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00:17Jim Rutenberg and I first started writing about the Murdochs more than 20 years ago.
00:24And you know I would say with some humility that I think we we have like gotten to know the
00:29family pretty well.
00:33One day out of the blue we get contacted by this mystery person.
00:39It's like you're gonna find this pretty interesting given what you do and who you cover.
00:46So we agreed to meet.
00:51All I can say is the way that we had to get that first document was pretty involved.
00:56Nothing was going to be given to us electronically because it's all so sensitive.
01:01So that meant meeting in secret locations, passing envelopes.
01:07Until finally we got our hands on these secret documents.
01:12We couldn't believe it. I mean it was jaw-dropping.
01:16This was thousands of pages. Emails, text messages.
01:21Every page was unbelievable.
01:27You're being lobbied by James and you're going to bend to his will.
01:31To this Liz responds, do you think I'm a fucking moron?
01:37The family was airing decades of dirty laundry in a Nevada court.
01:43That's when it first dawned on us that, oh my god, the Murdoch family is in a massive lawsuit against
01:48each other.
01:49Breaking news.
01:50According to the New York Times, 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch allegedly surprised three of his children by filing to
01:56change an irrevocable trust.
01:58It reads like an episode of Succession.
02:00Sacred proceedings of a legal battle.
02:02At issue who controls his right-leaning media empire.
02:05Joining me now is one of the reporters who broke this story.
02:07All right, Jim, why are the three siblings going up against Lachlan and Rupert?
02:13I just would say it's really why is Rupert going against the three siblings.
02:24After our story ran, everyone knew the family was suing each other over Rupert's desire to lock in Lachlan's control
02:32over the company.
02:34Good morning. Do you have any comment this morning?
02:37But then there was no more information available.
02:40The case was sealed.
02:42Do you have any comment?
02:43No one was really allowed to talk about it.
02:45And then we learned that all the Murdoch family members were going to actually testify against each other.
02:52The Murdochs were going to war in a pitched court fight over the future of the entire empire.
03:13In early 2024, before the New York Times piece came out,
03:20I approached James really just on a hunch that he would have an interesting story to tell.
03:27He couldn't quite believe that his father was willing to divide the family, maybe permanently.
03:35So when James was deposed as part of the preparation for the trial, he was really ready to go to
03:43battle.
03:45James had spent 20 years as a senior executive.
03:49He had been in depositions where you have to be really aggressive.
03:54And so he decided that he was going to approach the whole thing in a spirit of corporate combat.
04:01But the deposition was much more difficult for James emotionally than I think he was prepared for.
04:10When he walked into the boardroom, James saw that it wasn't just his father's lawyer and his lawyer,
04:18but sitting in this office was his father himself.
04:25James didn't know that Rupert would be there.
04:27This is the first time he had seen Rupert in years.
04:31They were fully estranged.
04:34His dad just sat down across from him.
04:38They didn't talk to each other.
04:40And for the next several hours, Rupert's lawyer just grilled James with incredibly witheringly personal questions.
04:52Questions like, have you ever accomplished anything on your own?
04:57Or, why don't you ever take responsibility for the things that go wrong in your life?
05:04Or, why were you too busy to call your dad on his 90th birthday?
05:10James told me that he tried to concentrate on the lawyer's questions, but he just kept looking over at his
05:17dad, who is staring inscrutably at his son.
05:20And every once in a while, Rupert would pick up his phone and tap something out.
05:27And eventually, James realized that these super aggressive, mean-spirited, personal questions were actually coming from his father.
05:41I remember talking to James weeks later, and he was still sort of reeling from the experience.
05:47He couldn't quite believe what had happened.
05:51He was constantly analyzing it and trying to make sense about why his dad did what he did.
05:58The question that kept coming back to him was, how do we let it come to this?
06:14If you look at the succession in 2011, James is in the box seat.
06:20The Binocular's been the strong challenger as they turn for home.
06:23The Binocular now strikes the...
06:24Elizabeth walked away from the company, and Lachlan's back in Australia.
06:29And Binocular, who's had this patchy season, win the champion hurdle!
06:34James is running News Corp in Britain.
06:36And their tabloids were making an absolute fortune.
