Original subtitles

[distant siren wailing]

[car horns beeping]

[ominous string music playing]

[Jonathan Mahler] Jim Rutenberg and I started writing about the Murdochs

more than 20 years ago.

And, you know, I would say, with some humility,

that I think we have, like, gotten to know the family pretty well.

[Jim Rutenberg] One day, out of the blue,

we get contacted by this mystery person,

saying "You're gonna find this pretty interesting,

given what you do and who you cover."

So we agreed to meet.

All I can say is the way that we had to get that first document

was pretty involved.

Nothing was gonna be given to us electronically

'cause it's all so sensitive.

So that meant meeting in secret locations, passing envelopes.

[Jonathan] Until finally, we got our hands on these secret documents.

We couldn't believe it. It was jaw-dropping.

[dramatic music playing]

This was thousands of pages. E-mails, text messages.

Every page was unbelievable.

[Jonathan] "You're being lobbied by James, and you're going to bend to his will."

To this, Liz responds, "Do you think I'm a fucking moron?"

[Jim] The family was airing decades of dirty laundry in a Nevada court.

[Jonathan] That's when it dawned on us,

that, oh my God, the Murdoch family is in a massive lawsuit against each other.

[reporter 1] According to the New York Times,

93-year-old Rupert Murdoch allegedly surprised three of his children

by filing to change an irrevocable trust.

- [reporter 2] It reads like Succession. - [reporter 3] A legal battle.

[reporter 4] At issue, who controls his right-leaning media empire.

[woman] Joining me, one of the reporters who broke this story.

All right, Jim, why are the three siblings going up against Lachlan and Rupert?

I just would say it's really why is Rupert, uh,

going against the three siblings?

[soft, intriguing music playing]

[Jonathan] After our story ran,

everyone knew the family was suing each other

over Rupert's desire to lock in Lachlan's control over the company.

[reporter 5] Morning. Anybody have any comment this morning?

[Jonathan] But then there was no more information available.

The case was sealed.

[reporter 5] Any comment?

[Jonathan] No one was really allowed to talk about it.

And then we learned that all the Murdoch family members

were going to actually testify against each other.

[Jim] The Murdochs were going to war

in a pitched court fight over the future of the entire empire.

[intriguing music continues]

[music ends]

[McKay Coppins] In early 2024,

before the New York Times piece came out,

I approached James really just on a hunch

that he would have an interesting story to tell.

[intense music playing]

He couldn't quite believe

that his father was willing to divide the family, maybe permanently.

So when James was deposed as part of the preparation for the trial,

he was really ready to go to battle.

James had spent 20 years as a senior executive.

He had been in depositions where you have to be really aggressive.

And so he decided that he was going to approach the whole thing

in a spirit of corporate combat.

But the deposition was much more difficult

for James emotionally than I think he was prepared for.

When he walked into the boardroom,

James saw that it wasn't just his father's lawyer and his lawyer,

but sitting in this office

was his father himself.

[music intensifies]

James didn't know that Rupert would be there.

This was the first time he had seen Rupert in years. They were fully estranged.

His dad just sat down across from him.

They didn't talk to each other.

And for the next several hours,

Rupert's lawyer just grilled James with incredibly witheringly personal questions.

[music pauses]

Questions like,

"Have you ever accomplished anything on your own?"

[music resumes]

Or, "Why don't you ever take responsibility

for the things that go wrong in your life?"

Or, "Why were you too busy to call your dad on his 90th birthday?"

James told me that he tried to concentrate on the lawyer's questions,

but he just kept looking over at his dad, who was staring inscrutably at his son.

And every once in a while, Rupert would pick up his phone

and tap something out.

And eventually, James realized

that these super aggressive, mean-spirited, personal questions

were actually coming from his father.

I remember talking to James weeks later,

and he was still sort of reeling from the experience.

He couldn't quite believe what had happened.

He was constantly analyzing it

and trying to make sense about why his dad did what he did.

The question that kept coming back to him

was, how did we let it come to this?

[curious music playing]

[Paul Barry] If you look at the succession in 2011,

James is in the box seat.

[commentator] But Binocular's been the challenger as they turn for home.

Binocular now strikes the…

[Paul] Elisabeth walked away, and Lachlan's back in Australia.

