Is News Corp dying?

While the former United States of America are demonstrably becoming less united, there is potentially another empire crumbling away. The Murdoch media empire, News Corporation, is the proprietor of numerous companies that are loosely aligned with print and electronic media predominately in Australia, the UK and the USA. Some of their best recent work is shown by the recent brouhaha around sending an actor playing someone of the Jewish religion into a cafe is western Sydney owned by people with a middle eastern background. The full story is here but suffice to say the actor walked in, asked for a coffee, was served a coffee, waited around for a while, walked out the door when no one took the bait. One of the staff of the restaurant was approached by the Daily Telegraph (a News Corp publication) reporter and photographer (with a long lens) asking about their reaction to a ‘Jewish’ person being in their cafe and they were effectively evicted from the cafe due to the nature of the reporters questions. The discussion continued outside the cafe. Full credit to the cafe employee for calling out the bad behaviour by people that should have known better.

Crikey investigated the story and found it was part of a series of reports over the past few years where the premise seemed to be provoking anger and reporting it. The PrimeChinister account on Facebook located this gem. Those that use Facebook may have also recently seen a number of Australian News Corp owned medial outlets publicising a story on the salary packages of ABC staff. Earlier in February, the Daily Telegraph also published a story claiming the ABC cost each Australian more than a Netflix subscription even though 40% of the population didn’t use ABC services. According to The Guardian,

The unsubstantiated claim was repeated in Murdoch’s outlets nationally, including the NT News, Cairns Post, Advertiser, Herald Sun, Courier Mail, Geelong Advertiser, Mercury and Gold Coast Bulletin.

ABC Chairman, Kim Williams, stated the claim was unbalanced and agenda driven. It is interesting to note that the Daily Telegraph and other News Corp publications that are actively promoting stories claiming ABC staff are paid too much, the reach of the ABC is reducing and is expensive have not released details of the salary packages of their senior management, their change in circulation during the same period as the claimed decline in ABC usage and (as they are a private company) their profitability.

Another thing that hasn’t been reported in News Corp publications is the recent trial in Nevada where Rupert Murdoch and his oldest son Lachlan have been attempting to change the terms and conditions of a family trust. In a series of events that would be equally at home in the TV series Succession (which is reputed to actually be based on the Murdoch family), ‘Operation Family Harmony’ was planned by Rupert and Lachlan to remove the potential of three of Rupert’s six children to have any control in the management of News Corporation. Apparently the three other children are seen to be less conservative than Rupert or Lachlan and may take the company away from the fundamentalist right wing mouthpiece it seems to be at the moment. 

The trial judge ruled that the family trust conditions could not be varied, which is being appealed by Rupert and Lachlan. According to The Guardian  

The decision by the Nevada family court judge is still to be approved after Rupert and Lachlan lodged an appeal, but few lawyers believe they will succeed. If the dispute is to be settled before the trust dissolves in 2030, the most likely scenario is for a sale of parts of the business valued at a combined $43bn. Such disposals could end decades of Murdoch family influence in the US and British political systems.

The timing of this very public washing of the family linen comes just as the businesses themselves are enjoying a political and legal boom. The anti-environmentalist, right-wing causes espoused by Murdoch’s Fox News may be loathed by some of his children but are very much in tune with the new US president. About a week before the NYT exposé, a withered-looking Rupert was pictured in the Oval Office alongside President Trump.

The court case over the family trust is ongoing. This is something you won’t see reported in News Corp newspapers or on SkyNews. But you see obviously unbalanced reporting that suits a particular agenda – which you shouldn’t if the company had any morals and ethics. And while the ABC does get it wrong on occasions they report it – as evidenced in the recent openly reported (on the ABC and elsewhere) case in Sydney about wrongful termination of a fill in announcer on ABC’s Sydney radio station.

If News Corp wants to be a respected news gathering and publishing empire, it needs to demonstrate that the reporting is fair, balanced and equitable. Dressing people up and sending them out in an attempt to provoke outrage is hardly that. Mounting a campaign to undermine their apparent competition without full disclosure of the salary packages of their staff is only telling half the story. Comparing the cost of the ABC per person to a Netflix subscription is not only a ‘strawman’ argument, there is also an implication that a Netflix subscription is better value that a subscription to your local News Corp publication or SkyNews. 

Back in May, Crikey reported on News Corp’s financial results, filed in the USA. After sacking 1 in 20 staff around the world in 2023, further rationalisation was ‘required’ in 2024 amid declining reader and viewership around the world. As Crikey notes

For News Corp, it’s been a long-term management for decline, starting with national political news and the syndication of its tabloid commentariat, before following up with common supplements (like travel), then sections (like finance), and, finally, news. This drove a lookalike design of both print and web, as well as a shared chase for the same news-lite market of low-attention, aging, conservative men.

And aging, conservative men, like Rupert himself, are slowing dying out. It appears that News Corp is dying with them. The sad thing is the family seems to be irrevocably broken. The Guardian notes that in 2012

James was about to be sent out to Asia to run Star TV. When I asked to whom he will turn for advice in his new job, he says: “I know it sounds hokey, but I speak to my father.”

In court, amid a welter of evidence that at one point saw James weep in the witness box, it emerged that he had not talked to his father for years.

 

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