Today, Explained - How Rupert Murdoch remade the world

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Murdoch started his media empire in Australia, sharpened his playbook in the UK, and became one of the most powerful people in the world once he came to the United States. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen with help from Denise Guerra, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Rupert Murdoch with some of his newspapers and magazines, at the offices of the New York Post in 1985. Photo by Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lot happened this month. Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel, James Comey. Easy to miss a resolution in the epic legal fight between the Murdox. But their family drama matters because we've got a Fox News Secretary of Defense, Fox News Secretary of Transportation, Fox News Secretary of Janine Piro, our Fox News presidency is the crowning achievement of 94-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch. in Australia. If you say Rupert, if you mention the name Rupert, people know who you're talking about. He has been one of the most important kind of media owners, not only for what he owns,

but also for the way he's used it. He has had this fascinating, but for many people, poisonous impact on political discourse, on politics more generally. How Rupert Murdoch remade the world on Today Explain. Support of the show, and it comes from The Guardian. If you listen to our show, my guess is that you value independent voices and perspectives on the news. You want real reporting on real stories, and you don't want to wonder if the news you're getting is being skewed by an unseen hand. The Guardian says they're fiercely independent, too. They aspire to report the whole picture, and their coverage goes beyond the news.

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Learn more at Amex.ca. Do you like the feeling of power you have as a newspaper proprietor, of being able to sort of formulate policies for a lot of number of newspapers in every state of Australia? Well, there's only one hundred times of that, of course, and that's yes. Of course one enjoys the feeling of power. I think Rupert is a very good and tough businessman. We've only seen one side of Mr Murdoch at the present moment. We won't stand people like him. We don't like people like him.

He's too powerful, he's got too much money. People like him, spit on people like us. Treat us like the kickers. Is Rupert Murdoch a nepo baby? Murdoch is absolutely a nepo baby. If the term nepo baby was in existence in 1931, yes, he is a nepo baby. My name is Des Friedman, and I am a professional. Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmith's University of London.

My name is Matthew Rickardson and I'm a Professor of Communication at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. One of our former Prime Ministers, Malcolm Turnbull, who tangled with Rupert Murdoch, has described him as Australia's deadliest export. His whole presentation is of this kind of scruffy, rebellious outsider figure, shaking his fist at the establishment and the elites. The reality is that when he was born in 1931, his father was the managing director of a big newspaper group in Australia. They lived in possibly the wealthiest suburb in Melbourne, in Australia, went to Oxford University, and then his father dies in 1952 and leaves him one afternoon newspaper in Adelaide,

which is another city here in Australia. His father, Keith, really pioneered tabloid journalism in Australia. My name is Graham Murdoch. No relation. And I'm an emeritus professor at the University of Loughborough in the UK. Keith Murdoch realized that newspapers had the power to bring down politicians. So Rupert inherited not just newspapers, but actually a whole kind of philosophy, if he like, of what newspapers could do and how to, how to, how.

they operated. He's very clear from very early on that he wants to learn everything about running newspapers and then very quickly from about 1954 he starts expanding. And he always had the reputation for being quite ruthless. He was trying to get a deal done and this politician was being obstructive. So he said to him, look, I could. I can either give you favourable publicity or I can pour a bucket of shit on you every day. What's it to be? Not surprisingly, the politician decided

he'd rather have the favourable publicity. It's kind of illustrative of the sort of idea that you can make and break reputations. And that was really part of the sort of family philosophy. The main ambition was to make his father proud and to do better than his father, to internationalise the father's operation and he was willing to throw everything at it to get there.

He moves into England in the late 1960s. When he came to Britain, he bought the News of the World, which was this, you know, humongous best-selling Sunday tabloid, a huge commercial success. Murdoch took over the news of the world in January. Since then, its circulation has risen by more than half a million. This old family business, just off Fleet Street, is now his power base in the newspaper world. Was it buying into the news of the world your own idea, or was it suggested from someone else?

