Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily This is the Daily.
Speaker 1: Ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Daily Ours. It's Wednesday, the eighteenth of September.
Speaker 1: I'm Harry, I'm Zara. You may have never heard of
Speaker 1: Lochlan Murdoch. He's the son of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian
Speaker 1: born media mogul who is arguably one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful men in the world. Rupert wants Lachland to be
Speaker 1: the successor in control of his vast global media empire
Speaker 1: and is currently fighting to make that happen in a
Speaker 1: US court. In today's deep Dive, will take a look
Speaker 1: at the real life succession drama playing out in America
Speaker 1: and how much do we really know about Lachlan Murdoch,
Speaker 1: the man in line to inherit the biggest media empire
Speaker 1: in the world. The First Sarah. What's making headlines.
Speaker 2: Australia has negotiated a new free trade agreement with the
Speaker 2: United Arab Emirates. Trade Minister Don Farrell announced the agreement yesterday,
Speaker 2: which he said will save money by reducing tariffs taxes
Speaker 2: applied by the UAE on Australian goods. It imports like meat, dairy,
Speaker 2: seafood and steel. Farrell said the deal will mean quote
Speaker 2: more higher paying jobs, more opportunities for our businesses, and
Speaker 2: cheaper bills for Australian households. The Australian Council of Trade
Speaker 2: Unions had previously flagged concerns over the treatment of workers
Speaker 2: in the UAE, saying it quote strongly believes the government
Speaker 2: should not give preferential market access to countries with poor
Speaker 2: labor rights practices.
Speaker 1: US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield, has criticized
Speaker 1: the recent killing of a Turkish American activist, aishanaw Skiegi
Speaker 1: in the West Bank. Greenfield said, quote this horrific tragedy
Speaker 1: should never have happened. She demanded access to Israel's investigation
Speaker 1: into the matter, adding quote her death, like that of
Speaker 1: so many others over the past year, was tragic and unnecessary.
Speaker 1: The Israeli Defense Forces expressed deep regret and said its
Speaker 1: preliminary investigation had found it was quote highly likely that
Speaker 1: she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDA fire.
Speaker 2: US Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles has filed an appeal of
Speaker 2: the decision by the Court of arbitration for sport or
Speaker 2: CIS to strip her of the bronze medal she won
Speaker 2: at this year's Olympics. At one of Charles's events at
Speaker 2: the Paris Olympics this year, her coach requested her score
Speaker 2: be reevaluated, leading to her winning the bronze over two
Speaker 2: athletes from Romania. Those athletes then in turn lodged an
Speaker 2: appeal with CIS, arguing Charles's coach asked for a reevaluation
Speaker 2: outside of the allowed time. The CIS then ruled that
Speaker 2: Charles had to give back her medal. In a statement,
Speaker 2: Charles's lawyers alleged to the CIS didn't accept video evidence
Speaker 2: from her showing the reevaluation requests was filed on time,
Speaker 2: and that a member of the panel that stripped her
Speaker 2: of her medal was a lawyer for Romanian gymnasts. The
Speaker 2: appeal has been filed in the Supreme Court of Switzerland,
Speaker 2: where COAS is based.
Speaker 1: And Today's Good News. For the first time ever, five
Speaker 1: female authors have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The
Speaker 1: prize is awarded to an English language novel voted the
Speaker 1: best of the year by an expert panel. To be eligible,
Speaker 1: authors can be from any country, but their books must
Speaker 1: have been published in the UK and Ireland. This year's
Speaker 1: shortlist features six authors, five of whom are women, the
Speaker 1: most ever nominated in one year. They include Australian author
Speaker 1: Charlotte Wood, who wrote the novel's Stoneyard devotional What is
Speaker 1: the first Australian to make the shortlist since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: The last women to win the Booker were Bernardine Everisto
Speaker 1: and Margaret Atwood, who jointly won in twenty nineteen for
Speaker 1: their books Girl Woman, Other and The Testaments respectively. Will
Speaker 1: be back with the Deep Dive after this.
Speaker 2: Quick break, now, Harry. If we could pay the incredible
Speaker 2: royalties that were required to play the Succession theme song,
Speaker 2: I would do it. Put my own money.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining the tune. It's happening up here, maybe.