06:40He sits atop what's now called News UK, their publishing empire in Great Britain.
06:46The four newspapers that they own, most importantly, the news of the world.
06:52They have a villainous reputation in Britain for down-market tabloids and conservative politics.
06:59One of Rupert's editors once gave a staff talk. He said, imagine the old man down the end of the
07:05bar.
07:06He doesn't like immigrants. He doesn't like poofs.
07:10He thinks that there's too much smut on TV. But he wants to see tits in the newspaper.
07:15That's who we're writing for.
07:17You're feasting on the missteps and embarrassments of celebrities.
07:22That's the news of the world.
07:24If you were a royal, if you were a politician, if you were some fancy actor, a sports star or
07:31a singer, you were fair game.
07:33The news of the world's duelling the crown of Rupert Murdoch's empire.
07:37Enormously profitable.
07:38Britain's biggest selling newspaper with an unrivalled reputation for journalistic scoops.
07:47I went to work for the news of the world because I liked its reputation.
07:53It was like the death star, the dark heart of the evil empire.
07:57And that emanated from the characters who ran it.
08:03Piers Morgan, who you might have heard of, was my first boss.
08:07One day, I turned up with a load of stolen photographs.
08:12Pictures of Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzegovar, Carla Bruni, all of them topless.
08:21I gave them to the picture editor and he said, well, you can't use these, they're stolen pictures.
08:26And Piers went, yeah, Barks to stick it in, good work.
08:31And on the basis of that, I got my staff job at the news for stealing, basically.
08:41One thing which is interesting about Rupert Murdoch and his corporate culture,
08:44is a sense that anything can be achieved by a force of will.
08:49And this is a really important characteristic of the people who worked for him.
08:54He needed people that would do whatever it took to continue his way of doing business.
09:00And at the news of the world, that was Rebecca Brooks.
09:05Rebecca Brooks was the features editor.
09:07Rebecca used to work as a secretary in the magazine.
09:11And Murdoch made her editor of the biggest newspaper in the world.
09:17Rebecca Brooks was sort of the daughter that Rupert never had,
09:22because she was unfailingly loyal to him.
09:26Elizabeth Murdoch hated her, but Murdoch loved her.
09:30Rebecca Brooks is an excellent example of a senior Rupert Murdoch executive.
09:37Moves at 800 miles an hour, knows all about newspapers, makes quick decisions, is resourceful.
09:43Quite hot, nice ass.
09:46She walked through the office, bits of paper just throwing them behind her,
09:50this is shit, this is shit.
09:52And the secretary's scurrying behind her, picking up the bits of paper.
09:56There was no moaning or excuses.
10:00It was get the story at any cost.
10:05Throughout the 2000s, the news of the world was going gangbusters.
10:09They were getting great scoops about celebrities, politicians, football stars.
10:15And every entity in the UK was trying to get to the bottom of, how are they doing that?
10:24The Murdoch organization at the news of the world was an organized crime group by any definition.
10:32Scores of people were involved, journalists and private detectives trading unlawful information.
10:38Give them back.
10:39They were spending millions of pounds a year on gathering it and it went on all over the world.
10:45It was called the Dark Arts.
10:48Where have you gone, Kate Hudson?
10:50Dark Arts are hiring private investigators, sitting in surveillance vans,
10:56getting their phone bills, medical records, bank records, flight details.
11:02Paris? Paris?
11:04And what that means is you can get to the story first.
11:08It gave Murdoch a competitive advantage against other newspapers and exclusive stories.
11:15Hello there.
11:19I had a contact who could give me stories on Prince Charles,
11:23who was having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.
11:25You know, she's the Queen now.
11:26I saw her new inside movements.
11:33I spent the last month of Diana's life just chasing around the world.
11:38I can see why Harry hates us.
11:41Sorry, Harry.
11:45Wherever you went,
11:47bang, out came a Pat.
11:50And you thought, how do they know where I am?
11:53I got sent to LA to follow Hugh Grant crawling for Black Hookers.
12:00So, what did Murdoch want us to do?
12:03Find the girl, give her $250,000 to tell us all about what Hugh Grant asked you to do in
12:13his car.
12:14All of the dirty details.
