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Gabfest Reads is a monthly series from the hosts of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast. This month, David Plotz talked with Gabriel Sherman about his new book Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World. During part of their discussion, they explored how Rupert Murdoch pitted his children against each other and what those rifts reveal about the family dynamics driving Fox News.
This partial transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
David Plotz: What is a story about the family and the family dynamics that most shocked you, that seemed most grotesque when you told your wife about it?
Gabriel Sherman: I guess the darkest anecdote, or one of, I should say, is the way Rupert manipulated his children to turn on each other to advance his own agenda and aims. And I think one prime example of that is in 2011, at the height of the London phone-hacking scandal… Rupert used James’s older sister, Elisabeth, who was sort of desperate for her father’s attention and love. And she was really angry that the family’s name was being dragged down in the scandal. And Rupert turned to Elisabeth and told her, “Well, you should tell James to essentially quit. I want you to fire your brother,” in so many words.
And I thought that is sort of the cruelest thing, the way Rupert, as a father, abdicated his responsibility, used one of his children to sort of punish one of the others. And Elisabeth and James went years, really, after that without speaking. And kind of ironically, the thing that brought them back together was when they united several years ago to sue their older brother, Lachlan, and Rupert for trying to change the trust and hand the empire to Lachlan. So sort of, what tore them apart was Rupert, and I think what brought them together was their mutual animus towards Rupert.
David Plotz: Do you get the sense that Lachlan has the ruthless brilliance and the eye for talent that Rupert Murdoch has had? And without that, do you forecast some kind of degradation of Fox’s role in the decades to come?
Gabriel Sherman: Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about that. I mean, I think my prediction is that after Rupert’s death, Lachlan sells the company, or does some sort of transaction where he’s no longer running the company, because he’s shown no evidence throughout his entire career that he has the same hunger that his father did to travel the globe, buying companies, building an empire.
In fact, Lachlan has gone the complete opposite direction. When he was rising the ranks early in his career through News Corp, he first started out in Australia, then he came to New York. And in the mid 2000s, after feuding with Roger Ailes and Peter Chernin, who was Rupert’s other deputy at the time, Lachlan quit the company and moved back to Australia to raise his family. He married a former model and TV host, and they’re sort of royalty in Sydney society.
Now that he’s running the company, he continues to do it from Australia where Rupert made an escape—Rupert tried to get away from Australia as soon as he could when he was building his empire. So Lachlan is someone that I think wants to protect what his father built, but I don’t see any evidence that he’s aggressively going out and trying to do new deals and build things.