Speaker 2: Not out here, but I'm so sorry for anyone that
Speaker 2: had to listen to that this morning. Anyway. All that
Speaker 2: to say that we are talking about a real life
Speaker 2: succession scenario playing out and you don't have to have
Speaker 2: seen the television show to understand this story. But if
Speaker 2: people haven't been following or haven't been reading about the
Speaker 2: Murdochs and you know, we are in media, we do
Speaker 2: have a bias towards caring about these sorts of stories.
Speaker 2: How would you introduce someone like Rupert Murdoch at a party,
Speaker 2: for example.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I'd say, this is my mate Rupert.
Speaker 1: He's ninety three years old, he was born in Australia
Speaker 1: and he is the most influential media mogul in the world.
Speaker 1: He owns more than one hundred news titles, including dozens
Speaker 1: based in Australia, in the UK and in the US.
Speaker 1: And it's very likely you've watched some of them, So
Speaker 1: think Fox News or Sky News here in Australia, or
Speaker 1: you've seen some of his news outlets so the Daily Telegraphed,
Speaker 1: The Australian or News dot com dot Au online, So
Speaker 1: it's very likely that you've come across one of his
Speaker 1: news platforms before. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, when we talk about the Australian media market,
Speaker 2: for example, and you know us trying to build the
Speaker 2: Daily os so often conversations around media concentration emerged because
Speaker 2: Rupert Murdoch and News Court now owns so much of
Speaker 2: the Australian media market. Almost every newspaper, every radio station,
Speaker 2: every TV station, at some point, whether or not it
Speaker 2: is now has been touched by Rupert Murdoch. Why are
Speaker 2: we speaking about him today, though? Why are we talking
Speaker 2: about the Murdocks.
Speaker 1: So, as we've discussed, Rupert owns a massive media empire
Speaker 1: and Forbes estimates he's worth about twenty billion dollars US,
Speaker 1: which is about the thirty billion in Australian dollars. And
Speaker 1: as we know, he's also not a young man anymore,
Speaker 1: so a lot of attention has turned to what will
Speaker 1: happen once he passes. And so that's where we go
Speaker 1: back to nineteen ninety nine where Rupert divorced his second wife,
Speaker 1: Anna Murdoch, who he had three children with, Elizabeth, Laughlin
Speaker 1: and James. And by that point Rupert had one other child, Prudence,
Speaker 1: who he had from his first marriage, and he set
Speaker 1: up what's known as an irrevocable trust to split ownership
Speaker 1: of his businesses, shares and his money between his four
Speaker 1: children when he divorced annas So that's back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and now the family's in court debating this trust.
Speaker 2: Okay, And for anyone unfamiliar, which I am, what is
Speaker 2: an irrevocable trust?
Speaker 1: It's basically a legal document setting out how Rupert Murdock's
Speaker 1: going to divide up his assets after he dies. Okay,
Speaker 1: irrevocable means it can't be changed, but it has changed before.
Speaker 1: That's with the exception when Rupert had two other children,
Speaker 1: Chloe and Grace, they were added to this trust, but
Speaker 1: they aren't involved in this pointy aspect of the trust
Speaker 1: that is being debated in courts. So that's how we
Speaker 1: end up in Nevada, the great US state next to California,
Speaker 1: because Rupert is trying to change the trust again. It
Speaker 1: specifies that Prudence, Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James, his first four children,
Speaker 1: each have equal say over the future of Rupert's vast
Speaker 1: business empire.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let me just stop you there, just to
Speaker 2: recap where we're at. So Rupert Murdoch, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: been married many times, but at this point had been
Speaker 2: married twice, had four children from two wives, and so
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine, after he divorces Anna, his second wife,
Speaker 2: he sets up this trust. And the premise of the
Speaker 2: trust is that all of his great fortunes will be
Speaker 2: passed down to all of his children and that it
Speaker 2: can't be changed. Is that right?
