Andrew Bolt: Future of News in strong hands

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to pass the baton onto his son Lachlan means News Corp and Fox will continue to promote debate and challenge smug elites.

Rupert Murdoch has given a voice to people too often marginalised by the mainstream media. Picture: AFP

I’ll say what no other Murdoch journalist has: I’m glad Rupert Murdoch has made way for son Lachlan.

I can say this because if I’m sacked tomorrow I couldn’t care less.

But I want to say it because Lachlan is our best hope to keep his father’s legacy alive, so his media empire keeps promoting debate and challenging smug elites and their self-serving pieties.

Under Rupert’s other son, the Left-wing James, it probably wouldn’t.

What Rupert has done – giving up his chairmanship of both Fox Corp and News Corp, owner of this newspaper – is designed to cement the conservative Lachlan in place as his successor.

Sure, I wish he’d made that even clearer in his statement announcing he’d become “chairman emeritus” of both companies, leaving Lachlan as the sole real one.

Instead, he told staff to still “expect to see me in the office late on a Friday afternoon”.

Mind you, if I’m glad Rupert is stepping aside it’s not because I’ve lost my admiration and affection for this genius.

The future of News Corp and Fox will be in safe hands with Lachlan Murdoch. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

It’s that he’s now 92 and his empire mustn’t fall into the hands of people like, well, James.

Even when he was still on the board of News Corp, James, a global warming crusader, had a seeming yen to muzzle some of us, complaining he was “particularly disappointed with the ongoing [climate] denial among the News outlets in Australia”. He’s also been a loud critic of the Right-leaning Fox News.

He now seems keen to fight Lachlan for control of the family trust once Rupert dies – the trust that owns about 40 per cent voting share of Fox and News, and has two other members, Rupert’s oldest daughters.

I fear for both the business and debate if James won.

Remember, Rupert’s biggest breakthroughs have come from giving a voice to people too often marginalised by the mainstream media.

He bought London’s Sun newspaper 55 years ago, and made it a champion for working-class conservatives. Later, he created Fox News for the same kind of voters in the US, creating a massive money maker as well.

Moving them, or other Murdoch outlets, to the Left would destroy their point of difference as challengers of the elites, when – as Rupert said last week – “most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth”.

And what would happen to debate? So thank you, Rupert, and may Lachlan, another anti-elitist freethinker, triumph, too.