WI live in an age of private dynasties. America’s billionaires at last count are worth $5.5 trillion. The three — Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — are worth more than $500 billion between them. Americans dominate the global league table of billionaires: Britain has no one in the top hundred. But we still have enough to cause concern.
Individuals who have resources on this scale change the dynamics of the economies and societies in which they live, as the US increasingly dramatizes. Their spending derails economies so that excess production is directed to rich and useless pastures, but, most dangerously, it is poured into buying political influence – directly in the political process and indirectly through media ownership. . Unlimited, influence can only grow in the coming decades, a phenomenon the founders of the dynasty are aware of, even if the general public is not.
A dynastic courtroom drama set to unfold this September in Reno, Nevada – so far under wraps, but exposed by New York Times last week – will further illuminate the new realities. Rupert Murdoch, controller of a huge media empire ranging from Fox News in the US, Times AND SUN in Britain, in Australianand the 31ststr the richest billionaire in the US, is petitioning to change the terms of an irrevocable trust. It currently stipulates that after his death his four eldest children will have equal voting rights in the strategic and editorial control of his empire. The court hearing is his attempt to change the trust and instead give control to the child he considers most trustworthy, his son Lachlan.
It is, as the three children (James, Elisabeth and Prudence) are about to be disenfranchised instantly, a bare dynastic power play that makes the series a hit. Legacy they look tame. Murdoch, at the age of 93, did not want to end up in court: he tried to use all his deception, dressing the action as “Project Harmony”, to persuade his daughters Prudence and Elisabeth to a private meeting in London that it would be in their interests – and thus not to oppose them. The obvious body was to isolate James, the guy who most openly denies the maxims of the new conservatism — he is neither a climate change denier nor a supporter of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — and thus create a majority voter. for the change.
He underestimated his daughters, who were reportedly angry. They have joined with James to challenge the change, which under Nevada state law must be made in “good faith” and for the sole benefit of all trust beneficiaries. The most expensive lawyers in the US will go head-to-head in an attempt to prove Murdoch’s good faith on the one hand – and bad faith on the other. This more than rivals the most dramatic scene in the Legacy.
All four children are staunch capitalists and uncomplaining billionaires; this is not the basis of the quarrel. But the trio disagrees with neither Lachlan’s strategic direction and the way the companies have been run, nor his political judgment, which has been so severely tested by Trump’s political resurgence since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. What is at stake is corporate honesty, journalistic integrity and the direction of right-wing politics in the US, Britain and Australia.
James Murdoch as CEO and then chairman of Sky between 2003 and 2012 was a leading champion of sustainability. A Joe Biden donor, he resigned from the News Corp board ahead of the 2020 presidential election citing strategic and editorial differences. He is not a Trumpite and would surely have agreed with his father’s email on the eve of January 6 that Trump should become a “non-person”. But that was then.
His father’s current effort to ingratiate himself with Trump — even though he was embarrassingly relegated to a balcony seat at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — by arranging his affairs so that his influence extends beyond the grave must be resisted to the end. It’s all part of a right-wing universe in which billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are reportedly orchestrating massive contributions to Trump’s campaign, while Musk plans to use his expensive dress — the X — to cause a tsunami of pro-Trump propaganda. .
Neither will any of the Murdoch trio be impressed with the empire’s corporate leadership. It has forgiven the deletion of 35 million emails after the hacking cases in Britain, as recently reported in OUTLOOK magazine, and continues to pay compensation and legal costs to victims, now estimated to exceed £1 billion.
In the US, Fox and voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly aired false claims that Dominion was involved in a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
In any other company these would be matters of resignation. Not in the Murdoch empire as it is currently run. Nor, apart from family, is there any pressure to change.
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The political polarization and growing misgovernance of the US are there for all to see. No democracy can survive unless the losers accept the legitimacy of the winner’s vote; thus the political debate turns to open civil war. Billionaires who openly politicize the media as their easy-to-buy games—Musk’s $44 billion accidental purchase of X is one example, along with Murdoch’s attempt to reverse an irreversible trust—are part and parcel of of this origin. Fact-checking and scrupulously honest reporting in American journalism has been a global benchmark. Not any more.
Britain should take note and learn. Limit the number and power of the super-rich with proper wealth taxation. Take care of who owns our media, including digital media, and ensure they comply with best practice governance arrangements. The right was successfully mobilized to ensure that the desperate Daily Telegraph it could not be owned even in part by a foreign national government: it was correct. The principle should be extended to prohibit majority media ownership by foreign billionaires.
Build and support the BBC and other public service broadcasters as guarantors of honest information, thankfully now likely to happen with a Labor government. Ofcom should ensure that, at the very least, all TV stations rigorously separate news from commentary: Britain does not need overtly partisan TV channels like Fox News and the way GB News aims to be. Carefully extend checks, balances, accountability and independent moderation to social media platforms (don’t exempt the press from the same standards).
Above all, care for and curate our public square to maintain its plurality and dynamism, but limit its abuse as much as possible. It should never be at the whim of politicized billionaires.