Rupert Murdoch: The Succession prequel

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Speaker 7 This is Good, Bad Billionaire. I'm Zing Sing.

Speaker 8 And I'm Simon Jack.

Speaker 11 Each episode, we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money.

Speaker 7 And then we judge them. Are they good, bad, or just another billionaire?

Speaker 8 And this episode, a big one.

Speaker 13 A man who bestrides the media world like a colossus, one Keith Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 7 You know you said in a previous episode that you were scared of El Chappell. I feel like I'm more scared of Rupert Murdoch.
I mean, what can El Chappell do to me?

Speaker 17 Yeah, and as a journalist, he owns an awful lot of media outlets, so job opportunities can be limited.

Speaker 7 But we will dive straight into his profile and we'll figure out how he became a millionaire, then a billionaire, and how he uses that billionaire influence around the world.

Speaker 16 So let us start with a few big numbers.

Speaker 23 The first number we should note is he's 92 years old.

Speaker 7 What do you call it? A non-agenarian?

Speaker 25 A non-agenarian?

Speaker 7 Yes. And he inherited his first newspaper, age just 22.

Speaker 10 And from that paper, he built an entire global media empire that we're known as News Corp these days.

Speaker 29 His right-wing Fox News channel became the US's most watched and most controversial cable channel.

Speaker 7 While he's a media magnate, he's also talked about as one of the most powerful figures in politics.

Speaker 7 And since 1979, his tabloid in Britain, The Sun, has famously backed every single eventual election winner.

Speaker 29 This is really a story about power money and the influence of the two of them.

Speaker 34 But various scandals have cost him.

Speaker 23 His company's paid the family of murdered teenager Millie Dowler £2 million

Speaker 15 after the phone hacking scandal.

Speaker 7 To put it simply, that power has earned him enemies. In fact, a man was sentenced to six weeks in jail after throwing a cream pie at him.

Speaker 37 Yes, well, it was very interesting to watch one of his wives try and intercede in that episode.

Speaker 7 He's also managed to fit in quite a lot into his personal life. He's got four divorces under his belt and six children.

Speaker 29 Everyone talks about who's going to succeed him.

Speaker 19 In fact, one of our producers has cleverly and mischievously titled this episode the succession prequel.

Speaker 7 For those of you who are familiar with Logan Roy and the jockeying for position of his three children will know we've talked a lot about succession the TV show on this podcast but this is the OG succession inspiration although apparently in an interview with James Murdoch he claims that he never watched it really I find that absolutely impossible to believe and do if you remember when he got divorced from Jerry Hall part of the divorce settlement he specified don't tell the producers of succession give them any more ideas which if you're the producer and the writer for succession you're punching the air at that point, right?

Speaker 7 Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 7 And actually, one thing that was really interesting about doing the research on this was seeing how all the kind of motifs and themes of succession to TV show, which has sadly ended, get repeated in Murdoch's own life.

Speaker 48 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So let's hear from the man himself, being interviewed by a very young David Dimbleby for a profile the BBC did on him in 1969, just after he'd bought his first UK newspaper, News of the World, and when he was on the brink of buying the sun.

Speaker 49 It seems to me, you see, that it's very tempting for someone in your position with a new paper to start to turn it into a salacious scandal sheet, because there's absolutely no doubt that if it were that, it would get a big circulation.

Speaker 49 How do you resist the temptation?

Speaker 50 Well, I doubt very much whether you're right, that it would get a big circulation.

Speaker 50 You might get one overnight, but it wouldn't stay with you, and you wouldn't have the loyalty of your readers. You wouldn't have people wanting it to go into their homes regularly.

Speaker 50 You might get people in the street corner buying it quickly, but you wouldn't hold the thing.

Speaker 51 Well, let's see how that one goes.

Speaker 7 Let's see how that pans out.

Speaker 42 Yeah, interesting to hear a young David Dimbleby there.

Speaker 53 And you don't often hear from Murdoch himself, very, very rarely speaks publicly.

Speaker 11 So an interesting clip there, right at the beginning of his Empire Building.

Speaker 56 But let's go back to the beginning.

Speaker 7 So Rupert Murdoch is born in 1931 in Melbourne, pre-World War II, second of four children and the only boy.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and his father was Sir Keith.

Speaker 27 He was knighted two years after Rupert was born.

Speaker 12 He had been

Speaker 27 a first World War correspondent who built Australia's first media empire, and he was the chairman of multiple regional newspapers.

Speaker 7 And, you know, coming back to the whole succession thing, you know, in the title sequence where you see this montage of colonial mansions and children playing on kind of grassy lawns, you know, Rupert Murdoch basically grew up wealthy in a similar kind of way.

Speaker 7 He had the tennis courts.

Speaker 28 Yeah, his mother, Dame Elizabeth, much younger than Sir Keith.

Speaker 17 That's a behaviour that Rupert picked up from his father, as we will see in later years.

Speaker 35 She was a renowned philanthropist, but she taught him the importance of family, very important to the Murdochs, but also she was a disciplinarian, made him sleep in the garden hut sometimes.

Speaker 7 And this is a really great image, right? Apparently, he grew up hunting water rats to sell their skins for sixpence, and he only gave his sister a penny out of that profit.

Speaker 7 And he also sold rabbit manure, which is presumably for fertilizer.

Speaker 7 and she says that I always say that Rupert got his start in life from rabbits and manure I never saw any of the money Rupert did he spent it on gambling at school yeah I don't know what the market for water rat skins is that is no I actually had to google what they were and they're huge they weigh up to 1.3 kilos so you can kind of imagine the beginning of the biopic a water rat scurries out of its hole and it's clubbed over the head by a teenage murder.

Speaker 23 Well, when he wasn't busy catching rats, he went to an elite boarding school from the age of 10.

Speaker 37 He was editor of the student journal, but he was bullied.

Speaker 7 Rupert really disliked his time there, although it did set him up in good stead to eventually attend Oxford, where he did PPE, which I was quite surprised by.

Speaker 7 I mean, I didn't expect him to study at Oxford. I just kind of think he emerged from Australia fully formed.

Speaker 14 Yeah, and being slight anti-elite, probably anti-some of these kind of august institutions.

Speaker 10 But there he is doing the PPE, something has in common with some of the prime ministers that he helped crown, if you like.

Speaker 27 But like many students, he was actually left-wing.

Speaker 10 He had a bust of Lenin on his shelf at college, and he campaigned to be the treasurer of the University Labour Club.

Speaker 7 I mean, wow, that's a real sliding doors moment, isn't it?

Speaker 55 His father apparently said, he's at present a zealous labourite, but will, I think, probably eventually travel the same course as his father.

