Today, Explained - Rupert Murdoch presents: Succession

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Murdoch has built a media empire that leads all the way to the White House. But nothing lasts forever. And at age 94, he finally has an official successor. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen and 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 his son Lachlan. Photo by Drew Angerer/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

Did you watch Succession on HBO? I loved that show. I would tell friends to watch it, but a lot of them would say, you know, I tried, but I hated all the characters. The funny thing about that, of course, is that Succession is loosely based on a real family. The kids fighting over who gets control of Daddy's Empire, those are the Murdoch children, the older Murdoch children, the unyielding Mercurial patriarch who built an empire that none of his children truly deserve. That's Rupert Murdoch, of course. You'll remember Rupert from our show yesterday.

We talked about his humble rise from Australian media nepo baby to global media mogul. On today, explain from Vox, the chickens come home to roost. Or the children come home to fight over Fox? Or Rupert realizes he can't quite control the monsters he's made. Let's go with D, all of the above. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded,

so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you, like T-time U. Or this T-time U, or even this T-time U. Said you hear about Dave? Or even T-time, T-time, T-time, T-time U. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse.

be great. From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes? I keep waiting for this moment when he says, Mom, I get it. I'm sorry. Bigger dreams. Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance. And bigger heartbreaks. I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear. I've always been in love with you. Check out new episodes of heavyweight on Apple Podcasts. A media analyst quoted earlier this year in the New York Times, quote, Rupert has his mojo back.

We have a lot of experience in producing newspapers, no longer feeling about where they fit in the society. They do. undoubtedly still carry a lot of influence. I think probably not as much influence as politicians. When Rupert is in a class by himself, he's an amazing guy, and guys and guys and guys and guys and guys. The one thing Murdoch has always wanted and never gotten was a bat phone in the White House,

similar to what he has at 10 Downing Street, similar to what he typically had in Canberra in the Prime Minister's office in Australia. he wanted a bat phone. And with Donald Trump, he got it. His relationship with Murdoch media starts, certainly years and years before he ever runs for president. Donald Trump's obviously a creature of New York

and has a long history planting stories with the New York Post. A source for a lot of their gossip reporting and often a source for their gossip about himself. Because he's a bit of a gossip magnate himself. Marla boasts to her pals about Donald, quote, best sex I've ever had. Trump himself was the source for that. And he was a fixture on Fox and Friends.

I'm Donald Trump, and you're watching Fox and Friends. And if you turn the channel, you're fired. He used to have that weekly segment where he would call in and opine on everything under the sun. Donald, are you going to be doing that anytime soon? Well, I'm not so sure. It doesn't look too good to me. I was talking about going shirtless. Well, shirtless I love, right?

Shirtless I love. All right. Let's talk about Gaspers. Can we move on now? Ben Rupert just has kind of an amused contempt for it. He thinks this is not a serious person. My name is Oliver Darcy. I'm the founder and lead author of Status, which is a nightly newsletter covering the media industry.

My name's Dave Fulkin Flick. I am the media correspondent for NPR News. I'm also relevant to this conversation, the author of Murdoch's World, the last of the old media empires. As Donald Trump became a more serious candidate in the 2016 election, you certainly saw Rupert Murdoch's media empire start to scrutinize him more seriously. Fox being Fox gets the first Republican debate, August of 2015. Megan Kelly, who was an anchor at Fox News at the time,

she asks Donald Trump about some of his previous statements. You've called women you don't like fat pigs. dogs, slabs, and disgusting animals. Donald Trump does not like it. Honestly, Megan, if you don't like it, I'm sorry. I've been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me,

but I wouldn't do that. He makes this debate about his debate with this woman person representing the news industry, even though it's Fox, a friendly outlet, and it changes the nature of the debate. Donald Trump retaliates against Fox News, and it leads to this conflict

between Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. You know, you can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. Rupert Murdoch likes being in Trump's good graces because it's good for ratings, it's good for business, it's good for his bottom line. And Donald Trump likes to be in the good graces of Fox because it's his most powerful megaphone.