12:18I think I thought, well, this is all part of my punishment.
12:22But life at that time was extremely difficult because their power grew and grew and grew.
12:29I mean, you know, you could do anything as long as you didn't get caught.
12:33But it's important that the war is maintained so the Murdochs can't see how the sausage is made, even though
12:42they know how it's done.
12:43So there's plausible deniability on every level.
12:46That's really important in a Murdoch organisation.
12:52Technically, James is in charge of all of Murdoch's papers in Britain at the time.
12:56But he doesn't really care about newspapers that much.
13:00He was very much interested in tech.
13:02And he was making investments all over the place.
13:05I think he was trying to say, you know, this is not my daddy's old media company.
13:12B-Sky B, Britain's most lucrative satellite TV provider.
13:17News Corp is trying to buy the 60% of B-Sky B it doesn't already own.
13:23At that point, James is right on the cusp of getting this deal with B-Sky B,
13:28which would make a huge amount of money for them.
13:30B-Sky B is an incredibly powerful satellite television operation.
13:35And it will give the Murdochs a launch pad to control the media environment around the world.
13:42We're about to complete the merger of the three European Sky businesses,
13:46which, you know, creates something really new, a real 21st century digital television company.
13:53James sees that if he's able to bring B-Sky B into the fold, that will be his crowning achievement.
14:00But in order to be approved, you need to be quote unquote fit and proper,
14:05which means your newspapers are not doing things that are illegal or untoward.
14:11This requires an enormous amount of review by the British government.
14:15And it's James's job to get it across.
14:19James has managed to befriend and ingratiate himself with Jeremy Hunt, a key cabinet figure.
14:26And Rebecca Brooks is a close friend and confidant of the new prime minister, David Cameron.
14:33So everything seems aligned perfectly to go James's way.
14:40When a headline erupts in early July of 2011.
14:48Heenous and despicable.
14:49Shock and anger.
14:51Going much too far to get a story.
14:53New allegations against the news of the world.
14:55News of the world hacked into the...
14:57Voicemails of the families of murder victims.
14:59The murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler.
15:02Millie Dowler was a school girl who was abducted and murdered.
15:09And before she was...
15:11Before her body was found, the news of the world were hacking her phone.
15:20The way to hack someone's phone is to make sure they're asleep or engaged.
15:26You just ring them up on one phone, they answer it.
15:28Then you just dial again on the other one and get through to their messages.
15:31Please enter your security code.
15:33And the private investigator has given you the code.
15:35So you put the code in and you listen to their messages.
15:38When the voicemail became full, messages were deleted so that more could be left.
15:43A private detective working for the news of the world deleted some of those messages,
15:48giving her family the false hope that she might still be alive.
15:52I rang her phone.
15:53Yes.
15:54And it clicked through onto her voicemail.
15:57So I heard her voice.
15:58Yes.
15:58And I was, it was just like, she's, she's picked up her voicemails, Bob.
16:02She's alive.
16:03They made the parents think the girl was alive.
16:06It just was, who, who would do that?
16:10That's when I started calling him Uncle Satan.
16:12Boycott murder, boycott murder, boycott murder.
16:16There had been stories about celebrities getting hacked, but there's not as much
16:23sympathy for the victims of those stories because these are wealthy people.
16:26But when it was a school girl, people realized this stuff could happen to anybody.
16:33This was themedishly vile.
16:35Money, power lies by the hour, Rupert Manor.
16:39We were reviled by everybody.
16:42My wife fucking hated me for my job.
16:45You're a fucking lowlife.
16:47This is my wife, you know.
16:49Boycott murder, boycott murder.
16:51Cover up started to take place.
16:53Deletions of emails and destruction of evidence.
16:57The private I.I. used to use, he'd burn all his records quickly.
17:02This developed into a raging, roiling scandal.
17:06It affected the law enforcement establishment, top officials at Scotland Yard,
17:10who had essentially looked the other way for years, and politicians who appeared compromised
17:16by their ties to the Murdochs.
17:18What I've read in the papers is quite, quite shocking.
17:23Britain's prime minister vowing no stone will be left unturned.