Speaker 7 And in fact, Sir Keith saw to it that the Aussie News correspondent Rohan Rivett took him under his wing, after which he wrote to Sir Keith, who was his boss at the time I am inclined to prophecy that Rupert will make his first million with fantastic ease.

Speaker 55 That prophecy was proved to be pretty right because at age 21 Rupert's father Keith Sir Keith died and in his will quite a specific instruction this.

Speaker 53 I think it's kind of unusual.

Speaker 14 It said Rupert should continue to express ideals of newspaper and broadcasting activities in the service of others and that he would ultimately be occupying a position of high responsibility in the field of the media.

Speaker 7 The thing I find so astonishing about this is that this will was written when Rupert was 16 years old.

Speaker 38 Yeah, so Keith clearly had very, very clear ideas about what Rupert should do and he was up to it.

Speaker 7 At the time of his death, Sir Keith's estate was valued at £410,000,

Speaker 7 but he had a lot of debt on his hands. So he was a chairman of the Herald and the Weekly Times, but he only actually owned the Adelaide News and a controlling stake in Queensland newspapers.

Speaker 8 Which, against Rupert's wishes, his mother sold that controlling stake in Queensland newspapers to the rival, The Herald.

Speaker 7 So that leaves Rupert with only one newspaper, the Adelaide News, which was a loss-making newspaper.

Speaker 29 But he owns it.

Speaker 24 And that ownership, that control is, I think, something that comes across as being really important.

Speaker 17 And from this, I mean, let's face it, he's got a silverish spoon in his mouth at this stage.

Speaker 44 We'll discuss Ragster Riches later in one of our categories.

Speaker 70 But he's got the cornerstone to build a new family business.

Speaker 7 So this is the moment in Rupert Murdoch's origin story where it sets him on this path of wanting to reclaim what was lost to the Murdoch family.

Speaker 7 But first he has to kind of complete his tutelage and not just at Oxford.

Speaker 7 So even after his father passes away he goes back to the UK to finish his degree but then he has this kind of moment where the Daily Express owner at the time, Lord Beaverbrook, takes him under his wing and kind of tells his deputy editor at the time, make sure that this 20-something-year-old learns something of the trade.

Speaker 7 You know, take care of him. You never know where he might end up.

Speaker 13 It's amazing that.

Speaker 52 So his father's a newspaper man.

Speaker 23 A journalist takes him under his wing at university.

Speaker 60 And then one of the biggest newspaper owners in the UK decides that he wants to sort of make sure he learns the trade.

Speaker 34 He was not going to do anything else, right?

Speaker 7 No, I mean, he was pretty much being groomed for that particular role, right? And this is really interesting.

Speaker 7 Apparently, he also inherits these secret notes on popular newspaper techniques from Lord Northcliffe, who is the owner of the Daily Mail and the Mirror.

Speaker 17 Is there any newspaper proprietor around who's not involved in this kid's life at this point?

Speaker 42 It's amazing.

Speaker 7 I presume it says stuff like, if it bleeds, it leads. You know, the classic maxim.

Speaker 22 So he finishes Oxford, returns to Australia to run the Adelaide News.

Speaker 47 And the journalist Rowan Rivet observed at the time, the metamorphosis of the young left-winger in the space of just four weeks to a right-wing, hungry, self-seeking conservative was the most remarkable thing I ever witnessed.

Speaker 7 I just want to know what's in those notes. In my head, it's like the Indiana Jones kind of lost arc of the covenant, where you open it up and it turns you from left-wing to right-wing.

Speaker 36 The images we have of Rupert Murdoch from those early years are all with him holding the newspaper by the printing press.

Speaker 13 Get the feel that he's someone to this day who still likes that newsprint underneath his fingernails, and he involved himself in all aspects of the paper's production.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he said you can't make money just by being a backroom manager involved in union agreements and newsprint supply. So he really likes to get his hands dirty.

Speaker 37 And David Dimbleby's assumptions about what might happen with the News of the World and then to the sun were based on fat because he had an emphasis there on lurid stories, scandals, and that was good for circulation.

Speaker 7 But he was also operating at a very different time for newspapers, right? So at the time, newspapers were what you could call a penny business.

Speaker 7 You want to make it cheap, sell it cheap, and sell loads and loads of papers. But to make money, you need to kill the competition around you.

Speaker 7 So to do this, to kill the competition, Rupert Murdoch goes into debt, buying up his rivals.

Speaker 64 And that was a kind of unusual thing, being leveraged like that, borrowing money to buy new stuff.

Speaker 44 It's a risky strategy.

Speaker 40 However, as we'll see later, the thing is that newspapers, if you get the circulation right, they generate a lot of cash.

Speaker 23 And the more cash you generate, the more money you can borrow.

Speaker 7 He also switched the Adelaide News Bank from the National Bank of Australia to the smaller Commonwealth Bank. It's kind of an interesting move, right?

Speaker 7 Because you would assume you'd want to stick with the big, traditional, institutional bank, not the smaller one.

Speaker 42 Well, the more important you are as a client to a bank, maybe the more attention you get.

Speaker 56 There is a very famous old saying, and many people have said this, that, you know, you borrow £100,000 from the bank, you're working for the bank.

Speaker 15 You borrow £100 million from the bank, the bank is working for you.

Speaker 7 Right. So the bank has a vested interest in making sure you succeed because if you tank, you take the bank with it.

Speaker 63 Correct. Right.

Speaker 10 So using debt, debt, he buys a string of regional newspapers in Australia and New Zealand.

Speaker 27 And in 1964, he launches The Australian, which is Australia's amazingly first national newspaper.

Speaker 7 And he grows circulation across all those titles by employing the same tabloid techniques that we mentioned earlier.

Speaker 72 Yeah, lyrid stories, scandals, photo splashes.

Speaker 30 And at probably around this time, given the fact that he owns the first national newspaper in Australia, I think it's safe to call him at this point.

Speaker 38 He's gone from zero to a million.

Speaker 11 Rupert Murdoch is a millionaire.

Speaker 7 So, while he's on the process of acquiring these millions and going from a million to a billion, he is also busy in his personal life.

Speaker 7 He marries his first wife out of four, Patricia Brooker, in 1956, and they have a girl called Prudence.

Speaker 72 Prudence Murdoch.

Speaker 51 We never hear about her.

Speaker 7 No, she's kept out of the headlines.

Speaker 61 They got divorced after 11 years, so he marries wife number two, Anna Torve, in 1967.

Speaker 56 They are together for 31 years, and they have three children together whose names you may know.

Speaker 23 They are Elizabeth, Lachlan, and James.

