Profiles in Power: Who Is Rupert Murdoch? The Australian Who Became American Billionaire

In 1985, an Australian newspaper heir renounced his citizenship and became an American. He didn't do it for the dream. He did it because US law required broadcast license owners to be citizens, and he wanted to own television stations.

That man is Rupert Murdoch. What he built with those licenses has arguably done more to shape the political reality of the last four decades than any elected official in America.

And in September 2025, at age 94, he made sure that reality will continue until at least 2050, even after he's dead.

What he built

Murdoch inherited a single tabloid newspaper in Adelaide, Australia in 1952 after his father died. Over the next 70 years he built an empire that at various points included Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, HarperCollins, The Sun, News of the World, Sky News, and the Fox broadcast network. He did it through aggressive acquisitions, relentless cost-cutting, and a singular talent for identifying what audiences wanted and giving it to them in a way that generated loyalty rather than just readership.

Fox News launched in 1996. Within a decade it was the most-watched cable news network in America. It has held that position, with brief interruptions, ever since. Its influence on Republican politics is difficult to overstate. It functioned for two decades less as a news channel than as an ideological feedback loop, shaping what the party's base believed was true and amplifying voices that might otherwise never have reached a national audience.

Multiple presidents have cited Fox coverage as validation. Multiple wars have been either advanced or undermined in its prime-time hours. When Fox called Arizona for Biden in 2020, correctly, before any other network, Murdoch himself reportedly wrote 'I hate our Decision Desk people.' The network then helped circulate claims that the election had been stolen.

The $787 million acknowledgment

In 2023, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, the largest defamation settlement in American media history. The case had exposed internal communications in which Fox hosts and executives privately acknowledged that the network's election fraud coverage was not credible while continuing to broadcast it publicly. As part of the settlement, Fox issued a statement acknowledging that the court had found certain claims to be false.

No anchor was fired over this. No programming changed. Ratings stabilized. The settlement was a cost of doing business. Dominion got paid. The audience kept watching.

Voting machine maker Smartmatic has a separate $2.7 billion lawsuit still pending against both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch personally.

The succession fight and what it tells you

In late 2023, Murdoch filed a petition in a Nevada probate court to change the terms of his family trust, which had been established as irrevocable in 1999. The trust had given equal voting shares to his four eldest children: Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence. He wanted to strip the three younger children of their voting rights and give Lachlan sole control, because he believed James, Elisabeth, and Prudence were too politically moderate to preserve Fox's conservative identity.

The probate judge ruled against him in December 2024. But Murdoch kept maneuvering. In September 2025, the family reached a settlement: Lachlan's three older siblings sold their shares for $1.1 billion each. A new trust was created giving Lachlan sole voting control over Fox Corporation and News Corp until 2050. His two youngest daughters Grace and Chloe, from his marriage to Wendi Deng, get financial benefits but no vote.

The 94-year-old man filed a lawsuit against his own children to ensure that the ideological direction of the media his grandchildren will grow up watching is locked in for the next 25 years. He paid his kids $3.3 billion combined to make that happen.

This is what media as infrastructure looks like when one family controls it.

Lachlan is the story now

Lachlan Murdoch, born in London in 1971, raised in New York, educated at Princeton, is now the chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation. He is considered more ideologically conservative than his father. Rupert was transactional, backing politicians who served his interests regardless of party. Lachlan appears to be a true believer.

He has personally sued an Australian publication that connected the Murdoch family to the January 6 Capitol attack. He had to drop the case and pay over $800,000 in legal fees. He is now based in Sydney for much of the year, running a media empire whose primary audience is in America.

What changes with Lachlan in charge? Probably not much on Fox News, that's the point of the settlement. What may change is the Murdoch family's willingness to pivot when the political winds shift. Rupert was a pragmatist above all else. Lachlan is reportedly more committed to the ideology for its own sake.

The part that hits closest to home

Millennials grew up watching Fox News in their parents' homes. The network shaped the political imagination of the baby boomer generation, the one that voted in every election while this generation was told to wait its turn. The deregulatory politics, the 'economy is great' messaging, the contempt for institutional trust that Fox News amplified over three decades were not just media choices. They were political outcomes.

The wage stagnation. The housing policy. The student loan system that was never reformed. The tax structure that protected wealth concentration. These policies had audiences, and those audiences had a television channel that told them every night that everything was fine and anyone who said otherwise was a threat.

Rupert Murdoch didn't create those conditions. But he built the media architecture that made them politically durable for 40 years. And he just ensured it runs for 25 more.

Stay Frustrated.