17:27James Murdoch and other News Limited executives could face charges over a suspected cover up,
17:33with reports millions of emails were deleted from an internal archive.
17:38According to James, he immediately ordered the lawyers to turn over everything they had to the police,
17:45to start cooperating with an investigation, over Rupert's objections.
17:54Detectives made their first arrest and seized evidence.
17:57Thousands of pages of notes were seized.
17:59There are more alleged crimes, rampant computer hacking, stolen bank data, even break-ins.
18:05This was not a one-off thing.
18:07Journalists at News of the World had been working with private investigators to hack voicemails for years.
18:14They packed the voicemails of parents of a child who was murdered by a pedophile,
18:22and troops who were killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
18:32This was emotional stuff, and Rupert was very much painted as the villain here.
18:39Boycott murder! Boycott murder! Boycott murder!
18:42One thing we understand about Rupert with his executives is,
18:46if you win, you can do whatever you want. Just keep winning.
18:51The hacking showed just how far his executives were willing to take that. This was a cross line.
19:00Here was pretty good evidence that they were leveraging these papers to push agendas,
19:06and to blackmail people, and to invade people's privacy. All the stuff that you kind of suspected,
19:14but didn't know, it was all out there and laid bare.
19:18I'm not making any comments.
19:21Stock in Murdoch's parent company, News Corp, has dropped nearly 15%.
19:27Advertisers leaving in droves.
19:28On Wednesday, the Prime Minister David Cameron joined opposition politicians in Parliament
19:33to call on Rupert Murdoch. The Prime Minister has promised a public inquiry.
19:38The people involved, however high or low they go, they must not only be brought to justice,
19:43they must also have no future role in running a media company in our country.
19:49The three principal executives are being called to testify before Parliament.
19:55I think they really are in a lot of trouble.
19:58This could be the moment his newspaper power crumbles.
20:02The question was how high up was this scandal going to go? Would there be a Murdoch scalp?
20:13Mr Chairman, thank you very much. First of all, I would like to say as well just how
20:18sorry I am and how sorry we are to particularly the victims of illegal voicemail interceptions
20:26and to their families. Before you go to that, I would just like to say one sentence.
20:31This is the most humble day of my life. Thank you.
20:35So in order to claw out from under this Millie Dowler scandal, he gives an apology.
20:42Rupert clearly knows that that's the posture that he has to strike.
20:47At what point did you find out that criminality was endemic at News of the World?
20:56Endemic is a very hard, a very wide-ranging word.
21:00I was absolutely shocked, appalled and ashamed when I heard about the Millie Dowler case only
21:09two weeks ago.
21:12He mumbled.
21:13I don't know anything about that.
21:15He seemed like a confused older man.
21:18I forget the date.
21:20This was not the fearsome media mogul that people expected that they were going to see.
21:25And it was a very effective performance, whether it was real or not.
21:29I don't remember meeting him. I might have shaken a hand walking through the office,
21:32but I don't have any memory.
21:34I just don't remember.
21:35I literally turned to someone. I was like,
21:38he's pretending? He's addled? Are you kidding me? This guy is a viper.
21:43Rupert said he had no idea. James said he had no idea.
21:48I have no knowledge and there is no evidence that I'm aware of.
21:56They all stood back, him, James, Rebecca, all said,
22:01oh, they knew nothing about that. It's just the journalists did it.
22:05They let me down and I think they behaved discreetfully and betrayed the company and me.
22:12Okay. Whilst it's been obvious to most of her...
22:15You know, Rebecca Brooks, by all accounts, would have been the natural scapegoat for all of this,
22:21right? She was running News of the World and then the newspaper division.
22:27But Rupert loved Rebecca Brooks and was more loyal to Rebecca Brooks than he was to James.
22:35Can I ask in 2008?
22:37In fact, there's this moment where one of the members of parliament asks Rupert about a specific
22:45incidence of phone hacking. And Rupert, rather than answer, says...
22:52I think my son can perhaps answer that in more detail. He was a lot closer.
22:57Rupert really threw James to the wolves on that one.
23:00Have you been made aware, prior to the Millie Dowler story breaking,
23:04that your reporters hacked into the phones of any other crime victims?
23:08No, I had not. I had not been made aware of them.