[commentator] …Binocular, who had this patchy season, win the Champion Hurdle.

[crowd cheering]

[Paul] James is running News Corp in Britain,

and their tabloids were making an absolute fortune.

[David Folkenflik] He sits atop what's now called News UK,

their publishing empire in Great Britain,

the four newspapers that they own.

Most importantly, the News of the World.

[McKay] They have a villainous reputation in Britain

for down-market tabloids and conservative politics.

[Richard Cooke] One of Rupert's editors once gave a staff talk.

He said, "Imagine the old man down the end of the bar."

"Doesn't like immigrants. He doesn't like poofs."

"He thinks that there's too much smut on TV."

"But he wants to see tits in the newspaper."

"That's who we're writing for."

[David] You're feasting on the missteps and embarrassments of celebrities.

That's a News of the World exclusive.

[David] If you were a royal, if you were a politician,

if you were some fancy actor,

a sports star or a singer,

you were fair game.

[reporter 1] The News of the World is the jewel of Murdoch's empire.

[reporter 2] Enormously profitable.

[reporter 3] Britain's biggest newspaper

with an unrivaled reputation for journalistic scoops.

[music ends]

[phone ringing]

I went to work for the News of the World because I liked its reputation.

It was like the Death Star. The dark heart of the evil empire.

And that emanated from the characters who ran it.

[indistinct speech]

[Paul McMullan] Piers Morgan, who you might've heard of,

was my first boss.

One day, I turned up with a load of stolen photographs.

[intriguing music playing]

Pictures of Naomi Campbell,

Eva Herzigová,

Carla Bruni,

all of them topless.

I gave them to the picture editor, and he said,

"You can't use these. They're stolen pictures."

And Piers went, "Bollocks to it. Stick it in. Good work."

And on the basis of that,

I got my staff job at the News for stealing, basically.

[music ends]

One thing which is interesting about Rupert Murdoch and his corporate culture

is a sense that anything can be achieved by a force of will.

This is a really important characteristic of the people who worked for him.

[Paddy Manning] He needed people that would do whatever it took

to continue his way of doing business.

[intriguing music playing]

And at the News of the World, that was Rebekah Brooks.

[Paul] Rebekah Brooks was the features editor.

Used to work as a secretary in the magazine.

And Murdoch made her editor of the biggest newspaper in the world.

[Jonathan] Rebekah Brooks was the daughter that Rupert never had

because she was unfailingly loyal to him.

[Paul] Elisabeth Murdoch hated her, but Murdoch loved her.

Rebekah Brooks is an excellent example of a senior Rupert Murdoch executive.

[camera clicking]

Moves at 800 miles an hour.

Knows all about newspapers, makes quick decisions, is resourceful.

Quite hot. Nice arse.

She'd walk through with bits of paper, just throwing them behind her,

"This is shit, this is shit."

And her secretary's scurrying behind her, picking up the bits of paper.

[indistinct speech]

[Graham] There was no moaning or excuses.

It was, "Get the story at any cost."

[Sarah Ellison] Throughout the 2000s,

the News of the World was going gangbusters.

They were getting great scoops about celebrities, politicians, football stars.

I mean, every entity in the UK was trying to get to the bottom of,

how are they doing that?

[pulsing electronic music playing]

[Graham] The Murdoch organization at the News of the World

was an organized crime group, by any definition.

Scores of people were involved.

Journalists and private detectives trading unlawful information.

They were spending millions of pounds a year on gathering it.

And it went on all over the world.

It was called the Dark Arts.

[man 1] Where have you gone, Kate Hudson?

[Paul] Dark Arts are hiring private investigators,

sitting in surveillance vans.

[Graham] Getting phone bills, medical records,

bank records, flight details.

[photographer 1] Paris! Paris!

[Graham] And what that means is you can get to the story first.

It gave Murdoch the competitive advantage

against other newspapers on exclusive stories.

[photographer 2] Hello, dear.

[Graham] I had a contact who'd give me stories on Prince Charles,

who was having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

She's the queen now.

So I knew her inside movements.

I'll wield my bullwhip at you in a minute.

[Paul] I spent the last month of Diana's life

just chasing her around the world.

I can see why Harry hates us.

Sorry, Harry.