It was entirely my own idea. It had printing presses, but they weren't used for most of the week, which was un-economical. So he began looking around for a daily title, and he fixed on the sun. which at that point is an ailing newspaper and he turbocharges that. Murdoch's plans for the sun are still uncertain. It seems that it'll be a spicier version of the Daily Mirror. Depends what you call by spice and sex and salaciousness.

We're obviously not going to avoid the subject. But it's not going to be a dirty paper, of course not. He immediately converted it into a tabloid, became famous for having these semi-nude, mortals. Topless women on page three. Tabloid newspapers have been sensational for a long time. And for him, that is the key message. That's, you know, those kinds of stories will drive circulation. The most famous or infamous example of this some years later is when he publishes the fake diaries of Adolf Hitler. He's advised these diaries are fake by a historian.

He famously says, fucking publish. Fucking publish. And he's, you know, he's questioned about that. His answer is twofold, which, well, first is, well, remember we're in the entertainment business. And, you know, I'll take the additional hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation that we got from this. The Sun, it became enormously popular, enormously influential,

both through the size of its audience and through its ability to shape politics. His rise in the UK coincides with the rise of Margaret Thatcher. And they share a kind of notion they're both outsiders. She's a grossest daughter from a provincial town, not part of the old English establishment. And the old English establishment also very hostile to Rupert. But that becomes an advantage because with Thatcher, he finds a kind of a fellow traveler. They share a kind of neoliberal sort of philosophy of free markets and antagonism to public ownership.

And I mean, Murdoch's papers were very much in support of that, Thatcher agenda. He already owns two of the most popular newspapers, and he wants to buy more. An opportunity comes up to buy the Times and the Sunday Times. And under the law at the time, there's a requirement. and that this matter is referred off to the Monopoly's and Mergers Commission. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, she ensures that that doesn't happen so that he is able to buy the Times and the Sunday Time. The classic kind of paper of record in the UK

because he wanted to have that entree into the elite. He wants the prestige, he wants the power and he wants the audiences. If you look at Rupert's career, he's always had the popular newspaper that can address, you know, the masses. But you also have an elite newspaper. So you're speaking to the insiders, but you're also speaking to the mass of the people. That's what gives him his influence, that he can pull the strings at both levels, if you like, yeah. Mr Murdoch, we've called this program, who's afraid of Rupert Murdoch. And it seems that many people are afraid, principally because they can't.

believe that you won't interfere and alter the character of the newspapers you've bought the Sunday Times and the Times. What do you say to that? Well, I certainly didn't buy them to change them, and I certainly have the right to insist on excellence. It was alleged that in the Australian election, when Fraser beat Whitlam, your papers actually distorted the news in favor of your candidate. In both occasions, you had industrial trouble. We, in fact, had trouble with a number of left-wing journalists because we took their distortions out of their stories.

We were not the only newspaper saying that the government should change. The Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory. When Margaret Thatcher and her government

launched the war in the Falklands, Murdoch's newspapers give a lot of editorial support for that. Gotcha! Our lads sing gumbo and hole cruiser! Headline, the sun. Maggie sends in the troops Headline, The Sun.

The paper that supports our boys. This was central to cementing the relationship to Murdoch and Thatcher. If you were asked to name the two key people who reshaped Britain in this more neoliberal vein in the 1980s, it'd be hard to think of to other people,

Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch. These stories you're telling us about Rupert time in the UK, in the 70s, and the 80s, they establish, I think, three major themes. One, a ruthlessness, a willingness for a newsman to lie if it sells more papers or does good business. And then three, you know, not just a desire to inform the public about politics, but to drive politics himself. That's just a good summary.

And you can see the fruits of this, if you like, the bitter fruits of this. Decades later, in the form of the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom in the kind of mid-2000s. The newspapers were declining in revenues and readership. So that kind of forced them to be even more militant in looking for sensation. Newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, that is mostly the sun and the news of the in the world, hacked into the phones of members of the royal family, celebrities, but also, and this is crucial, also ordinary people, not famous people. It's discovered that they've hacked the phone of this dead teenage girl, Millie Dowler.