23:11Most of this hacking took place before James came into the job.
23:14But then it comes out that James has in fact been on an email chain approving a settlement
23:21in order to keep the phone hacking situation quiet.
23:24When you signed off the Taylor payment, did you see or were you made aware of the full Neville email?
23:32No, I was not aware of that at the time.
23:35James approved a million pound settlement to an official with a football association that they had hacked into.
23:43James said the fact of the payment was on an email chain that he read over the weekend,
23:48that he hadn't really realized what he was signing off on.
23:51Mr. Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise.
23:56Mr. Watson, please. I think that's inappropriate.
24:00So at the hearing with James and Rupert is Wendy Dang Murdoch, who is there by his side.
24:07So then there's this crazy moment where this guy rises to smash a cream pie into Murdoch's face,
24:14like he's on some sort of Benny Hill slapstick episode.
24:18Hello!
24:19And Wendy knocks it out of his hand, which is incredible television.
24:25It's an absurd moment, but it's also really destabilizing.
24:30The saying is suspended for 10 minutes.
24:32It creates sympathy for Murdoch.
24:34The instant Murdoch was hit with that pie, News Corp stock spiked.
24:39This is brilliant. He needs to be hit with more pies.
24:44I think that the spectacle of the pie did distract a bit from the substance of the allegations,
24:52and it turned the whole thing into a farce when the issues that were being litigated were very serious.
24:59Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
25:01Thank you, all of you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
25:02Thank you, all members.
25:04It didn't bring justice, and it didn't get to the truth of this organized crime group.
25:14I must have watched that video a hundred times.
25:16It's striking because Wendy has such protectionism instincts for him, and James is not, which is the interesting thing.
25:26Your wife is a very good left hook.
25:29I have to say, she was fast. I wrote her. I'm like, wow, you're fast. I'm not getting in your
25:34way, my friend.
25:35I am not a big proponent of the four-decade marriage age gap, but if ever there was a situation
25:44where it would pay dividends,
25:49it would be an ambush like that.
25:51It's very good for Wendy's brand because she's seen as Rupert's protector and a badass.
25:58Wendy is just a much hipper person than Murdoch is. She's young. She's with it.
26:06She would call Rupert an old man. She would say that he was stupid.
26:10She belittles him in private and then over time socially in public as well.
26:15Can you understand how big is love, is love, is love?
26:19Yeah, she's very tough. Really.
26:23And she is linked to a number of other prominent figures romantically.
26:30There were rumors about a relationship with Tony Blair.
26:36Rupert grilled his staff to try to figure out if that was true or not.
26:40The family went crazy. They were like all hands on dick. Get rid of her.
26:44James and Lachlan got together and created a dossier on Wendy to present to their father.
26:51And this included a note that Wendy had written to herself in her diary and then thrown away.
26:59A housekeeper who was cleaning up in Rupert and Wendy's triplex found that piece of paper.
27:06And in that note, she was describing her feelings for Tony Blair.
27:12There were exchanges about the curve of his bottom.
27:16How hot he looked when he was talking on stage.
27:19His piercing blue eyes.
27:21And how attracted to him she was.
27:25And when James and Lachlan presented that to their father, that was the last straw.
27:30He was convinced to divorce Wendy.
27:34Media mogul and billionaire Rupert Murdoch is heading for divorce court again, ending a 14-year marriage to his third
27:40wife.
27:42A Vanity Fair story about the alleged relationship between Wendy Ding and Tony Blair is published.
27:50And it had access to the private note written by Wendy Ding.
27:57And this was deeply humiliating for Rupert.
28:00But it was perfect tabloid fodder.
28:03And because Rupert has always made his money on sex and scandal, a lot of people felt that he had
28:11finally gotten his just desserts.
28:17A complete bombshell.
28:20After 168 years in print, this Sunday's edition of the News of the World will be the last.
28:25Britain's biggest selling newspaper was dramatically killed off.
28:29Staff gasped in shock.
28:30Others reduced to tears.
28:33Closing the News of the World to Rupert Murdoch is like Paul McCartney deleting the White Album that would have
28:40been heartbreaking for him.
28:42It not only made this fortune, it was also a massive part of British popular culture.
