think
Speaker 1: about it. Came back the next day and said to Liz,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea. We should do it,
Speaker 1: and then said go tell him. James obviously did not
Speaker 1: take well to this, said, if my dad wants to
Speaker 1: fire me, he can do it himself, threw her out
Speaker 1: of his office. But you know, that moment, I think
Speaker 1: is so indicative of the way that this family operates,
Speaker 1: because it really poisoned the relationship between Liz and James
Speaker 1: for a long time. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Liz told me is that she really regrets. It's actually,
Speaker 1: she said, one of the greatest regrets of her life
Speaker 1: that she allowed her desire for her father's approval to
Speaker 1: poison her relationship with her brother.
Speaker 2: And it is very rare for Murdoch children to speak
Speaker 2: publicly about their family litt alone to do so critically,
Speaker 2: but James has done that a number of times now,
Speaker 2: and I think most famously for Australians that happened when
Speaker 2: he called out News Corp for their failure to link
Speaker 2: the bushfires that we had here in twenty nineteen to
Speaker 2: climate change. So how significant have these moments been in
Speaker 2: the fracturing of James's relationship with Rupert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no question that there's been kind of a
Speaker 1: succession of moments where James decided to kind of go
Speaker 1: off script, right break from the family talking points and
Speaker 1: say what he believed publicly. And it really has only
Speaker 1: happened a handful of times, but that was enough for
Speaker 1: Rupert to feel that his son was not loyal in
Speaker 1: the way that he should be. You know, at one point,
Speaker 1: after the neo Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, James put
Speaker 1: out a statement without clearing it with the company. This
Speaker 1: is when he was an executive at News Corp. And
Speaker 1: Fox said that you know that he disagreed with it,
Speaker 1: that it was you know, terrible, and that was seen
Speaker 1: as him going off script. The bush fires episode was
Speaker 1: another one these handful of episodes kind of go against
Speaker 1: one of the Cardinal Murdoch family rules, which is that
Speaker 1: you never talk about the family outside the family. And
Speaker 1: James's willingness to do that even just a handful of
Speaker 1: times and now in pretty you know, great detail with me,
Speaker 1: I think shows why he and his father were probably
Speaker 1: never destined to be able to work together in running
Speaker 1: the family business.
Speaker 2: And do you think that when he does do this,
Speaker 2: do you think that this is born out of a
Speaker 2: sense of guilt or a genuine desire to try and
Speaker 2: affect change.
Speaker 1: You know, he told me about early twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 1: he and his brother were kind of running Fox together,
Speaker 1: the Fox Corporation together, that Donald Trump was elected and
Speaker 1: issued his travel ban for predominantly Muslim countries, and James
Speaker 1: wanted to issue a company wide memo stating clearly that
Speaker 1: they opposed this policy, reassuring their Muslim employees that they
Speaker 1: had their backs, and his brother Lachlin said that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't go along with that. They ended up kind of
Speaker 1: arm wrestling over every line in the statement. It got
Speaker 1: watered down, and I think that James really felt in
Speaker 1: that moment he was being forced to censor himself and
Speaker 1: bite his tongue in a way that he had kind
Speaker 1: of been forced to do over and over and over
Speaker 1: throughout his life. He just doesn't share his father's politics.
Speaker 1: In many ways, he doesn't share his father's worldview. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason he is now speaking out is, yes,
Speaker 1: he wants to give his side of the story. Yes
Speaker 1: he wants to set the record straight. But I think
Speaker 1: there's also an element of almost kind of atonement in
Speaker 1: all of this. He might disagree with that characterization, but
Speaker 1: I think he does feel like he owes it to
Speaker 1: the world to kind of tell the truth about what
Speaker 1: he saw, and you know, obviously, as a journalist, I
Speaker 1: think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with part two with McKay coppins on
Speaker 2: the mind games and manipulations of the family court trial
Speaker 2: and the future of the Murdock media empire.
Speaker 1: And the lawyer kind of spent multiple hours just firing
Speaker 1: these questions at James that were really kind of disdainful
Speaker 1: and withering. They were questions like, have you ever done
Speaker 1: anything successful on your own? And why don't you take
Speaker 1: responsibility for your actions? And why didn't you call your
Speaker 1: father on his ninetieth birthday and things like that.
Speaker 2: You can find that in your feed now