Fox News and News Corp. chairman and CEO Murdoch announced Thursday that he will step down as chairman of the Fox and News corp. empires
Murdoch announced Thursday that he will step down as chair of Fox and News Corp., ending his seven-decade reign as mastermind of the media. His retirement won’t begin until November, but the great unbundling of his media empire has already begun.
Murdoch wrote in a memo that he has been engaged with news and ideas daily. “The time is right for me to take on different roles.”
Murdoch’s career has been marked by repeated scandals and his drive for business success. He struck political alliances that sparked both.
His elder son Lachlan Murdoch, who has been leading the company with him, will become the sole chairman of both Fox Corp., the broadcast arm of the family’s holdings, and News Corp., which encompasses newspapers and book publishing. Murdoch will become chairman of the board. The changes will happen in November.
Fox News is one of his major outlets. After the sale of most of his Hollywood holdings, he now has properties in Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Fox News reaching a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems that would have exposed them was one example of this, as the marriage of Fox News and the Trump administration was for a long time beneficial to both parties. It was also found that Carlson had 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 when he hated Trump so much he sent texts saying it. Carlson was no longer employed by Fox News.
In a letter to staff explaining his decision to step away, the 92-year-old Murdoch took a shot at unnamed elites, saying they “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarified class” and said most of the rest of the media was in “cahoots with those elites.”
The announcement comes ahead of the annual shareholder meetings in November for both companies; while they are publicly traded, Rupert Murdoch is considered to control more than 40 percent of their voting shares.
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He wrote that he will be involved daily in the contest of ideas. “I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest, and reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas, and advice.”
Outside of America’s borders, Murdoch newspapers in the UK backed Brexit and got caught up in a phone hacking scandal. Murdoch’s news empire is still important in Australia, but Murdoch’s periodicals were skeptical about climate change. On Thursday as Murdoch was stepping down, Angelo Carusone, the CEO of watchdog group Media Matters for America issued a statement saying the world is worse off because of Murdoch. No one should state the extent of the damage he caused.
It is an empire, or was it? Murdoch started out as a newspaper publisher in Australia at the age of 21, after his father’s death. Circulation went up by shifting their coverage to be more tabloid-y. In the 1960s and 70s, he wentbbling up The Village Voice, New York magazine, and The Sun in the UK.
In the 80s, Murdoch took over regional news stations and the movie studio 20th Century Fox. In 1986, Fox Broadcasting launched a network called Fox News. Murdoch was a big fan of new media and wrote a $580 million check to social network MySpace in the aughts.