28:49They were trying to protect their empire.
28:51And then they did what it took to fix it.
28:54They're good at sacrificing things they need to to survive.
28:58News International chairman James Murdoch said the paper's proud history had been tarnished by the behavior he called inhuman.
29:06We all got sacked. 200 journalists got laid off.
29:09Then he decided to turn us over to the cops.
29:12And I just thought, you fucker.
29:16Actions taken by certain individuals in what had been a good newsroom have breached the trust that the News of
29:24the World has with its readers.
29:26The main private part, Glenn Mulcair, got arrested, got sent to jail, as well as a bunch of reporters.
29:34I am baffled by the decision to charge me today.
29:38Rebecca Brooks was arrested.
29:40Rebecca played a blinder.
29:42Oh, I had no idea.
29:43I was so far, but I didn't know what they were doing.
29:46I really, really do want to understand what happened.
29:49I think all of us do.
29:51She was smart, really manipulative.
29:54Thank you, Jim.
29:56She walked free.
29:58We've just finished our meal and we're just going home.
30:01James really took a hit from the hacking scandal.
30:04That UK parliamentary committee did issue a very searing opinion.
30:08The younger Murdoch deemed, quote, not fit to run a major company.
30:13This is a moment when, if he was able to finally purchase the entirety of BSkyB, the company as a
30:23whole was there for James's taking.
30:26And the phone hacking crisis just puts an absolute end to all of that.
30:33Rupert Murdoch is backing down.
30:36Rupert Murdoch to withdraw news corporations' takeover bid for broadcaster BSkyB.
30:41The tabloid hacking scandal forced him to pull the plug on that deal today.
30:44Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch in retreat.
30:49The Murdochs have had to pay vast sums of money as a result of this hacking scandal.
30:55It's well over 1.5 billion pounds.
30:59That scandal did so much damage to the Murdoch name.
31:06Rupert is chased out of London and shouted down anywhere he goes.
31:10He's public enemy number one.
31:12I was appalled to find out what had happened.
31:16And I apologize and I have nothing for it.
31:21Morning.
31:22Good morning, Elizabeth. This way, please.
31:24And every time Liz left her house, she'd be swarmed.
31:27People would be yelling things at her.
31:28So Elizabeth urges her father to fire James.
31:38I actually talked to James and Liz about this.
31:41James is hunkered down in his office working on a response.
31:47And Liz comes into his office and tells James,
31:54Dad and I were talking and we really think that you need to resign.
32:01And take the fall for this because people are so upset.
32:06And it's not going to do to simply fire lower level executives.
32:11It has to be a Murdoch and we think you should be it.
32:15As you can imagine, James was furious,
32:18not just with the idea that he would be the one to take the fall,
32:21but with the idea that his father wasn't willing to come and tell him.
32:27And what James said in that moment was,
32:30if Dad wants to fire me, he can do it himself.
32:32And then he threw Liz out of his office.
32:37That ended up being a defining moment in his relationship with Liz.
32:42And he and Liz barely spoke to each other for years afterward.
32:51One of the things that's so fascinating about this family is that there's so much maneuvering
32:56and there are billions of dollars at stake.
32:59But at the end of the day, they are family.
33:03They do love each other on some level.
33:08When James was at his breaking point,
33:11Lachlan ended up flying to London in the midst of this whole scandal to calm his dad down
33:17and convince him not to fire James.
33:20So instead, James was given an exit ramp.
33:24He had a job set up in New York that was presented as a promotion, but everybody knew it wasn't.
33:32But it was one of the last moments of brotherly solidarity,
33:39where Lachlan really ended up supporting James.
33:43You are a Murdoch. It's either a blessing or a curse, but it's there, like it or not.
33:47It's obviously been a very big year. It's obviously been a very nightmare year for the family.
33:54Elizabeth thinks the hacking scandal is a disaster,
33:56and it would never have happened if the company had been run properly.
34:02Liz is outside of News Corp, building her own company, Shine.
34:09She helps make a huge success of The Biggest Loser, a perfect Murdochian type of show.
34:16Shut up and focus.
34:19She has shown that she's got talent for the sorts of things that you need in running a media company.
34:25Elizabeth, do you mind, please?