The face of Rupert Murdoch, after he apologised, privately and publicly to the family of Millie Dowler. I was appalled to find out what had happened. And I apologize and I have nothing for this. People are revolted. It creates a huge public reaction. Get it on you! In the view of the majority of committee members, Rupert Murdoch is not fit to run an international company like B-Sky-B.

You know, the Murdox could not control the revulsion. They could not kind of put a lid on it. they were forced to do something that Murdoch has almost never done in his career which is to close a newspaper. He closed the news of the world instantly. It folded overnight. And then of course an official government commission of inquiry.

Murdoch sat down in front of a parliamentary committee. He looked old. It was an amazing performance. He forgot all the details when they were put to him and he said, I would just like to say one sentence, This is the most humble day of my life. Pretty soon after that, once he got out of the committee room,

he magically regained his memory and regained his posture and his poise. And of course he has gone on to live his life in full. Rupert, he's undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the media, certainly in the last 50 years. not only for what he owns, but also for the way he's used it. Australia was the training ground. The UK was where he could really find his feet and wield political power.

Many, many millions of newspapers sold every day, which gives him the capital, but also the influence. All of those lessons are to be applied in the US and ultimately the rest of the globe. Rupert Murdoch in America. when today explained returns. Support for the show today comes from ethos. Here's the thing about insurance.

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Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes, but what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of channels. And that was James Panowoc, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free story. speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now. That's this week on channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

How does everyone know what everyone knows? It's a state sometimes called pluralistic ignorance or a spiral of silence, where everyone mistakenly thinks that everyone else believes something, and no one actually believes it. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, cognitive psychologist, Stephen Pinker, joins me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet, to discuss his latest book. It's called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. We discuss what common knowledge can teach us about collective behavior.

The episode is out now. Search and follow, stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. What does the fuck say? Do you, do, do, do, do, do, do explained. Rupert Murdoch's first foray in today. the American media isn't on TV. It's not in New York. It's in San Antonio, Texas, of all places.

Well, I mean, yeah, but then it very quickly moved to New York. Start spreading in the new. So he bought the New York Post in mid-1970s to establish a base. He gets access to all sorts of, at the political level, gets access to heavy hitters in the commercial world, in the political world, in the cultural world. You know, the New York Post historically had backed Democrats. When he buys the New York Post, they campaign vigorously for Reagan's, Reagan to become the president.

Bones run hot after big debate. Reagan wins TV poll 2 to 1, the New York Post. He is in sync with Ronald Reagan ideologically and with the sort of Republican Party values. You know, it's a big city, but it's a narrow elite. relationship with Murdoch does go back to the 1980s and to the New York Post. Murdoch had a very low opinion of him. This is a man who lost money running a casino. But good gossip column is another one of Murdoch's, you know, must-haves in his formula for newspaper success. Page 6 is most definitely a very successful gossip column.

Trump is one of its key sources, you know, they kind of have that symbiotic relationship where they're constantly pumping him up and he's constantly. feeding them stories because he's a bit of a gossip magnate himself. Marla boasts to her pals about Donald, quote, best sex I've ever had. The brashness of Trump is very different to the much more considered, strategic, studious, long-term thinking of Murdoch.

It is not like it's an immediate marriage. But he realizes pretty quickly that he can make a lot more money in television. And that's when, you know, he buys 50% of 20th century Fox, and that's the beginning of the Fox network, of the legacy we are now very familiar with. He is the guy whose company bankrolled. The Simpsons, ideologically,

is not the kind of thing you might think would sit that easily with a small-sea conservative like Rupert Murdoch. He has made several cameo appearances where he was introduced as... River Murdoch, the billionaire town. He's willing to take a hit for the greater good of the company. You know, this is a man who will do anything to increase the ratings and the audiences.

