The headline at Fox News was big news.
Rupert Murdoch announces transition to new role of Chairman Emeritus of Fox Corporation and News Corp.
‘For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change’
The story reported:
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is transitioning from his roles as Chair of Fox Corporation and Executive Chairman of News Corp, he announced on Thursday.
Murdoch, 92, informed colleagues in a letter Thursday of his decision, noting he was in good health. He will officially make the transition in November, and his son Lachlan will become the sole chairman of both companies.
“I am writing to let you all know that I have decided to transition to the role of Chairman Emeritus at Fox and News,” Murdoch wrote. “For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate, principled leader in Lachlan who will become sole Chairman of both companies. Neither excessive pride nor false humility are admirable qualities. But I am truly proud of what we have achieved collectively through the decades, and I owe much to my colleagues, whose contributions to our success have sometimes been unseen outside the company but are deeply appreciated by me.”
Not mentioned was something else.
Rupert Murdoch is a founding father of conservative media. Along with National Review’s William F. Buckley Jr., our own American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., and talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh, Murdoch helped create a mass media response to what had come to be recognized as the routinely left-centered worldview of major “mainstream” media outlets such as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and the government-created PBS. Not to mention print outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post.
As the legend goes, with his father’s sudden death, the 21-year old Rupert took over his dad’s struggling paper, the Adelaide News, in distant Australia. Bit by bit, piece by piece, the young Murdoch slowly began a new empire, expanding first inside Australia, then to Britain, and finally to the United States and around the globe.
His first purchase in America was the San Antonio Express News in 1973. Three years later, he purchased the New York Post, and, with that, the Murdoch empire in America was off and building.
By 1977, Time magazine’s cover was a cartoon of Murdoch as King Kong astride the two towers of the World Trade Center, New York stretched out beneath him, his paws clutching the New York Post and other media publications. The caption:
EXTRA!!! AUSSIE PRESS LORD TERRIFIES GOTHAM
In September of 1985, he became an American citizen, which in turn enabled him to meet the requirement that owners of U.S. television stations must be American citizens.
His News Corporation bought the Fox Corporation, owners of the 20th Century Fox movie business. In 1996, he expanded by creating the Fox News cable news network, taking on instant rival Ted Turner and Turner’s cable success at CNN. Eventually Fox was beating CNN repeatedly in the ratings.
There was also something else — a big something else — in play. Unlike the owners of the major media outlets in the U.S., Rupert Murdoch was a conservative. An ally in Britain of the Tory Party’s Margaret Thatcher, in America he fashioned Fox News as the conservative go-to on television.
Thus came television’s conservative stars — with names like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and later Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Greg Gutfeld, not to mention early morning’s Fox and Friends. Suffice to say the ratings were and are huge.
Combined with the talk radio revolution headed by Rush Limbaugh and spreading conservative talk radio shows of national and local origin across the land, the revolution that became conservative media was now firmly in place. Eventually that revolution would spawn conservative competition to Fox, notably with Christopher Ruddy’s Newsmax, where, full disclosure, I am a contributor.
Murdoch’s empire today is global. His Wikipedia bio notes:
Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation).
I Googled cartoons of Rupert Murdoch and came across almost 900 from across the years, many featuring him as an octopus with his multiple tentacles greedily gathering up media properties.
At this stage, now 92, Murdoch is merely in “transition” to the role of chairman emeritus. Where, doubtless, he will be on hand for wisdom checks from his successor, son Lachlan Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch’s life, with its many ups and the inevitable but occasional downs — his fight with former President Donald Trump would be one of those, I suggest — is altogether not just simply well-lived. He has been a major force in leading the revolution that is today’s America’s conservative media. It is his legacy. Or one of them.
Conservatives have much to thank him for.
For that matter, whether they recognize it or not, so too do all Americans.
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