34:27Elizabeth Murdoch, she has her own production company that was recently bought by News Corp,
34:32an indication, some say, that she may be directly next in line.
34:37Rupert buys Shine and she makes a lot of money.
34:41And so she was brought back inside his orbit.
34:45Whenever he wanted one of his kids to work for him and they were resisting,
34:50Rupert would just throw enough money at the problem that he could buy them off and
34:55force them back into his employ.
34:58Do you feel that in succession terms or in sort of family terms that you've been overlooked for the
35:03top job?
35:04No, but I don't think that way. I always think about what can be done. So I never feel completely
35:11satisfied. You always think of what more you can do.
35:14Elizabeth is probably the media executive who has had the greatest success outside the Murdoch
35:22company of any of the kids. But Rupert is of a certain generation. And so he always saw
35:28either James or Lachlan as the most likely successor.
35:34James, for what it's worth, told me that Rupert is a misogynist and never considered Liz
35:40a viable successor. So she is dispirited.
35:44She clearly does really admire and respect him, but she cannot deny the damage done by the family
35:51empire.
35:52Please welcome the one and only Elizabeth Murdoch.
35:59Elizabeth goes to Edinburgh Television Festival to give a very prestigious lecture.
36:05Being asked to give the James McTaggart Memorial Lecture has been quite a welcome distraction from some
36:14of the other nightmares much closer to home. Yes, you have met some of my family before.
36:24Elizabeth makes this absolutely scorching speech. She says all the sort of stuff that you don't want to
36:29see in public. Speaking of independence, my brother James spoke about it in his McTaggart three years ago.
36:38James ended his lecture with a line in which he claimed the only reliable and perpetual guarantor
36:47of independence is profit. The reason his statement sat so uncomfortably is that profit without purpose
36:56is a recipe for disaster. News Corp has been accused of putting profits first and nothing else.
37:05Elizabeth is saying the same thing everyone said about Murdoch to this point.
37:10Prophet must be our servant, not our master. And so she's aligning herself with the enemies of James and
37:20the enemies of her father. We see all of this play out in public, the deep, deep fissures in the
37:27Murdoch family.
37:29Not surprisingly, her father doesn't speak to her for nine weeks.
37:33Liz ended up leaving the company altogether, setting out on her own.
37:38She wants to get away from all of the toxicity of the family empire. And the phone hacking scandal was
37:48her opportunity to do that.
37:55Good morning, Mr. Murdoch. We're going to retire soon, finally, huh? And have a good life?
38:00Good life.
38:01The time after the phone hacking scandal was a real ebb in Murdoch's professional and personal life.
38:10B-Sky-B has been denied to him. The stalled deal and the scandal that caused it has thrown open
38:16the
38:17question of succession in the Murdoch empire. He thought he was rolling to world domination
38:22and now things are starting to fall apart.
38:30Earlier in his life, Rupert reveled in the idea of a battle royale between his children to succeed him.
38:39Rupert pitted them against each other, played them off each other,
38:43like they were cogs in this dynastic power game he was playing.
38:49But he allowed his quest for some kind of immortality to destroy his actual relationship with his actual kids.
39:01This is about control and about the lack of respect that Rupert Murdoch is showing in his very last chapter
39:10in life.
39:12Basically saying to three of his children, I don't think you have it.
39:20And this litigation brought all of it to the surface.
39:29This morning, the family believed to be the inspiration behind the HBO hit show, Succession,
39:35is locked in a similar battle playing out in real life.
39:38This is a dispute about the Murdoch family trust, and this is very much shrouded in mystery,
39:45and we aren't sure exactly what's going on inside.
39:48In September, we found out that the trial is about to start.
39:53The setting is Reno, Nevada, the birthplace of divorce in this country.
39:57Of all places for the Murdoch family to end up in court in Reno, Nevada, no offense to Reno.
40:03I personally went to that courthouse every day. The first day was just a bizarre scene.
40:11SUV, SUV, SUV, press everywhere. Lawyers are swooping up the courthouse steps, and then the children come.
40:22You know, so much of the Murdoch story has been narrated by anonymous sources and self-interested parties,
40:29speculating about what was going on behind the scenes. But for the first time with this trial,
40:36we were getting the actual story. The real human drama of this family was being laid bare.