Speaker 7 One thing that is true between the fictional Logan Roy and the real Rupert Murdoch is that both of them have little time for anything other than work, and they don't actually have that many friends.

Speaker 7 In fact, Rupert Murdoch himself said that he was too busy to have any.

Speaker 38 One of the interesting questions I think is: too busy doing what?

Speaker 23 What's the end game?

Speaker 12 Is it money?

Speaker 63 Is it it power? What's it all for?

Speaker 31 What drives him on?

Speaker 7 So Rupert Murdoch has done very well for himself in Australia at this point, but he has his sights set on something much bigger, and that is the UK.

Speaker 54 He moves there and he sets his sights on a newspaper called News of the World.

Speaker 48 Been around for a long, long time.

Speaker 11 It's been run by the Carr family for nearly 100 years.

Speaker 7 So at the time, another very rich man, Robert Maxwell, is also trying to buy News of the World, and Murdoch couldn't quite match Maxwell's £34 million offer.

Speaker 23 So he cozies up to Sir William Carr, the head of the family, playing on Sir William's apparent reported dislike of Maxwell.

Speaker 7 And Murdoch promises Sir William all these things, right?

Speaker 7 If Sir William just sells the paper to him, Sir William can remain as chairman, you know, he'll still have, you know, that kind of toe hold of power.

Speaker 7 And it all comes to a head at dun dun dun, the famous succession plot line, the shareholders meeting.

Speaker 67 Yeah, so Murdoch and Maxwell fighting bitterly.

Speaker 72 Apparently Rupert Murdoch told the press yesterday Mr.

Speaker 34 Maxwell called me a moth-eaten kangaroo.

Speaker 7 He doesn't lose his words.

Speaker 51 And ultimately, though.

Speaker 7 Ultimately, though, the shareholders end up supporting Murdoch and the cars. But then Murdoch goes back on his word to Sir William.

Speaker 7 He ends up buying more shares in News of the World and just pushes the family completely out.

Speaker 19 In fact, about this whole affair, the then MP Christopher Price said the assurance to William Carr and his family was not kept.

Speaker 56 Some of us knew knew him well, and William Carr felt a deep sense of grievance to the end of his days.

Speaker 7 So clearly, Rupert Murdoch is not a man who cares about making enemies or rubbing people up the wrong way. That's for sure.

Speaker 36 And in fact, one of the things I think you'll see throughout this, and I've spoken to a few people who work for him, one of his abiding driving forces is that he didn't like elites and the establishment, even though he is part of it.

Speaker 23 So I think that's a common denominator.

Speaker 58 So yeah, that's right.

Speaker 7 So now he's got news of the world under his spell, and he sets his sights on another another newspaper, The Sun, which was at the time loss-making.

Speaker 23 So Robert Maxwell is in the frame again in this contest.

Speaker 7 So Murdoch again starts doing deals, right? He speaks with the unions. He promises them that if he gets The Sun, there'll be fewer redundancies.
And he buys it for a song, like 800K.

Speaker 7 That's nothing, right?

Speaker 53 If it's loss-making, who knows?

Speaker 21 I mean, but newspapers are funny things, aren't they?

Speaker 44 They have an influence and they have something which is very hard to value.

Speaker 23 It's an intangible quality which can exert influence.

Speaker 5 And of course, The Sun is a daily newspaper, whereas The News of the World was a Sunday, much more influence with a daily.

Speaker 7 I mean, you could call it clout, the 21st century term for it.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 28 So he turned The Sun into a tabloid format.

Speaker 10 He reduced costs by using the same printing press, which proved to be very unpopular with unions.

Speaker 35 There was huge strikes down at the Whopping Printing Press, for example, at that time.

Speaker 70 It was a big deal.

Speaker 7 So again, a guy who doesn't mind rubbing people up the wrong way. And he actually told The Sun's first editor, Larry Lamb, I I want a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it.

Speaker 63 Okay.

Speaker 48 Can we say that?

Speaker 17 And he got his wish.

Speaker 11 The first topless page three model appeared in 1970.

Speaker 7 I really struggle to think of the meeting where people were like, you know what this newspaper needs?

Speaker 7 We need to get a random woman that nobody knows, get her to take her top off and put it on page three. What used to be on page three before page three happened? I honestly don't know.

Speaker 29 It predates me.

Speaker 14 Page three was a big thing. Daisy from Dorking would tell you all about her views on the issues of the day.

Speaker 56 It seems amazing now, but it was part of British life.

Speaker 68 The people who appeared on page three, some of them became big stars.

Speaker 39 People like Samantha Fox, Linda Lusazi, people like that.

Speaker 54 They were household names.

Speaker 7 God, and do you think that all came from Rupert Murdoch?

Speaker 8 So these tabloid tactics, you know, page three is one of them.

Speaker 23 The other one was lurid stories.

Speaker 27 And the News of the World serialised the memoirs of Christine Keeler, who was

Speaker 28 at the centre of the Perfumo affair, a scandal which in itself had rocked the establishment.

Speaker 7 Right. I think for people, could you explain the Profumo affair? Because I think that some people listening will, this will have receded into the mists of time.
If not, they've never heard of it.

Speaker 16 Okay, the Profumo affair, in a nutshell, it was a scandal that had rocked the establishment where a woman, Christine Keeler, was having an affair with this cabinet minister, John Profumo, and also a Russian operative.

Speaker 63 You can see it all in the well-known film of the name Scandal.

Speaker 7 So big,

Speaker 7 big blow-up. And News of the World serialised Christine Keller's memoirs of the Profumo affair.

Speaker 27 But what the British establishment were cross about was what they saw as tawdry and vulgar sensationalism.

Speaker 39 But what did it do to sales?

Speaker 7 Let's guess. Sales went up.

Speaker 31 And in fact, David Dimpleby again quizzed him on that very thing.

Speaker 50 Here he is.

Speaker 49 What worries people is I think there was a comment of yours on this, that you said people can sneer as much as they like, but I'll take the 150,000 copies we're going to sell, and I believe we're now going to sell

Speaker 49 printing at 200,000.

Speaker 49 It suggests that you are, in fact, lining your pocket with rather sleazy material.

Speaker 50 Well, I don't agree it's sleazy for a minute,

Speaker 50 nor do I agree that it is unfair to the man or anything else. As I say it once have greatest sympathy with him, but it doesn't alter the fact that everybody knows.
what happened.

Speaker 50 Certainly it's going to sell newspapers. And there'll be other stories

Speaker 50 we'll put in which will sell newspapers.

Speaker 50 I'm not ashamed of that.

Speaker 53 Well, that's, and in a way, it goes back to the comment we made before.