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Ok, all right, you're coming along the journey with me,
Speaker 1: and it is a very complicated way of handing down
Speaker 1: your assets and fortunes. But we're talking about the Murdocks.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, very unusual situation.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And so Rupert now wants to change this trust,
Speaker 1: the unchangeable trust, the unchangeable trust. He's going to try
Speaker 1: and change it because he's Rupert Murdoch. So here's what
Speaker 1: he wants to do. Rupert wants to change the trust
Speaker 1: so that Lachlan is in control of his business fortunes
Speaker 1: after he dies.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's changing it from it being all four
Speaker 2: of them to just being Lachlan.
Speaker 1: That's right. Why, Well, Lachlan is the only one of
Speaker 1: those four children who's still working for Rupert Murdoch for
Speaker 1: one of his businesses. I should say. He's at a
Speaker 1: senior position at Fox Corp and News Corp. And there
Speaker 1: are some other theories as to why. One of them
Speaker 1: is that he doesn't want internal conflicts within the family
Speaker 1: affecting the course of the business of his businesses once
Speaker 1: he dies. So he doesn't want any family divisions to
Speaker 1: hurt the fourtunes of Fox Corps of News Corp. But
Speaker 1: it's also widely reported that Lachlan and Rupert are a
Speaker 1: bit more ideologically aligned politically aligned these days as well.
Speaker 1: Lachlan attended his dad's last wedding and the other kids didn't,
Speaker 1: So it's a bit of rumor mill, a bit of
Speaker 1: speculation that that is some of the reasons being put
Speaker 1: forward why this trust might be changing. And so the
Speaker 1: other three kids aren't too happy about it. That sense,
Speaker 1: When you've got your fingertips potentially on a vast media empire,
Speaker 1: I think you wouldn't want it to slip away from you.
Speaker 1: And so that's why they're currently in court. They're trying
Speaker 1: to guarantee that they'll still have some control over the
Speaker 1: businesses once Rupert dies. And I think it's just important
Speaker 1: to note here that we wouldn't even really know about
Speaker 1: what's going on in this Nevada court if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the enterprising journalists at the New York Times their team,
Speaker 1: because they were the ones that managed to get their
Speaker 1: hands on this sealed court document. Because otherwise it's all
Speaker 1: happening behind closed doors. We don't really know what's happening
Speaker 1: in that courtroom.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Rupert Murdoch is really fighting for Lachlan to
Speaker 2: be his successor. And this isn't just a normal family story,
Speaker 2: and you know, you and I were speaking about this
Speaker 2: off Mike. This is about the future of not just
Speaker 2: Australian media, like the world's media, and the way we
Speaker 2: get our information and who wins elections and who loses elections,
Speaker 2: and to understand the gravity of it, I really feel
Speaker 2: like the world needs to understand a bit more about
Speaker 2: Lochlan Murdock because he is this notoriously quite private figure,
Speaker 2: isn't he.
Speaker 1: We don't actually know a huge amount about him. We
Speaker 1: rely on sources that are close to him, yeah, acquaintances
Speaker 1: that are talking out and friends, but we don't hear
Speaker 1: much from Lochlan Murdock himself.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that he had an American accent.
Speaker 2: I don't read about him. Yeah, I don't think I've
Speaker 2: read about him, and I had never listened to an
Speaker 2: interview with him. I've never met him. And so when
Speaker 2: I was watching the ABC's Australian story, I was so
Speaker 2: shocked by how deep his American accent is, and it
Speaker 2: just made me realize how little I actually do know
Speaker 2: about him.
Speaker 1: And some of those interviews were from when he was
Speaker 1: a bit younger as well, and I think as he's
Speaker 1: gotten older, he's been a bit more reluctant to do interviews.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the family don't tend to
Speaker 1: do those sit down interviews very often. So I think
Speaker 1: to understand who Lochlan Murdock is got to go back
Speaker 1: to his roots. So he was born in London. He's
Speaker 1: the eldest boy in the family. He lived in Australia
Speaker 1: in his twenties and he was working quiet senior posts
Speaker 1: across his dad's businesses and that's where he met his wife, Sarah,
Speaker 1: who we might know from Australia's Next Top Model. Correct,
Speaker 1: so deep in my brain that finale. So Lachlan didn't
Speaker 1: have a very smooth run in his early years, and
Speaker 1: it was partly because of rugby league in Australia. So
Speaker 1: the big rival media family in Australia, the Packers, they
Speaker 1: had the TV rights to broadcast rugby league, and how
Speaker 1: did Rupert and Lachlan want to overcome that because they
Speaker 1: also wanted the rights. They set up their own competition.