40:44Rupert! Rupert!
40:46That's not Rupert!
40:47Mr. Murdoch, are you confident of victory?
40:51Every major member of the family is testifying in front of each other in court.
40:57Rupert went first.
41:00Here is Rupert Murdoch taking the witness stand in defense of his effort to unilaterally change this
41:07inviolable family trust, even though by definition an inviolable trust cannot be changed. But on some
41:15level, you can understand why he would feel entitled to do it. He built this empire. He made everyone in
41:22this room, a multi-billionaire, and it's his money. The judge said that he was open to their argument,
41:30if he can prove that he's doing it in good faith and for the sole benefit of his beneficiaries.
41:39But Rupert is a man who speaks his mind. He's a master of the universe. And so, you know, how
41:44disciplined
41:45is he going to be on the witness stand, I think is a question right from the very beginning.
41:48What will become a problem is that when Rupert's cross-examined about this, he's incredibly honest.
41:54He was very upfront about the fact that this was about his legacy and he didn't trust James or
42:01Liz or Prudence to retain the conservative political slant of his media outlets.
42:06That's why he wanted Lachlan to take control. I'm not a legal expert, but a legal expert would
42:15probably say that was not in his best interest to make that argument.
42:19But Rupert's legal team appeared to think they had an ace in the hole,
42:23and that was an exchange between Rupert and Anna, his second wife.
42:33One day, several months prior, she had reached out to Rupert, which was a bit strange. She doesn't
42:40ordinarily just call Rupert. It rarely happens. As Rupert says, it's out of the blue.
42:45They're talking, catching up, and Rupert shares with her some of his angst about James doing something
42:52with the sisters to shove Lachlan aside. And after they get off the phone, Anna writes Rupert
42:58by email. I think it's imperative that you get this sorted out soon. Some toes will be trod on and
43:07egos hurt, but it would be worse to leave things as they are. Then she tells Rupert, you are the
43:13kingpin.
43:14You still hold the power. And Rupert tells Anna he'd love nothing more than peace all around,
43:21but it's just not looking that way. And then Anna and Rupert start talking about the kids.
43:27And intriguingly, Rupert is sort of complimentary of James. He's bright. He's articulate. But time
43:33and time again showed bad judgment. Rupert tells Anna, this isn't just about the children. He says,
43:42Fox and our empire is the only thing standing in the way of this woke mob, that we are the
43:48true
43:49defenders of the free world. And James and his wife, Catherine, want to change it. And Anna does
43:57something kind of surprising. She talks about her resentment of James and Catherine as well. That
44:05they and their like-minded woke friends are going to be the ruination of the country. America will be
44:11doomed if these cultural elites take over. She's in perfect agreement. Rupert's lawyers try to use this
44:21to say, look, if all of this mess we're in, it's because Rupert was trying to accommodate Anna in
44:28their divorce. Anna, who set these parameters. Anna, who never wanted to see one child succeed above
44:36the others. She is now saying that doesn't matter to her. She is endorsing Lachlan's leadership.
44:42She's endorsing Rupert, backing up Lachlan's leadership. Why are we even here is basically
44:49the implicit argument. This, of course, has no legal weight. This is just an exchange of emails.
45:00There's binding language around the trust, and Anna has no control. And she wasn't telling him he
45:07should change the trust. She doesn't have the authority to tell him to change the trust.
45:10Still, as a matter of atmospherics, it was important. And it shows what's at stake in this trial.
45:21Once the litigation began, years of internal Murdoch family communications, texts and emails,
45:28started to surface that were really painful for, I think, everyone involved, but especially James.
45:37James, he started telling friends, my advice is to never get involved in litigation with your family
45:42where there's discovery and the discovery is all about you. I mean, just imagine what that's like.
45:50If you were suddenly able to read everything that your family says about you behind your back for two
45:58decades. It was brutal. And I think there is a tragedy in that that transcends whatever you think
46:07about the Murdochs or Fox News. This is the story of a family unraveling. And it was just in the
46:19beginning.
46:19It was just in the beginning.
46:49It was just in the beginning.
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