Speaker 68 It shows again his dislike of elites.

Speaker 23 Why should John Profumo, former cabinet minister, have some kind of establishment protection, some sort of overmurta to basically protect him from the consequences of his actions?

Speaker 22 I think that's kind of a guiding star for Murdoch in many ways.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it is. And you know what?

Speaker 7 This is maybe the red-pilled alternative take on publishing Christine Keller's memoirs. But why does Profumo get to have the last say on it?

Speaker 7 You know, her name was also dragged through the mud, presumably. So why shouldn't she be allowed a platform to tell her side of the story?

Speaker 10 Yeah, it was around this time David Frost, he of Frost Nixon, also interrogated Rupert Murdoch, and it was described as an interview so hostile that some people put that interview as a reason that Rupert Murdoch decided to leave the country.

Speaker 23 And apparently he stormed offset and saying, I will buy this company.

Speaker 37 But mysteriously, no footage of this televised interview seems to exist.

Speaker 7 No, and actually Piers Morgan speculated online that Murdoch actually bought it off the market completely. I don't believe this clip is completely out of circulation.

Speaker 7 There must be some kind of I don't know someone in their 70s who was a runner who has you know.

Speaker 44 But anyway, so by this point he's got the news of the world, he's got the sun and later in the 1980s he would acquire the Times for $28 million, once again thwarting Robert Maxwell.

Speaker 63 The late Robert Maxwell must have, you know, had nightmares about Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 7 But as we'll find out, Rupert Murdoch doesn't just want to be confined to the UK. He wants to go global.
And with that, he moves his family to New York in the 70s.

Speaker 15 At the moment, his company is worth around $44 million in the early 70s.

Speaker 79 Not a big player in the US.

Speaker 32 But the Sun, as we mentioned earlier, is a big cash flow engine.

Speaker 70 And if you've got cash flow, you can service debt.

Speaker 65 So you can borrow to expand.

Speaker 7 What do you mean by service debt?

Speaker 54 There are some businesses which are highly cash generative.

Speaker 23 For example, newspaper business, someone hands over their 20p to get their copy of the sun, you're selling millions of copy, you're getting millions and millions of pounds in cash every day.

Speaker 16 That means you've got ready money to be able to pay the interest when it comes due on your debts.

Speaker 57 Other types of businesses take longer for the cash to come in.

Speaker 18 This is an instant cash generator and therefore banks are more relaxed about lending to someone who's got ready cash available to pay their interest requirements.

Speaker 7 But presumably that also means that you have to be quite happy with risk, right? Because one day people might decide not to buy newspapers.

Speaker 10 That's true, but people's newspaper choices in many ways are a bit like, in these days, a bit like cigarette brands.

Speaker 68 You don't change every day.

Speaker 23 If you're a sun person, you're a sun person. If you're a mirror person, you're a mirror person.

Speaker 70 And whole dynasties have been built on the fact that people tend to have a spiritual home for news, which they go to.

Speaker 27 Now, it could be very different in the modern age, and we can discuss whether newspapers still have the clout they had in these days.

Speaker 57 But those cash flows will have been seen as being quite reliable, and the banks would feel comfortable about lending the money.

Speaker 7 That is really true, actually, because in a day and age where you can swap your supermarket brands in and out, depending on your budget and what you want to eat or whatever.

Speaker 7 News people don't really swap newspapers in the same way still.

Speaker 14 Well, certainly not when they were sold on the newsstand.

Speaker 70 You're about to get on your train or your bus.

Speaker 30 You buy one newspaper and you tend to pick the same one every day.

Speaker 7 Can't ask for more brand loyalty than that.

Speaker 14 So he goes on a bit of a a spending spree.

Speaker 20 He buys the San Antonio Express News first, then New York magazine, and then the New York Post, and that becomes a very important purchase.

Speaker 7 Because the gossip section, i.e.

Speaker 7 page six of the New York Post, becomes a really influential section of a newspaper because politicians and celebrities start fearing and courting the reporters from it. It becomes like, I don't know.

Speaker 41 The place to be seen.

Speaker 7 The place to see and be seen.

Speaker 80 In fact, Time magazine puts Rupert Word on its cover as a kind of King Kong figure across Manhattan.

Speaker 7 Yeah you can actually Google it. It's a very funny cover.

Speaker 14 And in 1980 Rupert Murdoch established News Corps, News Corp,

Speaker 14 which becomes the holding company for News Limited, which has now got Australian, British and US arms.

Speaker 12 So the idea of a global media conglomerate begins to take shape.

Speaker 7 And it starts growing rapidly during the early 80s because there's this dramatic upsurge in advertising. Companies want to be seen in these newspapers.

Speaker 34 So, you know, he's king of New York, according to Time magazine, King Kong of New York, and in 1985 actually becomes a naturalized U.S.

Speaker 9 citizen.

Speaker 23 So he's now legally permitted to do something else, which is own U.S.

Speaker 31 television stations.

Speaker 7 I don't understand why you need to be a citizen to own U.S. TV stations.
Me neither.

Speaker 38 You can buy newspapers, but you can't buy TV stations.

Speaker 7 Very odd. But it doesn't stop Rupert Murdoch because once he gets that naturalization, he buys 20th Century Fox from an oil magnate called Marvin Davis for a cool $600 million.

Speaker 23 Again, a lot of money in those days. He also acquires Metro Media's independent television stations for $1.5 billion.

Speaker 66 So he is now a television presence in six major cities.

Speaker 7 And in 1985, he's now worth $300 million, which makes him one of the richest people in America.

Speaker 14 And a year later, he launched the national broadcast network Fox, which becomes an entertainment staple in the US.

Speaker 7 Yes, and it's focusing on younger audiences. So you'll remember shows like The Simpsons, The X-Files, 90210.
I mean, The Simpsons are still going on now.

Speaker 7 I mean, I remember a time when Fox was just the pre-roll on a good TV show, you know, how times change.

Speaker 25 Yeah, do you even remember 90210?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I do actually. I watched reruns.

Speaker 7 And presumably those reruns were also making Murdoch quite a lot of money.

Speaker 10 So over the next few years, he makes some sales, some purchases.

Speaker 23 Just for old time's sake, he buys the Herald and Weekly Times in Australia, something his father never managed to do.

Speaker 14 That really solidifies his massive grip on the newspaper market.

Speaker 28 He owns over 60% of the newspaper market.

Speaker 7 So does this give him a monopoly? What exactly does

Speaker 7 a monopoly constitute?

Speaker 63 I don't know what that means really, because in this country, in the UK, there are rules about how much concentration of the news media you can actually have.

