Background

Beginning with two Australian newspapers inherited from his father, Murdoch built a global media empire and transformed both the content and the distribution of news and entertainment around the world. He took over News Limited, an Australian-based news company, in 1954 and expanded it to News Corporation with the acquisition of the Sydney Daily Mirror and the establishment of a national newspaper, The Australian. He continued to purchase other media outlets over the years, including American newspapers beginning in the 1970s, and branched out into entertainment with the purchase of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. in 1985 and later sparked a transformation of the cable TV landscape by introducing Fox News.

In 2013, at which point News Corporation was the largest multinational media company in the world, the firm split into two entities. One, a new News Corp, became the parent corporation of Murdoch-owned publishing assets that include The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The Sun, and The New York Post. Four years after restructuring his empire into two divisions, 21st Century Fox Inc. and News Corp., Murdoch sold much of 21st Century Fox to the Walt Disney Company in 2017. What remained became Fox Corporation — home to Fox News, Fox Business, and related broadcast properties. Murdoch stepped down from active leadership of both companies in 2023, handing day-to-day control to his eldest son, Lachlan. As of August 2025, his net worth was $24.1 billion, according to Forbes.

Public Role in the Second Trump Administration

Fox News and the MAGA Ecosystem

Trump has proven so reliant on Fox News that even after lambasting the network for calling the race for Joe Biden in 2020, he still used Fox as the main platform for his 2024 campaign, making nearly 20 appearances on the network during the general election between August and November. Since Trump's return to the White House, that dependency has deepened rather than eased. Fox News ratings continue to crush its cable news competition, and that gap has widened since the 2024 election. Fox has lured over 200 new advertisers to its platform since the election.

Fox News has operated as more of a pure MAGA-supportive outlet than ever during the second Trump term, even as Murdoch himself has kept a lower public profile. Murdoch joined Trump in the Oval Office in February 2025, a visible signal that despite his retirement and their history of friction, Murdoch remained willing to associate himself with the administration publicly.

The Wall Street Journal's Divergent Voice

While Fox News has broadly amplified the Trump White House, the Journal — also under the Murdoch umbrella — has charted a noticeably different editorial course. Murdoch's flagship business newspaper attacked Donald Trump for his "self-destructive" campaign against the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the Journal's editorial board taking direct aim at Trump's renewed threat to fire Jerome Powell. The Journal's editorial board has also taken sharp aim at Trump's trade policy, publishing a scathing editorial criticizing the Trump family for what it described as "profiting off the Presidency in ways that demean the office," following the release of Trump's financial disclosures.

The Journal has been able to navigate a uniquely polarizing time for national newspapers, growing its digital subscriber base by more than 3 million since 2016. While a majority of Republicans get their news from Fox, the Journal is read by both sides of the aisle, according to a recent Pew survey, giving Murdoch an unusual degree of influence across the political spectrum. Whether the Journal's editorial independence reflects Murdoch's own hedging against Trump, or simply the autonomy of its editorial board, has been a matter of debate among media observers. Some have suggested Murdoch may want to cover his bets with divergent viewpoints across his two marquee media properties.

The Epstein Lawsuit and Personal Friction

The most dramatic rupture of the second term emerged in the summer of 2025, when The Wall Street Journal published a story about a birthday letter purportedly connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump responded with striking aggression toward his longtime media ally. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Journal, News Corp, and Murdoch personally, seeking $10 billion in damages. Trump also banished the Journal from Air Force One and publicly demanded that Murdoch submit to deposition, with Trump's legal team noting the urgency given Murdoch's age. A federal judge threw out the lawsuit in April 2026, though the dismissal came just two days after the Journal published another editorial sharply criticizing Trump, and Trump vowed to refile the suit. Murdoch, for his part, characterized the lawsuit as an affront to press freedom.

The episode drew rare criticism of Trump from Murdoch-controlled outlets including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal alike, suggesting that even the commercial logic sustaining the Trump-Murdoch alliance has limits. Trump's public attacks on Murdoch have not been confined to the Epstein affair. Trump took to Truth Social to complain that Murdoch had long promised to "get rid of" Fox News's polling operation but had never done so, reflecting a recurring pattern in which Trump's frustration with unfavorable coverage spills into direct confrontation with his most valuable media patron.

Recent Developments

The most consequential development for the long-term structure of the Murdoch empire came in September 2025, when the family resolved a protracted succession dispute. Murdoch's family reached a deal on control of the 94-year-old mogul's media empire after his death, ensuring no change in direction at Fox News. The deal creates a trust establishing control of Fox Corp. for Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert's chosen heir who has been running Fox in recent years, along with his younger sisters, Grace and Chloe. Lachlan Murdoch's three older siblings — Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch, and James Murdoch — give up any claims to control of Fox in exchange for stock currently valued at $3.3 billion, according to The New York Times. The agreement ensures Lachlan Murdoch's control of the family's key media outlets until at least 2050, following a blocked bid to disinherit three of Rupert Murdoch's children.

The settlement matters politically because it forecloses the scenario — long anticipated by media observers — in which James Murdoch, who has been openly critical of Trump, might gain influence over Fox News. With Lachlan's control now legally secured for decades, the political direction of Fox News is not expected to shift after Rupert's death.

Outlook

Rupert Murdoch enters the latter stretch of his life as a figure whose formal power has passed to his son but whose institutional legacy continues to shape American politics in real time. The tension between Fox News's role as the dominant platform for Trump's political coalition and the Wall Street Journal's increasingly critical editorial posture illustrates the contradictions built into the Murdoch model: a business empire that profits from proximity to power while retaining enough editorial independence, in at least one outlet, to criticize that power when commercial or reputational interests demand it.

The defamation litigation with Trump, even if ultimately resolved or refiled, signals that the relationship between the two men has grown more adversarial in the second term than it was during the first. Yet the structural incentives that have bound Fox News to the Trump audience remain intact. For Murdoch, one of the most successful foreign-born businessmen in American history, this power dynamic works in his favor: so long as Trump's base remains Fox's core viewership, the network has little commercial reason to diverge. The succession settlement means those incentives will outlast Murdoch himself, making the empire's political alignment a durable feature of the American media landscape well into the future.

Sources

Axios, "Trump-Epstein saga splinters the Murdoch empire" (Jul 2025)

PBS NewsHour / Associated Press, "Murdoch family reaches media empire succession deal that won't change direction of Fox News" (Sep 2025)

Ballotpedia, "Rupert Murdoch" (Aug 2025)

KPBS / Associated Press, "Trump lawsuit against Murdoch and Wall Street Journal turns personal" (Jul 2025)

The Daily Beast, "Murdoch Paper Wall Street Journal Trashes Donald Trump's 'Self-Destructive' Vendetta" (Apr 2026)

The Daily Beast, "Murdoch Paper The Wall Street Journal Eviscerates Donald Trump After Bombshell Financial Disclosure" (Jul 2026)

Newsweek, "Murdoch Outlets Turn on Trump Over Iran Deal" (Jun 2026)

Yahoo / Variety, "Trump Lashes Out at Rupert Murdoch Over Fox News Polling" (Apr 2026)

Wikipedia, "Succession of Rupert Murdoch."