Rupert Murdoch – Part Two – Decline of the Digger

About this episode

Hello and welcome to season 10 of Origin Story. This week we conclude the story of Rupert Murdoch, the media titan people love to hate. After a brush with bankruptcy in 1990, Murdoch came roaring back with a new focus on television around the world. In 1996, he launched Fox News under the baleful command of Roger Ailes, which became a key driver of the polarisation of America. For a period, his celebrity-loving new wife Wendi Deng and attraction to New Labour seemed to pull Murdoch himself in a more liberal direction but his innate conservatism, and the profit monster of Fox News, won out. In the 2010s, Murdoch looked truly vulnerable for the first time. Damaged by the phone-hacking crisis at his British tabloids and multiple scandals at the increasingly extreme Fox News, he downsized his empire and wrestled with a succession psychodrama of his own making. After pitting three of his children — Lachlan, Elisabeth and James — against each other for years, he finally chose an heir but the bitterness he generated in the process has had seismic ramifications for his business. Murdoch is 95 and the global edifice he has spent seven decades building looks shakier than ever. Along the w