Speaker 43 I would have thought that in the UK, owning 60% of the newspaper market would not be allowed, but clearly in Australia, they have slightly different rules.

Speaker 57 It's a regular occurrence, actually for Rupert Murdoch that he pushes up against the limits of what is considered acceptable in different countries in terms of concentration of media power.

Speaker 34 Sometimes he gets it over the line, sometimes he has to cut a deal, maybe he'll have to sell something in order to buy something else.

Speaker 34 Sometimes he'll court the politicians involved and find a way of doing it.

Speaker 14 He did that in the satellite TV market in the UK, which we'll see in a little bit.

Speaker 78 So bit by bit, his influence and power increases.

Speaker 7 Sometimes King Kong gets to climb the Empire State and sometimes he doesn't. Yes.
So in 1987, Forbes declares his net worth to be $2.1 billion,

Speaker 7 which is tripling on from the previous year.

Speaker 7 So he is officially a billionaire.

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Speaker 23 So he's a billionaire, but like with so many of our billionaires, I'd have been out a long time ago.

Speaker 78 I've been fishing, I don't know, sailing, whatever.

Speaker 7 One newspaper's good enough for me.

Speaker 17 Exactly.

Speaker 30 But he goes on, he continues to amass and consolidate power.

Speaker 7 So just to list a few examples, he launches Sky TV in the UK. He buys the publishing house Harper and and Collins.
He buys Intermixed Media, which at the time owned MySpace.com.

Speaker 7 And he also buys Dow Jones, which is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 55 That is an incredible list of very, very powerful brands.

Speaker 60 In the Asian market, he buys the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Star TV, and India's Z TV.

Speaker 7 And in 1996, he launches the 24-hour cable news network, Fox News.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 82 Which becomes news itself pretty soon.

Speaker 7 So with your business hat on, I just, I want to know: is spreading yourself this thin, if that's what you can call it, usually a good strategy? Because he's in lots of different markets now, right?

Speaker 29 I don't know for sure what the rationale of this is.

Speaker 23 Maybe there's, you know, what often happens in business is that if you go to one market and the formula works, why not apply that to another market?

Speaker 45 Now, I'm guessing that page three probably doesn't work in China.

Speaker 7 It probably doesn't work for the South China Morning Post.

Speaker 48 I don't suppose it does.

Speaker 57 But that instinct of giving working people what it is they want to watch is something that I think is probably the common denominator in all of these things.

Speaker 5 I suppose the rationale is if you're succeeding in building this empire, like any empire builder, where's the stop button?

Speaker 18 Right. Why not do more?

Speaker 15 If that's the kind of thing that drives you,

Speaker 20 where's the off switch and why would you press it?

Speaker 7 I mean, it's a very compelling argument, I'm sure, that off switch doesn't exist in a lot of our billionaires.

Speaker 48 No, I think that's right.

Speaker 64 Like I say, I would have been, I would have quit a long time ago.

Speaker 7 You would have pressed the eject button.

Speaker 48 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 14 But anyway, one of the things about having this incredible reach, he becomes a very important political figure.

Speaker 7 So we said before that since 1979, his paper The Sun has backed every single eventual winner of a UK election.

Speaker 23 Including in 1992, when John Major was behind in the polls to Labour politician Neil Kinnock, but went on to win unexpectedly with the help of The Sun.

Speaker 69 Kelvin Mackenzie, who was the editor of The Sun, ran a headline saying, it's the sun what won it.

Speaker 57 And I happened to know, talking to one of the previous editors of The Sun, that Rupert Murdoch did not like that headline at all.

Speaker 18 He did not like the paper bragging about overtly about its political influence.

Speaker 29 I think that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I guess you can exercise influence a lot more effectively if you're working behind the scenes, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I asked one person what drove, again, one of his former editors, what drove him.

Speaker 55 What was the strategy?

Speaker 14 What's the end game?

Speaker 21 And he said, it was a bit like talking to a spy case officer, that you knew what you had to do, but you weren't let into what the whole project was.

Speaker 7 Right. You know, you've got to pick the briefcase up from the park bench in Regent's Park at 12 midday, but you're not going to know what's in it.

Speaker 63 Exactly right.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 10 fast forward to the 1997 election, and Murdoch told the then Sun to switch party allegiance and back Blair and Labour.

Speaker 9 200%, he said, back them 200%.

Speaker 7 Right. So with a daily readership of over 10 million people, they ran the headline, the sun backs Blair, and we all know what happened next.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 63 And it's interesting because I know for a fact that, you know, Murdoch had met Blair, was fascinated by him, liked him a lot.

Speaker 14 And here's the other thing is that they say that they back every winner.

Speaker 72 Sometimes they will have created the winner and sometimes they will have realized, uh-oh, this person's going to win.

Speaker 55 So let's flip-flop and back them.

Speaker 26 And I think that may have happened in the Trump election, which is what we'll come on to at some point.

Speaker 7 Interesting. And definitely, you know, he's not immune to moving support from his papers to do a U-turn.

Speaker 7 So in a 2010 general election, they moved support from Brown back to the Tories, to David Cameron. David Cameron won.

Speaker 29 He likes to keep his politicians on side because they can help him very much in his business interests.

Speaker 72 So, for example, Rupert Murdoch owned 39% of the satellite broadcast of B Sky B and wanted to buy the rest.

Speaker 8 And there's some suggestion that he's switching his allegiance.

Speaker 34 And if David Cameron would get into office, then that might help him

Speaker 16 seal that deal.

Speaker 31 Although Rupert Murdoch said his decision to announce the B-Sky bid after the general election was pure coincidence and said, I have never asked a prime minister for anything.

Speaker 7 No, if anything, I think Prime Minister is probably asking for quite a lot.

Speaker 42 Yeah, well, there is a rule in politics is don't upset Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 7 But becoming a billionaire doesn't make Murdoch immune to failure or criticism. So let's look at a few examples, beginning with the phone hacking scandal.

Speaker 23 And this one really hit home in a big way and actually ended up with him losing one of the cornerstones, one of the original cornerstones of his media empire.

Speaker 28 There were allegations that News International journalists had been involved for many years in hacking people's phones for information and the outrage hit its pinnacle when Millie Dowler, a teenager who was abducted and murdered, had her voicemails hacked.

Speaker 7 And the former News of the World editor Andy Cossen was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones and was given an 18-month prison sentence.

Speaker 42 Meanwhile, there were lots of cash payments and settlements made to people who were complaining, but suffice it to say that it ended up with Rupert Marlock closing down the News of the World, which had been around for, I think, for like 160 years.

Speaker 27 It was a big deal.

Speaker 31 But it was seen, I think, by the Murdoch family as the sacrifice in order to keep the rest of the empire intact.

