Media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch steps down as head of the US Fox Group and the publisher News Corp. back. The 92-year-old wanted to hand over the management to his son Lachlan, he announced on Thursday, according to the TV channel Fox News.
“On behalf of the boards of Fox and News Corp., the executive teams and all shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” Lachlan Murdoch said.
Rupert Murdoch, who comes from Australia, has been immensely influential for decades with his sometimes extremely conservative media. In the USA he is best known for the news channel Fox News.
Scandalous media empire
Earlier this year, Murdoch admitted that some of Fox News’ hosts spread lies after the 2020 presidential election. They supported defeated candidate Donald Trump’s statements that the election was “stolen,” Murdoch said, according to court documents.
Murdoch had already expanded his media empire to the USA in the 1970s. In addition to the Fox channel group, the portfolio now also includes newspapers, among other things New York Post, The Sun in Great Britain and the US financial newspaper Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch’s close ties to power and his ability to harness the political elite to his interests are legendary. “Republicans originally thought that Fox was working for us. Now we realize that we are working for Fox,” former US President George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum once said in a TV interview.