Rupert Murdoch denies his supposed fictional counterpart, it is said that the character of Logan Roy in the series Succession is inspired by him, and, before saying goodbye to this world, he chooses to retire as head of the conglomerate that heads the Fox network. He wants to see himself praised in life and not in obituaries to which he will not have access.
His decision comes after decades of long work in reconfiguring the American right and decisively promoting the emergence of Donald Trump and the extreme right, without any type of prejudice in the face of lies and self-serving manipulations. His merit is such that there is even talk of the United States and the “Fox country.” The one in which Trump, 77, is the king of the mambo, and President Joe Biden, an 80-year-old, demented and dazed man.
The 92-year-old mogul, who is already an old man, is stepping aside and retiring from the chairmanship of the boards of directors of Fox and News Corporation, as announced in a statement. He will thus become the “president emeritus” of the two companies, a rather contemplative position for a man of his idiosyncrasy. His son Lachlan remains the only executive in charge of the global empire, which also has film studios in the US and newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, a tabloid with overtones of fascist propaganda.
Murdoch began building his empire from a small local newspaper created in Australia, his birthplace. He then made the leap to the United Kingdom and landed in the US. When he acquired the Journal, a benchmark for reliability, many thought it was the end of his prestige. He maintained the informative quality and dedicated the ideology to the editorial part, which is like another different newspaper in which ultra-conservative commentators enjoy an open bar.
Something change. The businessman had shown no intention of giving up the handle or lowering his involvement in the business, not even in 2019, at which time he named Lachlan as his heir to the company and sold part of his entertainment business. to Walt Disney.
“All my professional life I have been involved daily in news and ideas and this is not going to change, but it is time for me to play a different role,” Murdoch explained in a message to workers.
So, despite his status as “emeritus,” he will continue to give advice to his successor at the helm, according to the statement. “In my new role, I can guarantee that I will continue to contribute ideas,” he added.
“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination and the lasting legacy he leaves behind the companies he founded and the countless people he has impacted,” said his son, 52, in that official text. .
Without a doubt it has had a lot of impact. Half a nation or more believes, under the influence of Fox, the lie that Trump won the elections, despite the fact that the network had to pay almost 800 million dollars for defaming the company Dominion Voting Systems that installed the vote counting machines. votes. It was a preliminary agreement because Murdoch was clear that if they went to trial that could be ruin. That figure is the largest publicly known in a pact of this type.
He fired his star Tucker Carlson, the friend of dictators, to try to calm the waters. But the substitutes are just as fanciful trappers, although more docile than Carlson. The country of Fox almost did not find out that the former president had been prosecuted for the conspiracy to destroy the November 2020 election result and perpetuate himself in the White House. That day, the news was another of the minor issues of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
Fox remains the most watched cable channel overall, even in the post-Carlson era. “Our companies are in good health, as am I,” he said in the statement.
His withdrawal puts an end to one of the major media stories of the modern era. His great legacy, without a doubt, was the creation in 1996 of Fox News, 24 hours a day, seven days a day, which he launched to compete with CNN. He had his pillar in Roger Ailes, the brain of a channel in which there was less and less news and more opinions from the right and beyond. He achieved a devout, religious audience and a pillar of the new conservative movement in the United States.