Wherever you went,

bang, out came a pap, and you thought, "How do they know where I am?"

I got sent to LA to follow Hugh Grant, crawling for Black hookers.

So what did Murdoch want us to do?

Find the girl, give her $250,000

to tell us all about what Hugh Grant asked you to do in his car.

All the dirty details.

[Hugh] I thought, "This is part of my punishment."

But, uh, life at that time was extremely difficult,

because their power grew and grew and grew.

I mean, you know, you could do anything as long as you didn't get caught.

But it's important that the wall is maintained,

so the Murdochs can't see how the sausage is made,

even though they know how it's done.

So there's plausible deniability at every level.

That's really important in a Murdoch organization.

[Paul Barry] Technically, James is in charge of all of Murdoch's papers

in Britain at the time.

But he doesn't really care about newspapers that much.

He was very much interested in tech.

And he was making investments all over the place.

I think he was trying to say, you know,

"This is not my daddy's old media company."

[dynamic music playing]

[reporter 4] BSkyB,

Britain's most lucrative satellite TV provider.

[reporter 5] News Corp is trying to buy the 60% of BSkyB it doesn't already own.

[Paul] At that point,

James is right on the cusp of getting this deal with BSkyB,

which would make a huge amount of money for them.

[Sarah] BSkyB is an incredibly powerful satellite television operation.

And it will give the Murdochs a launch pad

to control the media environment around the world.

[James] We're about to complete the merger of the three European Sky businesses,

which, uh, you know, creates something really new.

A real 21st century digital television company.

[Sarah] James sees that if he's able to bring BSkyB into the fold.

That will be his crowning achievement.

But in order to be approved, you need to be, quote unquote, "fit and proper,"

which means your newspapers are not doing things

that are illegal or untoward.

This requires an enormous amount of review by the British government.

And it's James's job to get it across.

James has managed to befriend and ingratiate himself with Jeremy Hunt,

a key Cabinet figure.

And Rebekah Brooks is a close friend and confidante

of the new prime minister, David Cameron.

So everything seems aligned perfectly to go James's way

when a headline erupts in early July of 2011.

[sparse, solemn music playing]

- [reporter 6] Heinous, despicable. - [reporter 7] Shock and anger.

[reporter 8] Going too far to get a story.

[reporter 9] Allegations against the News of the World.

[reporter 10] Hacked into…

[reporter 11] …families of murder victims.

[reporter 12] The murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

[Graham] Milly Dowler was a schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered.

And before she was…

Before her body was found,

the News of the World were hacking her phone.

[poignant piano music playing]

The way to hack someone's phone is to make sure they're asleep or engaged.

You just ring 'em up on one phone, they answer it,

then dial again on the other one and get through to their messages.

[voicemail] Enter your security code.

And the private investigator has given you the code,

so you put the code in and you listen to their messages.

[reporter 13] When the voicemail became full,

messages were deleted so that more could be left.

[woman 1] A private detective working for the News of the World

deleted some of those messages,

giving her family the false hope that she might still be alive.

- I rang her phone. - [man 2] Yes.

And it clicked through onto her voicemail, so I heard her voice.

- [man 2] Yes. - And I was… It was just like… I jumped.

"She's picked up her voicemails, Bob! She's alive."

[Kara] They made the parents think the girl was alive.

It just was… who… who would do that?

That's when I started calling him Uncle Satan.

[chanting] Boycott Murdoch! Boycott Murdoch!

[Sarah] There had been stories about celebrities getting hacked.

But there's not as much sympathy

for the victims of those stories because these are wealthy people.

[David] But when it was a schoolgirl,

people realized this stuff could happen to anybody.

This was fiendishly vile.

[chanting] Money, power, lies by the hour Rupert Murdoch…

[Paul McMullan] We were reviled by

everybody. My wife fucking hated me for my job.

"You're a fucking lowlife!" This is my wife, you know.

[chanting] Boycott Murdoch! Boycott Murdoch!

[Graham] A cover-up started to take place.

Deletions of emails and destruction of evidence.

The private eye I used to use, he burned all his records quickly.

[David] This developed into a raging, roiling scandal.

It affected the law enforcement establishment,

top officials at Scotland Yard,

who had essentially looked the other way for years,

and politicians, who appeared compromised by their ties to the Murdochs.