And he knows that a lot of people watch that channel, a lot of his base watches that channel, and it's much better for Fox News to be in his corner than to be scrutinizing his actions. Ultimately, they move past it. Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump, they both realize that a symbiotic relationship is best for both of them. Basically, Trump lit their ratings on fire. Trump is amazing television. So they are running pretty much everything he says live because they're so desperate not to miss anything he has to say or that.

people will turn elsewhere to wait for him. But I'm sure Murdoch never thought Donald Trump would actually succeed in winning out in that GOP primary field and then becoming president. Then he runs to the front of the line and pretends he was leading the parade all along. That's what Rupert Murdoch does. The president of the United States, my friend Donald J. Trump. Rupert Murdoch speaks with the president several times a week. Fox News in Donald Trump's first term, unquestionably, becomes a problem.

propaganda mouthpiece for Donald Trump. Trump's policies are working for African Americans, and the results are now beginning to come in. 20-year-old NAFTA deal, it would not be renegotiated right now, if not for Donald Trump. And they also know that he's not a fascist, he's not a racist, he's not a bigot. I think you almost see something that you have never seen in American politics, which is there is a channel on the air that is 100% committed to pumping propaganda on behalf of. half of the president out to the masses in a way that's just unprecedented. So Trump is delighted that Murdoch is sucking up to him. Largely speaking, these two are in tandem about messaging up until election night in 2020.

The Fox News Decision Desicions Desk is calling Arizona for Joe Biden. That is a big get for the Biden campaign. Are you 100% sure of that call and when you're not? made it, and why did you make it? Absolutely. We made it after basically a half hour of debating. Is it time yet? And that sets Donald Trump totally off. This was a blow because he's being repudiated and declared to having lost, having lost, not just by a television station publicly, but by the one he expects to be in his quarter. In real time, Donald Trump and his camp are calling Fox News, calling the Murdox, demanding that they retract the call, and Fox News stands firm. Trump starts a

attacking Fox and starts pointing people to watch Newsmax and even farther, right, O-A-N. And he's saying, you know, Fox is betraying you and betraying me. Fox is moving more and more to the losing wrong side in covering the Dems. They got dumped from the Democrats' boring debates, and they just won in. They forgot the people. Millions of viewers bleed away. They just disappear. And panic just consumes the top.

the top executives, the top talent, they are watching their ratings collapse, and they are wondering how they can turn this around. And what you see is Fox News immediately do its best to win back its audience by putting its opinion talking heads, the people like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, out front and center. They don't really seem to care about the risks of fraud and those possibilities. Some completely deny the fraud even exists. And by the way, they are once again lying to you the American people.

I love these legal challenges because we have to get to the bottom of all this and expose fraud where it occurred. And simultaneously, they soften their coverage immensely on Donald Trump. Well, they don't like the truth. Well, what can you do about? I talked about a rigged election, which it was 100% rigged. I mean, look at what happened in Wisconsin. As of tonight, tens of millions of Americans suspect this election was stolen from them. That means we now live in a country where a large percentage of our population no longer believes that our democracy is real.

You know, Murdoch is clearly aware of what's going on, has no illusions about whether Biden won. You know, Fox's line that they settle on is, hey, the President of United States is saying that there's fraud. It's newsworthy. It's inherently newsworthy. He's the most newsworthy person. in the country and the planet, and he's making claims about our constitutional system and the electoral process. We have to air that, and we have to acknowledge that in our reporting.

And some of the personalities like Maria Barteramo really embrace these conspiracy theories. And at the time, behind the scenes, top executives allowed them to take hold on their airwaves. Sydney, we talked about the Dominion software. know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that. Let's put it mildly. Dominion voting is now suing Fox for defamation over the cable channels what they describe as bogus allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Court records unsealed Monday showed that Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged under oath that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. On the eve of trial, right before the trial starts, right before Rupert Murdoch has to testify in open court, they settle for $7.5 million. Okay, so Fox News went hard on election denialism, the big lie. They had to pay out a ton of money, almost $800 million for doing so. They fired Tucker Carlson. It feels like a turning point for the network, but now Trump's president. again, and he's littered his cabinet with Fox News talking heads. Oh, he loves him something about, you know, people who appeared on TV, and he loves him when they look the part.

These are central casting. If I'm doing a movie, I pick you, General. In terms of his relationship with Rupert Murdoch, it has been at once very strong and strained. You know, cutting the Murdox in seemingly to ownership of TikTok, giving them an entree into social and new media for this legacy media company of Fox Corp. You know, Trump is also suing Murdoch, directed. You know, he sued the Wall Street Journal and Rupert himself for $10 billion for their reporting that he had sent a letter two decades ago to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday that was, you know, fairly sexually suggestive. Donald Trump in many ways is an outgrowth of the media environment that Rupert Murdoch shepherded into reality, right? He is someone who just took it to the nth degree that no one else had been willing to go before. But Rupert Murdoch should know that he is the one that created the structure that allowed Donald Trump to become who he is.

