Andrew Bolt: Debate devastated if voices from the right lost

Creating more clones of the ABC or Guardian would destroy a vital point of difference.

James Murdoch has shown he’s a most ungrateful, entitled and treacherous hypocrite.

This second son of Rupert Murdoch, chairman emeritus of the Murdoch media empire, is getting hero headlines for abusing his father and brother and whingeing how he’s been hard done by.

He’s smearing his father as a “misogynist”, a bad dad, a man James’ children don’t want to see. He’s leaking private family conversations.

He’s also bitching about his brother Lachlan, now steering this company – all in a long profile of James in the Left-wing Atlantic magazine, and gleefully retailed by Murdoch-hating papers.

James Murdoch (right) is getting hero headlines for abusing his father and brother and whingeing how he’s been hard done by.

I haven’t seen such treachery and jealousy since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did the same wah-wah about Harry’s family, falsely painting the royals as racists and bastards.

The difference is that James could hurt you.

He’s now battling his father in court over the future of this company, which – I should remind him – was actually built by his dad, who also made him a multi-billionaire.

Any gratitude?

I should declare I did not warn Lachlan or his team I was writing this, and was not asked to.

Here’s what the war is about.

Control of this Murdoch empire is held in large part by a family trust, which gives Rupert four votes, and his four eldest children, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence one each.

Do the maths: Rupert and Lachlan, the two conservatives, rule.

But Rupert is 93.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle falsely painted the royals as racists and bastards. Picture: Getty

What happens after his death? Three of the children could then fire Lachlan overnight.

That’s a threat to the Murdoch empire, because James is a cookie-cutter New York Leftist who’s publicly dumped on what it publishes and broadcasts.

For instance, he’s attacked Fox News, a massive money earner, announcing: “There are views I really disagree with on Fox News.”

He even resigned from the board, “due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions”.

He and wife Kathryn also attacked journalists on this paper and on Sky News for “ongoing denial” about global warming – which is actually our healthy scepticism about climate alarmism and the climate policies now devastating our electricity system.

That’s why Rupert and Lachlan, who has now run Fox Corp and News Corp for years, thought they should change this “irrevocable” trust so Lachlan could never be outvoted by his siblings.

This company had to stay healthy by staying conservative.

James Murdoch and Kathryn Hufschmid have attacked journalists on this paper and on Sky News for ‘ongoing denial’ about global warming. Picture: Getty

The reason is obvious: the key to Rupert’s success has been to give conservatives a platform – the Sun and The Times in Britain; Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall St Journal in the US; and Sky News and the Murdoch newspapers in Australia.

Imagine if the Murdoch media empire did not exist.

Who’d have fought the climate hysteria, the lockdown madness, the cancel culture and the race politics that nearly gave us Labor’s Voice?

Not the ABC, which has not one current affairs host who’s conservative.

Not The Age, Sydney Morning Herald or Guardian Australia, which have zero on-staff conservative commentators.

No wonder Murdoch media outlets are so popular with the public.

Finally, our readers and viewers see the world as it is and as they know it.

But soon you may not have to imagine a world without that choice.

Not if James got control instead.

Round one of the legal battle was a courtroom loss for Rupert, who had to prove it was in the interests of each child that Lachlan stay in charge.

Now come the appeals. And now comes James going wah wah wah. His father has broken the family!

I’m disgusted that a grown man would shop his resentments like that, all to grab a media empire he has not created, or negotiate a bigger payout.

Still, in whining to The Atlantic, James and Kathryn just added to Rupert’s argument that the value of the Murdoch media would crash if James, backed by his sisters, dumped Lachlan and took over.

For instance, The Atlantic reports James’ wife opining that Fox News “doesn’t have a clear purpose in the ecosystem anymore”.

What? Fox last month posted the highest ratings ever seen in American cable news history.

Imagine if James and Kathryn blanded Fox into another CNN, now haemorrhaging viewers.

Or turned the booming Sky News into an ABC, god save us.

Turning Murdoch outlets into clones of the ABC or Guardian would destroy their point of difference, and destroy the business.

But for you it would be even worse.

Culling conservatives would devastate debate.