What I've read in the papers is quite, quite shocking.

[reporter 14] Britain's prime minister vowing no stone will be left unturned.

[reporter 15] James Murdoch and other News Limited executives

could face charges over a suspected cover-up

with reports millions of emails were deleted from an internal archive.

[McKay] According to James, he immediately ordered the lawyers

to turn over everything they had to the police,

to start cooperating with an investigation,

over Rupert's objections.

[reporter 16] Detectives made their first arrest and seized evidence.

[reporter 17] Thousands of pages of notes were seized.

[reporter 18] More alleged crimes.

Rampant computer hacking, stolen bank data, even break-ins.

[McKay] This was not a one-off thing.

Journalists at News of the World had been working with private investigators

to hack voicemails for years.

They'd hacked the voicemails

of parents of a child who was murdered by a pedophile,

and troops who were killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[chanting] Rupert Murdoch's got to go to, say hey!

[protestors chanting]

[Matthew Belloni] This was emotional stuff,

and Rupert was very much painted as the villain here.

[people chanting] Boycott Murdoch! Boycott Murdoch!

[Jim] One thing we understand about Rupert with his executives is,

if you win, you can do whatever you want.

Just keep winning.

But hacking showed just how far his executives were willing to take that.

This was a crossed line.

[Matthew] Here was pretty good evidence

that they were leveraging these papers to push agendas

and to blackmail people and to invade people's privacy.

All the stuff that you kind of suspected but didn't know,

it was all out there and laid bare.

I'm not making any comments.

[reporter 19] Stock in parent company News Corp has dropped nearly 15%.

[reporter 20] Advertisers leaving in droves.

[reporter 21] The prime minister, David Cameron,

joined opposition politicians in parliament to call on Rupert Murdoch…

[reporter 22] The prime minister has promised a public inquiry.

The people involved, however high or low they go,

they must not only be brought to justice,

they must also have no future role in running a media company in our country.

[reporter 23] Three principal executives are called to testify before parliament.

[man 3] I think they are in a lot of trouble.

[reporter 24] This could be the moment his newspaper power crumbles.

The question was, how high up was this scandal gonna go?

Would there be a Murdoch scalp?

[indistinct chattering]

[James] Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.

First of all, I would like to say as well just how sorry I am

and how sorry we are, uh,

to particularly the victims of illegal voicemail interceptions

and to their families.

Before you get to that, I would just like to say one sentence.

- This is the most humble day of my life. - [man 4] Thank you.

So, in order to claw out from under this Milly Dowler scandal,

he gives an apology.

Rupert clearly knows that that's the posture that he has to strike.

At what point did you find out criminality was endemic at News of the World?

"Endemic" is a very hard…

a very wide-ranging word.

I was absolutely shocked, appalled, and ashamed

when I heard about the Milly Dowler case only

two weeks ago.

- [Sarah] He mumbled. - I don't know anything about that.

He seemed like a confused, older man.

I forget the date.

[Sarah] This was not the fearsome media mogul

that people expected that they were going to see.

And it was a very effective performance, whether it was real or not.

I don't remember meeting him. I might have shaken hands,

but I don't have any memory.

I just don't remember.

I literally turned to someone, I was like,

"He's pretending he's addled? Are you kidding me? This guy is a viper."

[Sarah] Rupert said he had no idea. James said he had no idea.

[James hesitates]

There is… I have… I have no knowledge

and there is no, uh, evidence, uh, that… uh, that I'm… that I'm aware of that…

[Paul McMullan] They all stood back. Him, James, Rebekah.

All said, "We knew nothing about that. It's just the journalists did it."

They let me down,

and I think they behaved, uh, disgracefully

and betrayed the company and me.

Okay. Whilst it has been obvious to most of us…

You know, Rebekah Brooks, by all accounts,

would have been the natural scapegoat for all of this, right?

She was running News of the World, and then the newspaper division.

But Rupert loved Rebekah Brooks

and was more loyal to Rebekah Brooks than he was to James.

[man 5] Can I ask, in 2008…

In fact, there's this moment where one of the members of parliament

asks Rupert about a specific incidence of phone hacking,

and Rupert, rather than answer, says…

I think my son can perhaps answer that in more detail. He was a lot closer.

