The Observer reports:

When some of the mind games and manoeuvres that turned a Murdoch family “retreat” into an ordeal appeared in Succession, the TV drama about squabbling family members of a right-wing media company, members of the real-life family started to suspect each other of leaking details to the writers. The truth was more straightforward. Succession’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, said that his team hadn’t needed inside sources – they had simply read press reports.

Future screenwriters have been gifted a whole load of new Murdoch material in the past few days, after two astonishing stories in the New York Times and the Atlantic lifted the lid on the dysfunction, paranoia and despair at the heart of the most powerful family in global media.

The stories followed the end of the secret trial involving the fate of the Murdoch family trust. The mogul’s four eldest children – Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence – were set to inherit the family firm following Rupert’s death. But four years ago, just after turning 90, Rupert had tried to cut James, Liz and Prue out of their inheritance and hand the businesses over to Lachlan, his favoured heir who also happens to share his increasingly right-wing politics.

The lawsuit was brought by the three errant offspring, and in December a Nevada commissioner ruled in their favour, accusing Rupert and Lachlan of acting in “bad faith”. The trial took place in secret, but the fallout – thanks to the New York Times investigation and a 13,000-word Atlantic interview with James – has been anything but. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

In early December 2023, Rupert Murdoch flew into London to see his two oldest daughters, Prudence and Elisabeth. It was not a social visit.

For months, Rupert and his firstborn son, Lachlan, had been working on a secret plan to amend the family’s trust to strip three of his other children — Prue, Liz and James — of their power to influence the direction of the family business. Their lawyers had named it Project Family Harmony.

The trust, which holds the shares that control the Murdochs’ global media empire, gives Rupert authority over his two companies until his death. After that, the voting power is distributed equally among his four oldest children. It is irrevocable, but it includes a provision that gives Rupert the ability to make changes as long as he is acting solely in the best interests of his beneficiaries. This was the provision that he intended to exploit in order to consolidate control in Lachlan, the most politically conservative of the four.

By the time Rupert was on the plane to London, he had already called a special meeting of the trust’s board — to be held two days later — to ratify the changes. He had the votes he needed to ensure it passed, but he hoped to sell Prue and Liz on supporting the idea to avoid a nasty legal fight with his own children.

Rupert did not intend to tell James in advance. The two men were hardly speaking. It was the 50-year-old James, really, who had brought his father to this place: Rupert and Lachlan, who was 52, were convinced that he planned to lead a family coup to take control away from Lachlan after their father’s death. [Continue reading…]

The Atlantic reports:

James had come to see Fox News as a blight on his family’s name and a menace to American democracy. He believed that drastic changes were needed to save the companies from the consequences of his father’s reckless mismanagement. (“If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings,” he would tell me, “a good culture wouldn’t do that.”) Determined to retain a voice in the business, James and his older sisters had moved to block Rupert from changing the trust.

The legal drama was set to play out far from public view, in a Reno probate court—Nevada is known for its flexible estate laws—but it had global significance: The trial would determine who controlled the most powerful conservative media force in the world, one that had toppled governments and delivered Donald Trump to the White House. For the Murdochs, the stakes were also intensely personal. Depositions and discovery were surfacing years of painful secrets—intra-family scheming and manipulation, lies and leaking and devious betrayals. [Continue reading…]