The Murdochs explores succession drama and Rupert’s empire
Whenever a new documentary about the Murdoch family comes out, I always say a silent prayer: “Dear documentarians, please do not resort to comparing the Murdoch family to the television series. InheritanceThis lazy metaphor whipped to within an inch of its life. My prayers have been answered as I prepare to watch Netflix’s new four-part realistic series Dynasty: The Murdochs – but only for the first three minutes.
Yep, you guessed it: “To explain the Murdochs, you have to understand the television show Inheritance “It’s on HBO,” he said. New York Times Journalist Jim Rutenberg at 3.02 minutes.
To be fair, Rutenberg apologized and explained how the Murdoch family watched the drama about the fictional dysfunctional Roy family of media barons. A plot point in the series had struck a fraught note, triggering a chain of events that culminated in the infamous December 2024 Nevada courtroom showdown over the “irreversible” family trust established by Rupert Murdoch, whom Tina Brown once described as “the great white shark of the media world with a faint trace of blood at the corner of its thin mouth.”
Ok, forget it Inheritancewhat is it about?
This documentary, prepared by American filmmakers Liz Garbus and Sara Enright, is about the Murdoch family’s struggle for confidence in Rupert’s succession. Inheritance, itself inspired by the decades-long struggle for supremacy of Murdoch’s four eldest children, Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.
Like drama, this series is no place for nuance. The Murdoch Dirty Digger Evil Empire worldview is prominent and rarely questioned; the program interviews all of the prosecution’s witnesses and almost no witnesses for the defense.
It is a continuation of reporting New York Times by Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler and Atlantic magazine’s McKay Coppins has written a surprisingly authoritative profile of James Murdoch, detailing the astonishing extent of family dysfunction caused by Rupert Murdoch’s plot to subvert trust to support Lachlan Murdoch’s accession to the throne.
Are the Murdochs involved?
The Murdochs are rarely out of the news; Rupert Murdoch celebrated his 95th birthday party in New York just a few hours ago. But interviews with the family are rare, and that’s a problem for modern documentary filmmakers who want to make a multi-part series like the seven-part CNN effort. Murdoch’s Empire of Influence In 2022, the three-part 2020 BBC The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty and three episodes of ABC Australian Story TV series in 2024 Making Lachlan Murdoch.
I am not a Murdoch expert, but I am aware that I have indirectly encountered various Murdoch players in my business life. My first job after university in the 1990s was as a photocopier delivering newspapers and magazines throughout News Corp’s headquarters in Sydney. Why did copies have to be sent to Rupert Murdoch? New Idea And Women’s Day In New York I have no idea. It was always obvious when Murdoch would come to town for a visit; They were putting carpet in the elevator in the parking lot.
Lachlan Murdoch emerges to become broadcaster Australian and had a conversation with the students, during which I somewhat controversially asked him what he actually did. I later worked for: Guard In Britain, and in 2007, he observed James Murdoch spending his free time in the pub after the Royal Television Society festival in Cambridge. He had asked for feedback and one of my colleagues told him his view that Murdoch’s event programming was “pedestrian”.
I came back after many years Australian and I bumped into Lachlan Murdoch, who was running Channel Ten at the time with chief executive James Warburton, who put on a thunderous face when he noticed a few media reporters approaching. Murdoch just looked up, smiled and asked if we wanted coffee.
Another time, I arrived at his office just after Christmas. Australian Seeing an old man making loud phone calls at the sub-editor’s desk. It was Rupert who decided to check which senior editors were on duty during the holiday period. They weren’t.
These types of real human interactions are completely absent from this documentary. And this is a problem. Because neither the family nor the Murdoch executives want to talk; especially phone hacking crime (Nine News UK journalists convicted but chief executive Rebekah Brooks found not guilty on all charges) – these documentaries tend to rely on contributions from secondary and third-party sources, commentators that the viewer must trust.
What is there without Murdochs?
Archival footage is key and it’s great in this series. Australian audiences will pay attention to his voice ABC News Breakfast Taken from a news report by host James Glenday. There are childhood images of young Rupert and his parents, Sir Keith and Dame Elisabeth; 1980s nostalgia fans will love this video. Noon with Ray Martin Interview with Murdoch’s wife Anna Murdoch (who passed away last month) about her novel Family Business – Another example of surprisingly prescient fiction. However, other devices to fill the gaps do not work. Doco’s computer-generated board game, which features statues modeled after Murdoch heirs advancing or retreating on a Monopoly-style board, looks cheap.
Did we learn anything (other than the fact that the Murdochs still aren’t talking)?
The final moments devoted to young James, in a clip repeated much earlier in the documentary, are poignant and suggestive of the media’s sometimes portrayal of his father as malevolent and his assessment that he was “a really good person, a fun person.” A beaming Rupert playfully taps his son’s chin with a slight correction: “Sometimes, yes.”
Rather, this series is a portrait of a man who built the world’s most incredible media empire but was unable to manage his own children.
Dynasty: The Murdochs It’s streaming on Netflix starting March 13.
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Stephen Brook is a special correspondent for The Age and a CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He is the former media editor of The Australian and spent six years working for The Guardian in London.Connect with: X or email.