The billionaire town. He's also buying up film studios. With Titanic as a movie that his studio financed, it could have ruined him, the gamble that he took on Titanic, and instead it made him. Was it over a billion dollars that Titanic took? He's got those mediums which make a lot more money,

and he's also doing similar things in Australia and in the UK. He develops a global media empire is what he does. But I think his ambition is always to come back to news. The Simpsons doesn't get you into the White House or the front or the back door of No. 10 Downing Street. being a news mogul does. The other piece of the puzzle in helping him develop in America

is the regulatory environment. There was this thing called the Fairness Doctrine which came up after the Second World War. What that said was that if you were going to cover contentious affairs on television, you had to present both sides of the story. Reagan was all about deregulation, getting rid of as much regulation as you can,

So the Fairness Doctrine goes, and that, what happens then is that unleashes or unlocks the door for the rise of people like Rush Limbaugh. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives and right-minded Republicans and those who are... You know, the idea of balance and Rush Limbaugh don't exist in the same sentence, you know? If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians. It opened the space for overtly partisan television because you didn't have any longer to give the other side of the story. Roger Ailes, who was the key founding person for Fox News and Murdoch and Ailes,

they look at what the success that Rush Limbaugh is having and they look to see if they can transplant that into television. And that opened the space for Fox News. By this stage, in terms of cable news, you've got CNN, which began in about 1980. We're going to report the news, whether it's Afghanistan or Botswana or Moscow or whatever. Ailes and Murdoch, they realize that instead of having lots and lots of correspondence everywhere, they'll have the bare bones. You know, you'll do the reporting of the news, but it won't be a lavish suite of foreign correspondence. it's much, much cheaper, and you will bring in guys primarily from radio like, you know,

Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and so on, to provide opinions about the news, you know, what it means, how to think about it, et cetera. The number that really scares me, African Americans on food stamps, is up by 58%. I don't know they need to rethink ludicrous. All of corporate America, in my opinion, needs to rethink their. responsibility to their country. And so you put those people on in the evening, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and they bloviate on demand.

You know, they don't just have opinions, they have big opinions and theatrical opinions. Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We are all doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent and you're going to all die, all of you. At least that's what the media mob and the Democratic Extreme Radical Socialist Party would like you to think. Tabloidisation, that's what

is applied to Fox News. It changes the media landscape in the sense that the predominant thing being, tell me what to think about the news, make me angry or upset or whatever about the news. It's an enormously profitable business. You know, you've ceased

being a news or journalism outfit at that point and you have become something quite different, which bears a much closer relationship with propaganda. Murdoch has always run his media empire in, you know, different parts of it, work with different parts of an audience, the upmarket, respected newspapers versus the downmarket ones. The Wall Street Journal was on Rupert Murdoch's radar for a long time. This was a newspaper that was unbuyable for him,

that the family who owned it said, not in a million years will we sell to a man like Rupert Murdoch. And yet, within a matter of months, they had sold to Rupert Murdoch. And when your Rupert, and you have both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Again, it positions you in such a, you know, you have that powerful role who is really going to go against you. Do you think Rupert Murdoch surpassed his own expectations? Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Look, who knows? I'm not in his head, so I don't know.

but if he could have looked into the crystal ball and seen himself from 195 to 2025, I think it's very hard for him to, would have been very hard for him to conceive of being where he is now. He certainly transformed the British media, the Australian media and the US media. He has had this fascinating,

but for many people, poisonous impact on political discourse, on politics more general. Democrats have finally realized what cost them the election in 2024, and the answer is being a-hole. Are you legal or illegal? You're illegal? Yeah. Welcome to America.

Thank you. You can stay. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. For now. Now you can see how much damage the company has done to journalism, to democracy. It's like Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

You know, they've created a monster, which is a monster, which is. now gotten away from them. And there's actually two monsters. The first monster is the Fox News audience, and the second monster is Donald Trump. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and the fight for the future of Fox News tomorrow on Today Explained. Our show today was produced by Peter Ballan, on Rosen. He had help from Jolie Myers, Denise Guerra, Laura Bullard, Patrick Boyd, Adrian Lilly, and Sean Ramos from him. That's me. Thanks to our guests, Des Freedman from Goldsmiths University of London, Graham Murdoch from the University of Lough, also in England, and Matthew

Rickettson from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.