Rupert really threw James to the wolves on that one.

[woman 2] Had you been made aware prior to the Milly Dowler story breaking

that your reporters hacked into the phones of any other crime victims?

No, I had not. I had not been… I had not been made aware of that.

Most of this hacking took place before James came into the job.

[Sarah] But then it comes out that James has in fact

been on an email chain approving a settlement

in order to keep the phone hacking situation quiet.

[man 5] When you signed off the Taylor payment,

did you see or were you made aware of the "For Neville" email?

[hesitates] No. I… I was not aware of that at the time.

James approved a million-pound settlement

to an official with a football association that they had hacked into.

James said the fact of the payment

was on an email chain that he read over the weekend.

He hadn't really realized what he was signing off on.

Mr. Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history

who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise.

Mr. Watson, please. I think that's inappropriate.

[Sarah] So at the hearing with James and Rupert

is Wendi Deng Murdoch,

who is there by his side.

So then there's this crazy moment

where this guy rises to smash a cream pie into Murdoch's face,

like he's on some sort of Benny Hill slapstick episode.

[clamoring]

[David] And Wendi knocks it out of his hand,

which is incredible television.

It's an absurd moment, but it's also really destabilizing.

[man 6] The sitting suspended for ten minutes.

[David] It creates sympathy for Murdoch.

The instant Murdoch was hit with that pie, News Corp's stock spiked.

This is brilliant! He needs to be hit with more pies.

[Matthew] I think that the spectacle of the pie

did distract a bit from the substance of the allegations.

And it turned the whole thing into a farce

when the issues that were being litigated were very serious.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman. - Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Rupert] Thank you, all members.

[Graham] It didn't bring justice,

and it didn't get to the truth of this organized crime group.

[Matthew] I must have watched that video a hundred times.

It's striking because Wendi has such protectionism instincts for him.

And James does not, which is the interesting thing.

Your wife has a very good left hook.

I have to say, she was fast.

I wrote her, "Wow, you're fast. I'm not getting in your way, friend."

I am not a big proponent of the four-decade marriage age gap.

- But… - [laughter]

…if ever there was a situation where it would pay dividends…

[laughter]

- …it would be an ambush like that. - [applause]

[Sarah] It's very good for Wendi's brand because she's seen as Rupert's protector.

And a badass.

[interviewer] And who's the jury…

[Jim] Wendi is just a much hipper person than Murdoch is.

She's young. She's with it.

She would call Rupert an old man. She would say that he was stupid.

She belittles him in private,

and then, over time, socially in public as well.

[in Mandarin] Do you understand, "beating and scolding means you are in love"?

- [in English] Yeah, she's very tough. - Really?

[laughter]

And she is linked to a number of other prominent figures,

uh, romantically.

[intriguing music playing]

[Matthew] There were rumors about a relationship with Tony Blair.

[Sarah] Rupert grilled his staff to figure out if that was true or not.

The family went crazy. They were like, "All hands on deck. Get rid of her."

[Sarah] James and Lachlan got together

and created a dossier on Wendi to present to their father.

And this included a note

that Wendi had written to herself in her diary and then thrown away.

A housekeeper who was cleaning up in Rupert and Wendi's triplex

found that piece of paper.

And in that note, she was describing her feelings for Tony Blair.

There were exchanges about the curve of his bottom.

[Richard] How hot he looked when he was on stage.

[David] His piercing blue eyes.

[Sarah] And how attracted to him she was.

And when James and Lachlan presented that to their father, that was the last straw.

He was convinced to divorce Wendi.

[reporter 25] Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is heading for divorce court again,

ending a 14-year marriage to his third wife.

[Richard] A Vanity Fair story about the alleged relationship

between Wendi Deng and Tony Blair is published,

and it had access to the private note written by Wendi Deng.

[David] This was deeply humiliating for Rupert.

But it was perfect tabloid fodder.

And because Rupert has always made his money on sex and scandal,

a lot of people felt that he had finally gotten his just desserts.

[man 7] A complete bombshell.

After 168 years in print,

this Sunday's edition of the News of the World will be the last.

[reporter 26] Britain's biggest newspaper was dramatically killed off.

[man 7] Staff gasped in shock. Others reduced to tears.

