The media mogul and other top executives were involved in covering up decades of illegal news-gathering tactics, alleges a new add-on to the royal’s legal filing.
Rupert Murdoch is pulling the plug on the television broadcast of his right-wing U.K. outlet TalkTV, a blow to the media mogul who launched the opinion-focused venture just two years ago with an aim of replicating the success of Fox News in the U.K. In a memo to staff on Tuesday, Scott Taunton, TalkTV’s president of broadcasting, said that the network will shutter its linear television broadcast in the summer and move to an online-only operation, focusing on streaming platforms.
Rupert was deposed this week and his son Lachlan will sit for a grilling as well, as the 2020-related case moves along.
Rupert Murdoch is set to be questioned under oath on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. over coverage of debunked vote-rigging claims involving the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a person familiar with the matter said. Murdoch will be deposed in Los Angeles, according to that person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The deposition does not appear on the public docket for the case.
“I’d like to be remembered, if I am at all, as someone who was a catalyst for change, and the good,” Murdoch said in a recoded interview to close out the sizzle reel that played during the meeting.
Exclusives
Former Republican FCC Chairman Al Sikes and other representatives of the group demanding that the FCC revoke the license of Fox-owned WTXF Philadelphia visited FCC officials in Washington yesterday to press their case. The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) argues that the Murdoch family that controls the station and Fox News is unfit to hold broadcast licenses because of the news network’s role in promoting Trump’s false claim that he lost the presidency in 2020 because of a rigged election. The contingent (l-r): David Goodfriend, adviser to MAD; Bill Kristol, former editor of conservative, Murdoch-owned The Weekly Standard; Art Belendiuk; counsel to MAD; Milo Vassallo, executive director, MAD; Preston Padden, former Fox executive and Murdoch lobbyist; Bill Reyner, former counsel to Murdoch/Fox; and Sikes.
As Rupert’s eldest son is set to rule a new empire, he could coast on the assets put in place by his father or evaluate the kingdom for a megadeal involving crown jewel Fox News.
What the Fox and News Corp. mogul’s transition to the chairman emeritus roles means for 2024 election coverage, a possible recombination of the two companies — and his son Lachlan’s reign.
4 Political Takeaways From Rupert Murdoch’s Exit
Rupert Murdoch Will Never Give Up Power
Murdoch’s “departure” sounds a lot like a lost episode of Succession, with Logan Roy dramatically stepping down but not really stepping down from the chairmanship of Waystar Royco for evil genius reasons to be revealed in a future episode. The idea that Murdoch would give up power before he dies defies everything we’ve learned about him.
Even now, in his emeritus status, he will continue to offer counsel to his successor, son Lachlan Murdoch. And the elder Mr. Murdoch indicated in a statement to employees that he intended to be active in providing that counsel. But the announcement was nonetheless potentially epochal, marking at least the formal end to an active career during which the senior Murdoch built the most important and politically influential media empire on the planet. His companies, infused with a brand of right-wing populism, have amassed the power to shape, and at times make or break, presidents and prime ministers.
Rupert Murdoch becomes chairman emeritus of the companies, effective in November.
The Trump tell-all author returns with a tale of Fox News strife that also includes the prediction that Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee.
Alfred Sikes is the latest figure to urge the commission to study whether Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch meet the character qualification to remain broadcast licensees.
Ervin Duggan and William Kristol join effort challenging renewal application of Fox O&O WTXF Philadelphia.
The Murdochs Are Awful. But Don’t Punish Fox O&Os For It.
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch undermined trust in American democracy with their reckless propagation of Trump’s Big Lie, but Fox’s O&Os shouldn’t be in the FCC’s crosshairs to pay for it, as a watchdog group would have it.
Preston Padden, Bill Reyner and Ken Solomon in a joint statement today said “Murdoch made it very clear … that he understood that the 2020 election had not been stolen. Nonetheless, during the same time period, Fox [News] continued to perpetuate the ‘Big Lie’ and promote the Jan 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in D.C.”