Speaker 7 And actually, Murdoch was hauled up before MPs to answer questions about phone hacking. And when he did so, he said, this is the most humble day of my life.

Speaker 41 Yeah that was also the moment when the foam pie was thrown in his face despite the efforts of Wendy Deng, his then wife, to intercept the assailant.

Speaker 64 This scandal led to a big inquiry called the Leveson Inquiry which was split into two parts and controversially the second part of the Leveson Inquiry never actually happened.

Speaker 63 The actor Hugh Grant was one of his biggest critics and was part of a campaign called Hacked Off who campaigned against the organization because of the phone hacking scandal.

Speaker 58 and his Hugh Grant's quote was Murdoch is a proper danger to liberal democracies if liberal democracy is your thing

Speaker 7 but it also isn't just the UK he also had to deal with recent scandal in the US in the Fox versus Dominion court case so rewind back to the 2020 US election right when Republicans including the failed presidential candidate Trump falsely claimed that a voting machine company called Dominion had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden that was something that was repeated ad nauseam by Fox News.

Speaker 29 They really amped up those allegations.

Speaker 7 So Dominion claimed that its reputation was hurt after Fox knowingly spread these lies about its voting machines and they sued Fox News for $1.6 billion.

Speaker 27 And it almost very nearly went to court, which would have seen Murdoch have to testify.

Speaker 8 But at the last minute, Fox News settled for $780 million just hours after the trial began.

Speaker 7 I mean, that is very, very close to the wire. And understanding.

Speaker 5 There's a check written on the court steps.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. But despite this, Murdoch still has time to find love many times over.

Speaker 7 In 1999, age 68, he divorces Anatov, who reportedly receives 1.7 billion US dollars in assets, including 110 million of which was in cash.

Speaker 7 So that would have made it the most expensive divorce ever at that point in time.

Speaker 62 And she had some interesting reflections on this.

Speaker 82 I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I love died a long time ago.

Speaker 57 Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him, but the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way.

Speaker 7 So he ends up marrying his third wife, Wendy Dung, 17 days after his divorce from Anatov is finalised. They met at a party when Wendy was just an intern.
She's actually 37 years younger than him.

Speaker 52 And the well-known singer in the UK, Charlotte Church, sang when she was only 13 years old and was offered £100,000

Speaker 47 or a favour.

Speaker 75 Right.

Speaker 7 Real godfather stuff, I think.

Speaker 43 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 14 If I was 13, I'll say I'll take the hundred grand, but she doesn't.

Speaker 7 No, she's actually told by her managers that a favour from Murdoch is actually worth more than 100K, although she doesn't seem to think it's done her any good.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but that's interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 42 I mean, that's quite a thing for a manager of a young celebrity to say £100,000 in your pocket now is worth less than possibly a favour in the future from Rupert Murdoch.

Speaker 26 I think he's wrong.

Speaker 7 But it says a lot about what people think of Murdoch's power and influence.

Speaker 32 Anyway, he's not done with his weddings.

Speaker 34 He divorced Wendy Deng in 2013.

Speaker 27 In 2016, age 84, he marries Jerry Hall, famous model.

Speaker 43 He used to be married to Mick Jagger, of course, but they didn't last long.

Speaker 7 They divorce in 2022, and in 2023, at the age of 92, Rupert Murdoch announces his engagement to a 66-year-old called Anne Leslie Smith, who is a former dental hygienist, turned conservative radio host.

Speaker 55 To paraphrase a line used by a comedy show in the UK about the attractiveness of very rich people,

Speaker 18 what is it about the 92-year-old multi-billionaire media mogul, powerful, one of the most powerful people on the planet that first attracted you?

Speaker 7 Well, it only took six months after their first meeting to announce the engagement, although it was then called off within two weeks.

Speaker 46 Now he's got a new girlfriend rumored as Elena Zukova, who is also 66 years old, and quite brilliantly happens to be billionaire, former Chelsea owner, oligarch Roman Abramovich's mother-in-law.

Speaker 7 Right, his ex-mother-in-law, actually, because I think he divorced her daughter. Oh, okay.
This is just the rarefied world of the rich, right? I'm sure they just all meet at parties on super yachts.

Speaker 61 Yeah, I'm sure that's right.

Speaker 52 He has had some health scares over the years.

Speaker 7 So, in 2000, he was treated for prostate cancer, receiving radiation therapy. Newscop at the time said, doesn't require a change in his work schedule.

Speaker 38 Yeah, well, that was 20-odd years ago.

Speaker 51 Just five years ago, he was hospitalized after injuring his back when he had a fall on his son Lachlan's yacht.

Speaker 7 And Lachlan will play an increasing role in the years to come because in 2019, Murdoch sells the entertainment empire he founded, 21st Century Fox, to Disney for 71 billion.

Speaker 23 And this is an interesting one because James's son was running this.

Speaker 27 He quite enjoyed being the head of a movie studio.

Speaker 73 And people close to him say that he was a bit annoyed about having that sold out from under him.

Speaker 47 But it goes back to his roots here.

Speaker 23 He's such a newsman. He's much more a newsman than he is a movie man.

Speaker 70 So he sold 21st Century Fox, but he retains control of the Fox News channel and Fox's broadcast network.

Speaker 7 Right. So this sale is his largest accrual of wealth in his nearly 70-odd year career.
This is the move that truly makes him rich.

Speaker 7 So he was a billionaire before, but this makes him billion, billion, billionaire.

Speaker 51 So the Murdoch family wealth stands at $17 billion.

Speaker 40 Around half of it is his personally.

Speaker 23 The rest is split between the kids.

Speaker 10 And I think he had a 34% share in News Corp.

Speaker 14 And he said, is that enough?

Speaker 41 And he said, it's enough to settle any argument.

Speaker 14 So basically, he could be the deciding vote on anything that happens in the family.

Speaker 7 But, you know, September 2023, he's 92 years old and he announces his retirement as the chair of Foxcorp and executive chairman of News Corp and becomes chairman emeritus. Emeritus.
Emeritus.

Speaker 7 What does that even mean?

Speaker 23 It just means somebody who used to be really, really senior, and you keep them around for old time's sake, and they've kind of got some honorary title.

Speaker 81 It's kind of an academic thing a lot of the time.

Speaker 72 And his son, Lachlan, becomes sole chairman of both companies.

Speaker 68 So it looks like he's won the succession race.

Speaker 33 But a lot of people think that the succession issue is not settled once and for all, and we could see more action on that in the future.

Speaker 46 The fictionalized series of that may be over, but the real-life drama about who eventually ends up being succeeding to the whole Empire may not be over yet.