[Graham] Closing the News of the World, to Rupert Murdoch,

is like Paul McCartney deleting The White Album.

It would have been heartbreaking for him.

It not only made his fortune,

it was also a massive part of British popular culture.

They were trying to protect their empire, and then they did what it took to fix it.

They're good at sacrificing things they need to, to survive.

[man 7] News International chairman James Murdoch

said the paper's proud history had been tarnished

by the behavior he called inhuman.

[Paul McMullan] We all got sacked. 200 journalists got laid off.

Then he decided to turn us over to the cops.

And I just thought, "You fucker."

[James] Actions taken by certain individuals

in what had been a good newsroom have breached the trust

that the News of the World has with its readers.

[Paul] The main private eye, Glenn Mulcaire, got arrested,

got sent to jail,

as well as a bunch of reporters.

I am baffled by the decision to charge me today.

[Paul] Rebekah Brooks was arrested.

Rebekah played a blinder.

"I had no idea. I was so far above. I didn't know what they were doing."

I really, really do want to understand what happened.

I think all of us do because that's…

[Paul] But she was smart.

Really manipulative.

Thank you, Chairman.

[Paul] She walked free.

We've finished our meal, and we're going home.

[Matthew] James really took a hit from the hacking scandal.

That UK parliamentary committee did issue a very searing opinion.

The younger Murdoch deemed, quote, "Not fit to run a major company."

[Sarah] This is a moment when,

if he was able to finally purchase the entirety of BSkyB,

the company as a whole was there for James's taking.

And the phone-hacking crisis

just puts an absolute end to all of that.

[man 8] Shame on you!

[reporter 27] Rupert Murdoch is backing down.

[reporter 28] Murdoch to withdraw News Corporation's takeover bid

for broadcaster BSkyB.

[reporter 29] The hacking scandal forced him to pull the plug on that deal.

[reporter 30] Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch in retreat.

[David] The Murdochs have had to pay vast sums of money

as a result of this hacking scandal. It's well over £1.5 billion.

[Jonathan] That scandal did so much damage to the Murdoch name.

Rupert is chased out of London and shouted down anywhere he goes.

He's public enemy number one.

I was appalled to find out what had happened.

And I apologized. And I have nothing further to say.

[man 9] Elisabeth!

[man 10] Good morning, Elisabeth. This way, please.

Every time Liz left her house, she'd be swarmed.

People would be yelling things at her.

So Elisabeth urges her father to fire James.

[tense string music playing]

[McKay] I talked to James and Liz about this.

James is hunkered down in his office, working on a response,

and Liz comes into his office and tells James,

"Dad and I were talking,

and we really think that you need to resign

and take the fall for this."

"Because people are so upset,

and it's not going to do to simply fire lower-level executives."

"It has to be a Murdoch, and we think you should be it."

As you can imagine, James was furious.

Not just with the idea that he would be the one to take the fall

but with the idea that his father wasn't willing to come and tell him.

And what James said in that moment was,

"If Dad wants to fire me, he can do it himself."

And then he threw Liz out of his office.

[music ends]

That ended up being a defining moment in his relationship with Liz.

And he and Liz barely spoke to each other for years afterward.

[Jonathan] One thing that's fascinating about this family

is that there's so much maneuvering

and there are billions of dollars at stake,

but at the end of the day, they are family.

They do love each other on some level.

[McKay] When James was at his breaking point,

Lachlan ended up flying to London in the midst of this whole scandal

to calm his dad down and convince him not to fire James.

So, instead, James was given an exit ramp.

He had a job set up in New York that was presented as a promotion,

but everybody knew it wasn't.

But it was one of the last moments of brotherly solidarity

where Lachlan really ended up supporting James.

[man 11] You are a Murdoch.

It's a blessing or a curse, but it's there, like it or not.

It's obviously been a very big year.

It's obviously been a very nightmare year for the family.

[Paul Barry] Elisabeth thinks the hacking scandal's a disaster

and it would never have happened if the company had been run properly.

[Jim] Liz is outside of News Corp, building her own company, Shine.

[woman 3] You are the biggest loser!

[Sarah] She helps make a huge success of The Biggest Loser,

a perfect Murdochian type of show.

Shut up and focus.