In Rupert Murdoch, he does not like Donald Trump's antics. Rupert Murdoch is not someone who is going to be a Maga stand. But Rupert Murdoch is also a very conservative man. And so he wants to make sure that his media empire, his conservative right-wing media empire, that he has spent his entire lifetime building, does not slip away into his liberal sons or liberal children's hands. You know, in 94 years old, he's certainly thinking about his legacy and how to secure it. Rupert Murdoch presents Succession on today explained momentarily. our late-night TV shows, like Jimmy Kimmel's show, still on TV. 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 Ponozozic, the TV, critic for the New York Times. This week we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV

format that's remained surprisingly durable for now. That's this week on channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Hey there, I'm David Pierce, and I'm going to tell you about our new show. It's called version history, and on it every week, we get together to remember the best, the worst, the weirdest, and the most important technology in history. So if you were the person in your friend group who how to Zoom instead of an iPod, or if you've ever fallen off of a hoverboard, or if you just still have a bunch of vines on repeat in your brain, you're going to love this show. We're launching in video on YouTube and in audio wherever you get podcasts. That's version history.

Check it out starting Sunday, October 5th, and every Sunday after that, see you there. It's been more than five years since President Donald Trump said that we were either going to ban or sell TikTok. And now, more than five years later, it seems there might actually be a TikTok deal. Sort of, potentially, maybe. This week on The Vergecast, we go into all of the things happening with TikTok

and how TikTok is almost inevitably going to become something very different in its next phase. That, plus what YouTube and Instagram are trying to do to copy TikTok, and lots more on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. What's up? Where does the drama between Rupert Murdoch's white children begin? I think the best way to say this is that it becomes clear to Rupert that if he should die,

there is a very decent chance that the more liberal children might take control of his media empire. And if that were to happen, he fears that they would destroy it by moderating the news outlets, particularly Fox News. And he does not like this idea. He said it's important that our properties remain conservative for the better of the country, but also for the financial fortunes of our holdings. So James Murdoch initially was seen as the successor to Rupert Murdoch. Second son James, who had been a very good broadcast executive and satellite TV executive. So he elevates James, and James by and large, does really well until the tabloid hacking scandal. James Murdoch, who just a few years ago was very much at the center of the phone hacking scandal in Britain.

In response, Rupert Murdoch shut his beloved News of the World newspaper. He even got a pie in the face by a protester when he and son James were hauled before a parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking. Rupert brings Lachlan back. The eldest boy. I'm the eldest boy. It says, come on, I need you by my side. Lachlan had basically taken off for Australia in the early 2000s because he thought his dad wasn't sticking up enough for him,

that he wasn't protecting him when Roger Ailes and other top executives were kind of sticking it to him repeatedly behind his back. And Murdoch said, hey, if you can't swim in the deep end, then you don't deserve to run the company. Lachlan Murdoch does come back. And he then basically puts Lachlan and James in power together, setting them against each other, the most uneasy, publicly uneasy partnership you could imagine.

All right, media mogul Rupert Murdoch is preparing to step down as chief executive of 21st Century Fox, leaving his youngest son, James, to take over. Lachlan Murdoch, the other son of Rupert Murdoch, will move from Sydney to Los Angeles, where he'll become executive chairman. James and Lachlan Murdoch are expected to run the company as partners, even though James has the CEO title. Murdoch really pitted James and Lachlan against each other from the outset. And that's kind of brutal.

That was not necessary. They are first and foremost competitors. And this just over the next decade just sours, the point where, you know, James speaks out against what the News Corp newspapers are doing on climate change, on immigration, on particularly January 6th in the 2020 elections. He walks away from the companies. James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of News Corp. He cited disagreements over editorial content at the company, which was founded by his conservative father. When he resigned from the News Corporation board, he blasted Fox. My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.

