Project Disharmony: The Murdoch Family In Court

As with most empires in history, the search for successors can be a blighted affair.  The children will rarely agree to lines of succession, and the parents can often be guaranteed to throw a spanner in the works and soil expectations.  Assassinations can take place.  Figures can be deposed and banished.  

A modern variant of this modern episode of family cannibalism is unfolding in a Nevada court, a story titillating to those who earn their keep on such subjects, not to mention an electric charge of schadenfreude.  Beginning on September 17, the case concerns the Murdoch family trust that arose from the divorce between Rupert and his second wife Anna Torv Murdoch Mann.  The 1999 agreement concerning the trust arose at the latter’s insistence in lieu of seeking a greater individual share of the fortune.  (She opted for a far from impoverishing settlement of US$200 million.)  

In place of demanding half his fortune, Anna sought to divide control of the businesses between Rupert and the children.  It was also intended to guard against the ambitions of the new arrival on the scene, Wendy Deng, including any offspring she might have with Rupert.  

As an irrevocable instrument, the trust was intended to ensure that Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James would each have an equal voting share in determining the course of the news empire after their father’s death. While Deng’s children have financial parity with the others, they purportedly have no legal influence.  

In November, the patriarch signalled a change in his black heart.  A division, brewing for some years, had manifested in the family.  Rupert and son Lachlan had shown a keenness to link Fox Corp with News Corp.  This meant that such tributaries as the Wall Street Journal could meet at the poisoned confluence of Fox News.  Son James had voted against the proposal.  

Lachlan became the heir apparent and designated keeper of the flame, while James began to add to his inventory of disdain for Fox News and News Corp.  In January 2020, for instance, a spokesperson for both James and his wife Kathryn, expressed their disappointment “with the ongoing [climate change] denial among the news outlets in Australia given the obvious evidence to the contrary.”  They were particularly concerned about the coverage of the bush fires savaging Australia at that time.  

In an interview with the New Yorker,  expressed himself in a way befitting the cumbrous sentences of the current US Vice President and presidential contender, Kamala Harris: “The connective tissue of our society is being manipulated to make us fight with each other, making us the worst versions of ourselves.”  

A change to the otherwise irrevocable trust would take place via the perversely nicknamed Project Harmony, showing that age does not weary sadism. In upending the nature of the trust, Rupert intends to consolidate the power of the media imperium in the hands of his eldest son Lachlan. 

The secretive nature of this entire manoeuvre, along with the weighty legal wrangling accompanying it, would have remained sealed but for a leaked court document to The New York Times.  It notes the “lack of consensus” among the children, and how it “would impact the strategic direction of both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content.”

In Nevada, the donor of the trust, known as the “settlor”, is usually prevented from making unilateral changes to its terms in the absence of any stipulation permitting that right.  But as the law is the Dickensian ass that it is, the irrevocable can still, certain circumstances permitting, be tinkered with.  

The scope for doing so is narrow.  In June, Nevada’s Probate Commissioner found that Rupert could amend the trust provided he could demonstrate that such a change was done in good faith and for the sole benefit of the heirs.  With sinister mischief, the mogul contends that everyone is bound to reap the rewards with Lachlan at the helm.  It is now up to probate commissioner Edmund Gorman to consider whether this, in fact, is the case.

These events have sent shivers of delight among journalists and media commentators.  Excited beads of sweat have gathered on brows.  The scribblers are out in force in Reno, hoping to penetrate the veil of secrecy, one imposed by Judge David Hardy, who earlier this month ruled against a petition from a coalition of media companies to unseal the case.  Paddy Manning, who wrote a biography on Lachlan, ponders and weaves around the options for Rupert’s anointed one.  He recalls a line from a Wall Street analyst “that the day Rupert dies is the day Lachlan gets fired”.  

An option, one used by Rupert regarding his own three sisters in the 1990s, would be buying out the siblings and assuming full control.  The sum would not be negligible.  To buy out Prudence, Elisabeth and James would require, at the very least, US$3 billion.  Lachlan’s current fortune, resting at $US2.4 billion, much of it not liquid, raises the inevitable problems.

Rupert’s appearance at the Nevada Probate Court is also an occasion to extract much irrelevant pith from the drama. “Clutching the hand of his latest bride,” bores Ian Verrender, “the 93-year old Rupert, dressed in a sombre dark suit, white shirt and white spotted blue tie, strode into the Nevada Probate Court on Monday morning…”

Beyond the scrapping and animosity delighting those obsessed with celluloid parallels, it is hard to see any veritable change in direction of the monstrosity that Daddy Murdoch gave the world.  It is one that remains political, interventionist and ruthless.  Fox News continues to eclipse the viewership and revenue of CNN and MSNBC.  Even after death, the father’s model is likely to remain in its stubborn ingloriousness, with all children securing their ill-gotten gains, however much they grumble.  

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com 

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