Speaker 1: So there were two competitions that occurred in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, and it only really lasted a short
Speaker 1: amount of time. It was really expensive and there was
Speaker 1: a really bitter fallout from it. Lachlan was also involved
Speaker 1: in the great rise and collapse of a telecommunications company
Speaker 1: called OneTel, which fell apart in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: but it was a big thing in the late nineties
Speaker 1: and that was put down to poor corporate management. But
Speaker 1: he is credited with investing in real estate Australia in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand so this is when the Internet
Speaker 1: was first coming to life and developing into what we
Speaker 1: know the Internet to be today. This was like a
Speaker 1: digital real estate advertising company. It was quite a novel
Speaker 1: idea at the time, but it's absolutely skyrocketed in value since,
Speaker 1: so the investment's very much paid off for Lachlan overtime.
Speaker 1: Lachlan actually left the family business in two thousand and
Speaker 1: five and he went off on his own and he
Speaker 1: set up an investment firm and lived in Sydney for
Speaker 1: quite some years.
Speaker 2: So the early part of Lochlan Murdoch's career had many
Speaker 2: kind of inflection points. Interestingly, it overlapped quite a bit
Speaker 2: with James Packer, who, as you said, is the son
Speaker 2: of another media mogul, But it really was defined by
Speaker 2: Lachlan Murdock emerging from his father's shadow and trying to
Speaker 2: get out there and propel the business forward. You said
Speaker 2: he left the company in two thousand and five. What
Speaker 2: brought him back to.
Speaker 1: It, Well, he came back in twenty fourteen, I think,
Speaker 1: at a time where the Murdocks were in a bit
Speaker 1: of strife. So his brother James was overseeing the UK
Speaker 1: arm of the Murdoch media business was called News International
Speaker 1: at the time, it's now News UK. And that's when
Speaker 1: the whole News of the World scandal broke out. For
Speaker 1: anyone who's unfamiliar with that, that's when the News of
Speaker 1: the World, an old tabloid newspaper, was found to be
Speaker 1: hacking the phones of certain celebrities and then also some
Speaker 1: victims of crime. So there was a really really horrific
Speaker 1: case involving a girl who had disappeared and who later
Speaker 1: was found had been murdered. The journalists had managed to
Speaker 1: hack hto her phone and so it was a massive story.
Speaker 1: The Murdocks actually had to front to parliamentary inquiry in
Speaker 1: the UK and that was really pinned on James, and
Speaker 1: so that's when we get Lachlan coming back into the fold.
Speaker 1: Because Rupert was looking at the job that James was doing.
Speaker 1: Things were sort of not going too well. And then
Speaker 1: Lachlan makes a great return and the two brothers become
Speaker 1: co chairs of the entertainment b Meth twenty first Century five.
Speaker 1: So they co chaired the company until twenty nineteen before
Speaker 1: it was sold to Disney. And so this is where
Speaker 1: things get a bit interesting and the brothers really diverge
Speaker 1: in their parts because Lachlan had a really significant rise
Speaker 1: through the ranks of the Murdoch family business through Fox,
Speaker 1: and it culminated last year when Rupert announced that he
Speaker 1: was stepping down as the chair of the main two companies,
Speaker 1: so that's Fox Corp. And News Corp, and that he'd
Speaker 1: be replaced by Lachlan. But what happened to James, you
Speaker 1: might ask. He stepped away from the family business in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and he cited some issues that he was having.