[Paul] She has shown that she's got talent

for the sorts of things that you need in running a media company.

[man 12] Elisabeth, do you mind, please?

[reporter 31] Elisabeth has her own production company

that was recently bought by News Corp.

An indication, some say, that she may be directly next in line.

[Sarah] Rupert buys Shine, and she makes a lot of money.

And so she was brought back inside his orbit.

[McKay] Whenever he wanted one of his kids to work for him and they were resisting,

Rupert would just throw enough money at the problem

that he could buy them off and force them back into his employ.

Do you feel that in succession terms, or in sort of family terms,

that you've been overlooked for the top job?

[Elisabeth] No, but I don't think that way.

I always think about what can be done, so I never feel completely satisfied.

You always think of what more you can do.

[Sarah] Elisabeth is probably the media executive

who has had the greatest success outside the Murdoch company of any of the kids.

But Rupert is of a certain generation,

and so he always saw either James or Lachlan as the most likely successor.

[McKay] James, for what it's worth, told me that Rupert is a misogynist

and never considered Liz a viable successor.

[David] So she is dispirited.

She clearly does really admire and respect him,

but she cannot deny the damage done by the family empire.

Please welcome the one and only Elisabeth Murdoch.

[cheering and applause]

[Paul] Elisabeth goes to Edinburgh Television Festival

to give a very prestigious lecture.

Being asked to give the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture

has been quite a welcome distraction

from some of the other nightmares much closer to home.

Yes, you have met some of my family before.

[Paul] Elisabeth makes this absolutely scorching speech.

She says all the sort of stuff that you don't want to see in public.

Speaking of independence,

my brother James spoke about it in his MacTaggart three years ago.

James ended his lecture

with a line in which he claimed…

[both] The only reliable and perpetual guarantor of independence

is profit.

The reason his statement sat so uncomfortably

is that profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster.

[tense music playing]

[Paddy] News Corp has been accused of putting profits first and nothing else.

[Paul] Elisabeth's saying the same thing

everyone's said about Murdoch to this point.

Profit must be our servant,

not our master.

And so she's aligning herself

with the enemies of James and the enemies of her father.

[Sarah] We see all of this play out in public.

The deep, deep fissures in the Murdoch family.

Not surprisingly, her father doesn't speak to her for nine weeks.

[McKay] Liz ended up leaving the company altogether,

setting out on her own.

She wants to get away from all of the toxicity of the family empire.

And the phone-hacking scandal

was her opportunity to do that.

[man 13] Yup, thanks. Bye.

[music ends]

[man 14] Good morning, Mr. Murdoch.

You're gonna retire soon, finally, huh, and have a good life?

- [Rupert] No way. - [man 14] Oh!

[Sarah] The time after the phone-hacking scandal

was a real ebb in Murdoch's professional and personal life.

BSkyB has been denied to him.

[reporter 32] The stalled deal and the scandal that caused it

has thrown open the question of succession in the Murdoch empire.

He thought he was rolling to world domination,

and now things are starting to fall apart.

[tense string music playing]

[music ends abruptly]

[Jim] Earlier in his life,

Rupert reveled in the idea

of a battle royal between his children to succeed him.

[enigmatic music playing]

[McKay] Rupert pitted them against each other,

played them off each other, like they were cogs

in this dynastic power game he was playing.

But he allowed his quest for some kind of immortality

to destroy his actual relationship with his actual kids.

[David] This is about control

and about the lack of respect that Rupert Murdoch is showing

in his very last chapter in life.

Basically saying to three of his children, "I don't think you have it."

And this litigation brought all of it to the surface.

[tense music playing]

[reporter 33] This morning, the family believed to be the inspiration

behind the HBO hit show Succession

is locked in a similar battle playing out in real life.

[reporter 34] This is a dispute about the Murdoch Family Trust,

and this is very much shrouded in mystery,

and we aren't sure exactly what's going on inside.

[Jim] In September, we found out that the trial is about to start.

The setting is Reno, Nevada, the birthplace of divorce in this country.

Of all places for the Murdoch family to end up in court, in Reno, Nevada.

No offense to Reno.

[Jim] I personally went to that courthouse every day.

The first day was just a bizarre scene.

SUV, SUV, SUV.