Former Fox Exec: Is It Time For The FCC To Take A Close Look At Rupert Murdoch’s Licenses?
Preston Padden: “False news has consequences. Despite all the factual information available to the contrary, millions of Americans, including Fox viewers, believe that the 2020 election was stolen. The rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were chanting ‘Stop the Steal.’ To the best of my knowledge, the FCC never before has been confronted with a judicial holding that a broadcast licensee knowingly and repeatedly presented false news. It is hard to imagine an issue that more directly impacts a broadcast licensee’s character qualifications.”
On the eve of King Charles III’s Coronation, a row has erupted over access to UK television footage of the historic event. Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV and rival GB News have united to condemn an “anti-competitive” decision by the BBC, Sky, and ITN to restrict access to Coronation coverage. In a statement on the “blackout,” the two news channels said they are being charged an “excessive commercial fee” to access pool footage of Saturday’s proceedings.
Attorneys defending Fox in the $1.6 billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over alleged false claims about the 2020 election withheld critical information about the role company founder Rupert Murdoch played at Fox News, a revelation that angered the judge when it came up at a Tuesday hearing. It was not clear whether the development would affect a trial scheduled to begin Thursday with jury selection.
Star hosts for Fox News like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity as well as Lachlan Murdoch may also appear in person at the high-profile Dominion Voting Systems trial, which is set to start April 17.
The planned summer wedding of the 92-year-old media mogul and Ann Lesley Smith is said to have been called off. It would have been his fifth marriage.
Soon after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fox Corp. explored acquiring rights to The Apprentice, the competition show that Donald Trump hosted on NBC before he became president, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News and Fox Corp. Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s chair, and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the company’s executive chair and chief executive, discussed acquiring the show in November 2020, according to court documents released this week.
Court filings give a peek into how Rupert Murdoch shapes coverage at his news organizations.
In sworn questioning in January by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems released Tuesday, Murdoch was asked, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?” “Yes,” he replied, according to a transcript. “The election was not stolen,” he said later. Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, saying the network crippled the company’s business by broadcasting false claims from Trump’s lawyers that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election.
The media mogul acknowledged that he could have stopped the parade of conspiracy theorists on Fox News from amplifying false claims by former President Trump and his surrogates that the election in 2020 was stolen.
The Murdoch Empire — And Fox News — Is At A Crossroads
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) have sent a letter to Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch asking him to stop Fox News personalities from “spreading false election narratives,” warning they could lead to “further acts of political violence.”
Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said in a deposition in an already-explosive defamation case against his company’s top business, Fox News, that “some of our commentators were endorsing” a series of claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, the latest revelation that suggests Fox executives could have been aware that some of the company’s hosts were pushing baseless assertions.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, unloads on Rupert Murdoch in his new memoir, saying he has long believed that conservative media mogul is “evil.” “Of course, I didn’t care for Murdoch’s politics, which were just to the right of the Taliban’s,” Harry writes in Spare. “And I didn’t like the harm he did each and every day to the truth, his wanton desecration of objective facts.”
An increasingly sour relationship between former President Trump, Fox News and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that has been building for months has come to a head in the weeks following the midterm elections. It is a rift that is being watched closely in political and media circles given the power of Fox News and other media entities owned by Murdoch in potentially shaping the race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.
The ruling from Judge Eric Davis is the latest development in Dominion’s suit that accuses Fox News of perpetuating false claims of voter fraud.
Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust will not vote in favor of a Fox-News Corp. merger unless the combination has the blessing of special committees of outside directors, and of non-Murdoch affiliated stockholders. The boards of both companies issued statements Tuesday in an “update on the process in response to recent inquiries.” Special committees began exploring a recombination of the two companies last month at Murdoch’s request, prompting some blowback by some outside investors who don’t think it’s in the best interests of either.