Speaker 1: He didn't go into the details of why. But since
Speaker 1: then he's made a pretty startling move from Murdoch, which
Speaker 1: was he criticized the media coverage of the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: US election. Now he didn't specifically speak about his dad
Speaker 1: or Lachlan. He didn't name them, but he did say
Speaker 1: that the media was responsible for platforming some views spread
Speaker 1: by former President Donald Trump after he lost to Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: saying that the election was reached that there had been
Speaker 1: voter fraud. So James was very critical of the way
Speaker 1: that the media had handled those allegations. Fox News actually
Speaker 1: ended up having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: to settle defamation claims after allowing some of Trump's supporters
Speaker 1: to spread false claims of election interference and fraud, and
Speaker 1: James's criticism really didn't go down too well. He reportedly
Speaker 1: was iced out by the rest of the family after that.
Speaker 2: And I think this goes to why it's so fascinating,
Speaker 2: because we are talking about really competing ideologies here. You know,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, we have James Murdoch, who has
Speaker 2: criticized the way that platforms like Fox News dealt with
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election result. And on the other hand
Speaker 2: we have Lachlan who we know mirrors if not is
Speaker 2: sits to the right of his And so with this
Speaker 2: succession plan, we have the kind of possible future direction
Speaker 2: and political leaning and ideological leaning that comes with it.
Speaker 2: So can you go into a bit of that, like
Speaker 2: why is it so important to be talking about this?
Speaker 1: Well, you touched on some of the reasons why they're
Speaker 1: but I think it is important to note that when
Speaker 1: we talk about the Murdocks, sometimes the news and the
Speaker 1: news industry more broadly gets a little bit obsessed with
Speaker 1: itself and speaks a bit inwardly. But we've got to
Speaker 1: remember news is how we make sense of the world
Speaker 1: and what's going on around us. And when you have
Speaker 1: a family that controls such a vast portion of the
Speaker 1: news media industry, then they are going to shape how
Speaker 1: people millions of people are making sense of life around them.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I think the influence of the
Speaker 1: Murdocks can't really be overstated. There's a hugely consequential election
Speaker 1: happening later this year in the US. I don't have
Speaker 1: to tell you that, Zara.
Speaker 3: Because we've spoken about podcasts on exactly, but it is
Speaker 3: so important how that's going to play out, the outcome
Speaker 3: of that election, what happens afterwards.
Speaker 1: We saw what happened on January sixth, after the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election loss for Donald Trump, so the news and
Speaker 1: the media have such a huge role to play in
Speaker 1: that space, and so whoever becomes the new Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: effectively is going to have such a vast control and
Speaker 1: decision making power that we probably could never quite imagine
Speaker 1: for ourselves. So when we think about who Lochlan Murdock
Speaker 1: is and how powerful he could become, it's just so
Speaker 1: interesting to think that we actually really don't know that
Speaker 1: much about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Harry, I want to end with a question for you.
Speaker 2: We have spoken at length in this podcast about how
Speaker 2: important Rupert Murdock is and by extension, how important his
Speaker 2: children are. Do you think that their influence is waning
Speaker 2: at all as we see this decentralization of media across the.
Speaker 1: World thanks to a little thing called social media. I
Speaker 1: would say that legacy news definitely doesn't quite have the
Speaker 1: power and reach that it once did. But news organizations
Speaker 1: are on these platforms as well, and they do have
Speaker 1: the capacity to shape the narrative, so to speak, and
Speaker 1: they also have a responsibility to tell the truth and
Speaker 1: to find the truth. And that sounds very lofty, but
Speaker 1: it's a really important part of democracy, it's a really
Speaker 1: important part of society and behind those courtroom doors in
Speaker 1: Nevada where there's no media because they can't have any
Speaker 1: access to what's going on. The fate of the biggest
Speaker 1: news and media business in the English speaking world is
Speaker 1: hanging in the balance.
Speaker 2: Harry will certainly be keeping a close eye on this one.
Speaker 2: Thank you for ex and breaking down all the family
Speaker 2: politics and brought her politics when it comes to this story.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Oas.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from you. If you had
Speaker 2: any thoughts about this story. Who do you think should
Speaker 2: be the successor to Rupert Murdock? You can leave a
Speaker 2: comment on Spotify. There's a little question box and we
Speaker 2: look forward to reading your answers. We'll be back again tomorrow,
Speaker 2: but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcoton woman from Gadighl Country.
Speaker 3: The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 3: the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
Speaker 3: all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 1: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 1: both past and present,