Sincerely, James R. Murdoch. He's accused the media empire of misinformation and of poisoning the public discourse, and he has not been shy about it. As I've said in the past, and on the record, there's plenty of stuff on Fox News that I disagree with. Do you think there's ever a future

in which you would go back to Fox? I don't think so. I think they're off doing their own thing there. And so, Lachlan Murdoch becomes chief executive officer of Fox Corporation, which is obviously the parent company to Fox News, and also News Corporation, which is the publishing arm that owns outlets like the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. And it becomes clear that he is going to be Rupert's

preferred son, his chosen son. In part because Lachlan is more cast in his image and in part because Lachlan shares his ideological outlook. But there is this family trust where each of the siblings has an equal vote. The trust designed 25 years ago put the conglomerate, which owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and several international outlets in the hands of all of Murdoch's four oldest children. Murdoch explaining this decision in a 2006 interview. If I go under a bus tomorrow, it'll be the four of them I'll have to decide which of the one should lead them. The Murdoch Family Trust is an asset protection trust that,

holds the voting chairs of Fox Corporation and News Corporation. The reason that there was this trust was that when he was with his second wife and a tour of Murdoch and left her, she was seemingly entitled to half of what he owned. But she asked for a lot less than that. She said, but in exchange, I want you to ensure that their three children and one daughter from his first marriage be treated equally in the trust and have equal voting shares and they will have to work out together how to lead. And that way nobody's screwed over.

And so Murdoch says, fine, I will do this. It'll be an irrevocable trust. And then he comes up through a couple years ago and says, I want to revocate it. Time and again, he has done this, where what he promises and what he writes down, he doesn't live up to. Murdoch tries to effectively oust his children from the trust. And this court case plays out. And ultimately, Rupert Murdoch does not win. and the children are going to stay as members of the trust.

But he was effectively able to buy the children out in a $3.3 billion deal. Rupert did not want James coming back with his sisters, or even one of his two sisters, in a four-person vote, and causing a stalemate as to what the direction of the company would be and causing a crack-up of it. Rupert wanted his legacy cemented. And so the kids each got... $1.1 billion.

In exchange for rewriting the trust that will see them seed control and see Rupert Murdoch be able to get what he wants, which is Lachlan Murdoch on the throne in his death. Rupert Murdoch, he doesn't know how to show love very well, aside from paying them off when they're upset. James doesn't speak to his father or his brother anymore. James Murdoch in particular has effectively been outcast from the family. There is a sort of winner-take-all mentality there. His two daughters, older daughters, decided to do this in part because they didn't want this clash and this resentment to define their last interactions with their father before his death. I think Lachlan certainly from an ideological perspective will make.

maintain his father's vision for Fox News and some of these other right-wing outlets, which is to be a counter in their eyes to what they would call the liberal mainstream media. And he wants to take this company further to the right. Lachlan is not Rupert. Lachlan is not the political animal. He's not got the same sensibilities and inclinations. He may not be quite as ruthless. Regardless of what you think about Rupert Murdoch, he is a strong,

businessman. And the question is whether Lachlan Murdoch can continue to make the business moves that is going to see Fox News and some of these other outlets live long into the future. To me, there's like a human tragedy to this. Like Rupert Murdoch never set his children up to sustain each other, to love each other, to support each other, to take pride in each other. He pitted them against each other. And I think that tells you in some ways something fundamental about who he is. And I think you can see that in some ways in his publications and in the kinds of ways in which they frame stories, that the things are always sort of competition and confrontation and collision. And he took us back to an age where news organizations were more nakedly

partisan and more interested in the exercise of the power of their owners than a news report that could be accepted by all sides. Rupert Murdoch's legacy will be leaving behind a world in which shared reality no longer exists and where a large portion, at least of the United States, believes in debunked conspiracy theories, believes in lies, has been trained to hate the other side, these are the narratives that Rupert Murdoch's empire have helped promote for years and years to a very large audience. When you see Donald Trump up at the White House podium, behaving, frankly, like a manman, trying to control speech, acting like an autocrat wannabe, that is a direct result of

the way Rupert Murdoch treated him, but also the media reality that Rupert Murdoch. gave birth to. It's Rupert's World, and we just live in it. Thanks to David Fulkenflick from NPR.org and Oliver Darcy from status. Dot news. Thanks to Peter Balin-Rosen for making our show today with Denise Guerra. Thanks to Jolie Myers for editing with help on facts from Laura Bullard.

Thanks to Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly for mixing. And thank you for listening. I'm Sean Ramos for him. this is today explained from Vox. You can become a Vox member at Vox.com slash members, easy enough. To further entice you, there's a deal right now in our membership.

You can support shows like this one we brought you today for 30% less than what you would usually pay. Plus, you won't have to listen to ads anymore. Easy enough, Vox.com slash members to join. Thank you.