Press everywhere.

Lawyers are swooping up the courthouse steps,

and then the children come.

[McKay] You know, so much of the Murdoch story

has been narrated by anonymous sources and self-interested parties

speculating about what was going on behind the scenes.

But for the first time with this trial,

we were getting the actual story.

The real human drama of this family was being laid bare.

- [photographers 1, 2] Rupert! - [photographer 1] Big smile!

[reporter 35] Are you confident of victory?

[Jim] Every major member of the family is testifying

and in front of each other in court.

Rupert went first.

[Jonathan] And here is Rupert Murdoch taking the witness stand

in defense of his effort

to unilaterally change this inviolable family trust,

even though, by definition, an inviolable trust cannot be changed.

But on some level, you can understand why he would feel entitled to do it.

He built this empire.

He made everyone in this room a multibillionaire.

And it's his money.

The judge said that he was open to their argument

if he can prove that he's doing it in good faith

and for the sole benefit of his beneficiaries.

But Rupert is a man who speaks his mind. He's a master of the universe.

And so how disciplined is he gonna be on the witness stand,

I think, is a question from the very beginning.

What will become a problem is that when Rupert's cross-examined about this,

he's incredibly honest.

[McKay] He was very upfront about the fact that this was about his legacy

and he didn't trust James or Liz or Prudence

to retain the conservative political slant of his media outlets.

That's why he wanted Lachlan to take control.

I'm not a legal expert, but a legal expert would say

that was not in his best interest to make that argument.

[Jim] But Rupert's legal team appeared to think

they had an ace in the hole.

And that was an exchange between Rupert and Anna, his second wife.

[soft, suspenseful music playing]

One day, several months prior,

she had reached out to Rupert, which was a bit strange.

She doesn't ordinarily just call Rupert.

It rarely happens. As Rupert says, it's out of the blue.

They're talking, catching up,

and Rupert shares with her some of his angst

about James doing something with the sisters to shove Lachlan aside.

And after they get off the phone,

Anna writes Rupert by email.

"I think it's imperative that you get this sorted out soon."

"Some toes will be trod on and egos hurt,

but it would be worse to leave things as they are."

Then she tells Rupert, "You are the kingpin."

"You still hold the power."

And Rupert tells Anna he'd love nothing more than peace all around,

but it's not looking that way.

And then Anna and Rupert start talking about the kids.

And intriguingly, Rupert is sort of complimentary of James.

"He's bright, he's articulate,

but time and time again, showed bad judgment."

Rupert tells Anna, this isn't just about the children.

He says, "Fox and our empire

is the only thing standing in the way of this woke mob,"

that, "We are the true defenders of the free world."

And James and his wife, Kathryn, want to change it.

And Anna does something kind of surprising.

She talks about her resentment of James and Kathryn as well.

That they and their like-minded woke friends

are gonna be the ruination of the country.

America will be doomed if these cultural elites take over.

She's in perfect agreement.

Rupert's lawyers try to use this to say, "Look,

if all of this mess we're in

is because Rupert was trying to accommodate Anna in their divorce,

Anna, who set these parameters,

Anna, who never wanted to see one child succeed above the others,

she is now saying that doesn't matter to her."

"She is endorsing Lachlan's leadership."

"She's endorsing Rupert backing up Lachlan's leadership."

"Why are we even here?" is basically the implicit argument.

[music ends]

This, of course, has no legal weight.

This is just an exchange of emails.

There's binding language around the trust,

and Anna has no control.

And she wasn't telling him he should change the trust.

She doesn't have the authority to tell him to change the trust.

Still, as a matter of atmospherics, it was important.

And it shows what's at stake in this trial.

[tense music playing]

[McKay] Once the litigation began,

years of internal Murdoch family communications, texts and e-mails,

started to surface that were really painful

for, I think, everyone involved, but especially James.

He started telling friends,

"My advice is to never get involved in litigation with your family

where there's discovery and the discovery is all about you."

I mean, just imagine what that's like

if you were suddenly able to read

everything that your family says about you behind your back for two decades.

It was brutal.

And I think there is a tragedy in that

that transcends whatever you think about the Murdochs or Fox News.

This is the story of a family unraveling.

And it was just the beginning.

[music ends]

[ominous music playing]