Speaker 7 So Lachlan's on top for now, but who knows?

Speaker 21 So it's time, this is the difficult bit, being a journalist, being in a rather uncomfortable position of asking whether Rupert Murdoch is good, bad, or just another billionaire.

Speaker 27 Now, as we always do, we're going to do this by a series of categories.

Speaker 70 I'm going to start with wealth, just absolute wealth.

Speaker 7 So the Murdoch family is currently 95th richest in the world. He's also managed to hold on to billionaire status for nearly four decades, which is very impressive.

Speaker 16 Yeah, we also look at things like how they spend, how they wear, how they exhibit their wealth.

Speaker 32 And he's bought some of the usual billionaire trinkets in 1997. He bought the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for $240 million and sold them again in 2004.

Speaker 7 In 2004, he also bought a $44 million apartment, which at the time was the most expensive in New York and previously owned by a Rockefeller.

Speaker 42 Yeah, and in 2021, he bought the Beaverhead Ranch in Montana for over $200 million, buying from the Koch family.

Speaker 80 People will be covering soon, very influential.

Speaker 7 And he also has an extensive portfolio of luxury yachts.

Speaker 18 Yeah, although apparently, Wendy Deng's saying it's always the same with his family.

Speaker 39 When he bought his 183-foot sailing yacht, he thought it was too ostentatious.

Speaker 14 It's always the same with his family.

Speaker 62 They're so cheap, they're always wondering that they spent too much money.

Speaker 7 I mean, how would you judge wealth? I mean, in terms of absolute wealth, he's not in the top 10.

Speaker 65 No, I think he's got enough money to be at the top table.

Speaker 27 Somebody said to me, said the reason he wanted money as well as power was because 90% of the best deals are offered to the 2% of the richest people.

Speaker 12 So you've got enough money to be in and around it.

Speaker 46 In a way, he had enough wealth to be present at the very top table of rich people.

Speaker 5 And that's where the big deals and the empire building gets done.

Speaker 7 And he's probably one of the richer people in media.

Speaker 63 And without doubt, the most powerful, but we'll get onto that in a minute.

Speaker 7 So I would give him probably a six.

Speaker 68 Well, I'll tell you what, I'd give him a six for personal wealth.

Speaker 28 For family wealth, I'd give him a seven.

Speaker 7 Interesting. So rags to riches, that's the next category.
How far have they travelled from their humble or not so humble origins?

Speaker 61 Not so humble in this case.

Speaker 70 Dad was a knight, mother a dame.

Speaker 18 He went to Australia's most elite school, then Oxford.

Speaker 10 And at 22, he inherits a newspaper.

Speaker 7 I mean, can you imagine?

Speaker 62 Wouldn't that be fun to inherit a newspaper at 22 years old?

Speaker 7 I mean, at 22 years old, these days, the most you inherit student debt. So I would say for rags to riches, he scores pretty lowly on this one.

Speaker 57 But he did turn a single regional Australian newspaper that was losing money into the world's largest media conglomerate.

Speaker 19 So that is a pretty big and impressive journey.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that is true. Oh, maybe I should reconsider.

Speaker 7 I would say personal journey, given the fact, you know he was born into money probably a one but the journey itself from australia all the way to the white house really yeah that's that's pretty impressive yeah what would you give him in terms of rags to riches out of ten uh one right we're both in agreement on a one so now we come to the juicy bit villainy how would you rank him on villainy

Speaker 22 Well, like most, let's have a look at what he's actually done.

Speaker 9 He butts heads with Robert Maxwell lots of times, ends up winning most of the time.

Speaker 11 That's palf the course in love and war.

Speaker 23 He cozies up to the Carr family when he buys the News of the World, only to oust them after a little while.

Speaker 14 Again, pretty power for the course.

Speaker 33 In terms of being hard-headed, maneuvering to

Speaker 11 gain control of businesses, to build an empire, there's nothing in that behavior which is very different from some of the other billionaires we've seen.

Speaker 7 At the same time, I think he has been held held as ultimately responsible, right, for a lot of the more salacious, distasteful side of journalism that a lot of his publications and channels have fostered over the years or have been accused of fostering.

Speaker 7 You know, there's that really famous interview with Dennis Potter, who was terminally ill with cancer at the time.

Speaker 7 And he said, I call my cancer Rupert because there's no one person more responsible for the pollution of what was already a fairly polluted press.

Speaker 7 And the pollution of the British press is an important part of the pollution of British political life. And he said that in the 90s.
You could easily say, you know, the same thing about Fox News.

Speaker 7 And some people have even drawn a straight line between the January insurrection at the capital and what the kind of things that Fox News was saying about the vote being rigged.

Speaker 7 But then you can also ask yourself, you know, the guy at the very, very top, was he making the decisions to say things like that?

Speaker 68 He could have stopped it probably.

Speaker 32 And, you know, you're seeing right now now the

Speaker 63 fallout from the Trump years and you've got Trump in court.

Speaker 70 Some people are saying, you know, the US is on the verge of some kind of political chaos with an election about a year away.

Speaker 81 A lot of people put that down to Fox News.

Speaker 10 You look at incidents like that and it's easy to say that this is an organization which has got its fingerprints on some pretty murky stuff.

Speaker 43 But do we know that, you know, Rupert Murdock at the top was the person who was directing this?

Speaker 8 I think that you've got an empire that big, all sorts of things happen how much you can trace back to him personally I don't know you could argue that he certainly had the power to stop it again what we should probably say is that no one forced people to buy a newspaper with women with her tits out on page three no one forces people to watch Fox News there is an audience out there how much you're the agent and how much you're reflecting what the society you're in is an age-old debate.

Speaker 23 I guess the other thing is he fundamentally believed in a free press.

Speaker 77 Now, a free press majority owned by one person with a particular agenda, you know, is that a free press in the way that we'd normally understand it?

Speaker 52 You know,

Speaker 20 I think that if you went out and asked a straw poll in the street, I think you would get over 50% of people saying he's a villain.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and I think he would, he's the kind of guy who would hate to be given a measly down the line five out of ten. So I'm going to give him a six.

Speaker 74 Okay, I'm going to give him I'm going to give him a seven.

Speaker 50 Okay.

Speaker 7 We'll see how that comes back to haunt us.

Speaker 7 Let's talk about his philanthropy, though, because this is the score where, you know, a lot of billionaires can kind of save themselves, right? Yeah.

Speaker 14 He scores pretty low on this one, Rupert Murdock.

Speaker 7 So Forbes, which, you know, gives out these scores, he actually has the lowest philanthropic score. And he's given away less than 1% of his wealth.

