Detailing the many power struggles within the family, Coppins writes that one former News Corp employee claimed Lachlan had referred to the media side of the business as “ShitCo” (a claim a spokesperson for Lachlan denied to Coppins) – a possible echo of RoyCo, the fictional company created by patriarch Logan Roy in HBO’s Succession, commonly regarded as having been inspired by the Murdochs.
When discussing why the battle for succession saw Rupert pit James and Lachlan against each other, leaving Prudence and Elisabeth on the sidelines, the Atlantic piece quotes James calling his father a “misogynist”.
The American journalist McKay Coppins this weekend published a rare and wide-ranging interview with James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s second-oldest son, who is often portrayed as a bitter rival to his older brother, Lachlan.
By the time of the court battle, “James and Rupert had barely spoken in years,” the piece says, then detailing a handwritten note from Rupert delivered along with legal documents:.
For years, as power and control waxed and waned between the male Murdochs over various parts of the organisation, there had been reports of James’ unease with News Corp’s reporting of the climate crisis and Fox News’s apparent embrace of rightwing conspiracy theories.