Speaker 27 Okay, so that puts him well below people like Gates, Chuck Feeney, what have you.

Speaker 14 He has made a few donations.

Speaker 29 He gave £1 million to charities specified by the Millie Dowler family.

Speaker 73 And obviously, that wouldn't have happened without the phone hacking scandal.

Speaker 7 He's also given $100K to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. And in 2013, he gave $15K to the Chelsea Pensioners Appeal in memory of Margaret Thatcher.

Speaker 48 Both of the donations.

Speaker 7 15 grand. I mean, yeah, 15 grand is not very much, is it? In the grand scheme of things.

Speaker 28 That's not even a rounding area.

Speaker 18 Probably, you know, there's a lunch bill.

Speaker 31 I'm going to give him a zero philanthropy.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, even though, you know, I think News Cork does have a charitable giving program,

Speaker 7 but the pot is only worth $100K to be shared between chosen charities by News Corp employees. That's also not tons, is it? Pitiful.
Yeah, so zero.

Speaker 78 Okay, here's the here's for me the category that matters the most for this one, and it's power.

Speaker 7 How powerful is Rupert Murdoch? I mean, he apparently uses the back door of Downing Street for his appointments.

Speaker 21 He says it's close to his apartment.

Speaker 71 I don't believe that for a second.

Speaker 31 He's got a reasonable claim to be one of the most powerful people on earth.

Speaker 7 Oh, definitely.

Speaker 63 I mean, I would say he's, given the fact his longevity and his influence, he has been a kingmaker for politics in Australia, in the UK, in the US.

Speaker 57 You could argue he's more powerful than any sitting prime minister or president.

Speaker 7 I feel like surely he should be a 10 on this.

Speaker 53 Yeah, I don't think that you do this stuff.

Speaker 71 Back one politician, then back another.

Speaker 8 You know full well that your backing can make or break someone's political career and decide who the next prime minister or president is.

Speaker 45 You don't do that for decades without slightly enjoying it.

Speaker 18 So for power, I think it's 10.

Speaker 42 I'd be surprised if we come up in all of our billionaires with someone who wields this much power.

Speaker 17 And then legacy.

Speaker 27 I mean, in a way, he's a bit of a throwback.

Speaker 55 You know, the sort of newspaper media baron.

Speaker 29 You just wonder whether there'll ever be anyone like him ever again.

Speaker 7 No, if you want to make money these days, you don't get into newspapers.

Speaker 13 And yet it's interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 21 So newspapers, do they have, we've just talked about how powerful he is, he's still that powerful.

Speaker 23 And you could argue that he's still wielding that power when some argue that newspapers aren't the force they used to be.

Speaker 7 I mean, could newspapers make or break a political party in the same way that the sun has?

Speaker 7 I still think they could, you know, because you can have a sea of 10 million TikToks and tweets or X's, whatever they call them now. Yeah.

Speaker 7 But a front page of a newspaper still has what's called cut through, right?

Speaker 55 Yeah, it cuts through.

Speaker 12 The other thing I think is interesting is that Rupert Murdoch did for the right what the left has never done.

Speaker 14 And David Dimbleby said this recently, actually.

Speaker 79 He said he created a mustering point for right-wing opinion in the US and in the UK in the way that the left has never done.

Speaker 29 There is no Rupert Murdoch of the Left.

Speaker 7 Oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 7 Because, you know, yeah, there is that sliding doors moment where could the young Rupert Murdoch, the guy with a Lenin bust on his college bookshelf, could he just have stuck the course and become a left-wing media magnate?

Speaker 7 The world would probably be a very different place.

Speaker 61 Well, given the fact that he has single-handedly helped pick or influence a number of different presidents, prime ministers of the UK and Australia,

Speaker 8 you've got to imagine that he's changed the course of history and that gives him a pretty high legacy score.

Speaker 63 So I would give him a nine.

Speaker 7 I would give him a nine too, I think. I think we're going to remember him in centuries to come.
Yeah.

Speaker 77 Also, a lot depends on what happens with his kids.

Speaker 9 But maybe we'll do a separate podcast on them.

Speaker 7 That's very true. It depends on what Lachlan, Elizabeth, and James end up doing.
So balls in your court, kids.

Speaker 72 Cue the succession music.

Speaker 7 Good, bad, or just another billionaire?

Speaker 44 Okay, I'm the BBC's business editor.

Speaker 14 Our instincts and our orders are for due impartiality.

Speaker 75 Right.

Speaker 23 Our job is to look at how they made their money and then judge them on certain categories.

Speaker 15 It's not to take a view on their personal politics.

Speaker 81 And the thing is, he's such a divisive, controversial, powerful figure that it's easy to get sucked into, as you say, your personal politics.

Speaker 5 That's not our job on this programme.

Speaker 39 And so I'm going to say he's

Speaker 55 a very, very powerful billionaire.

Speaker 7 I think this is a litmus test for your own personal politics

Speaker 7 because whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, it's going to influence how you view him.

Speaker 7 The thing I came back to is, you know, that eulogy that Kendall Roy delivers at Logan Roy's funeral. It's a great piece of script writing, right?

Speaker 7 You know, it was clearly written with someone like Rupert Murdoch in mind, someone who has a really kind of politicized, very Marmite, to put it mildly, legacy.

Speaker 7 And Kendall Roy says he was a brute, he was a beast, but he built things. And I think you can't deny that Rupert Murdoch has built things.

Speaker 7 He's built something in absolutely, when you look at it, staggering, whether or not you agree with what it's accomplished and however much you think he had personal influence in some of the decisions that people take most issue with.

Speaker 7 So for me, he's a billionaire. He's not just another billionaire, but he's probably the billionaire of our times.

Speaker 20 That's really interesting. It's a really well put.

Speaker 14 Okay, so who's our billionaire for next episode?

Speaker 7 Well, you might know him as the father-in-law of the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Speaker 44 The father of Akshata Murti, as you say, Rishi Sunak's wife,

Speaker 61 is a billionaire with a hotline to the British Prime Minister.

Speaker 7 He's also known as the father of India's IT boom and the Indian Bill Gates.

Speaker 16 Yeah, a hugely influential figure in the emergence of India as an economic and technology superpower.

Speaker 7 So that's NR Nairayana Murti next week.

Speaker 11 Thank you for listening to Good, Bad Billionaire.

Speaker 44 This podcast is produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward.

Speaker 41 James Cook is our editor, and it's a BBC Audio Production.

Speaker 1 John Grisham explores the dark side of the criminal justice system in his number one New York Times bestseller, written with innocence advocate Jim McCloskey, Framed, 10 true stories of innocent people framed for murder.

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