In a wide-ranging article in New York magazine, Gabriel Sherman writes about Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. While focusing on Elisabeth, the article explores the complicated relationships within the Murdoch family, as well as how they were frayed when the phone-hacking scandal erupted in the UK earlier this year.
Among the topics covered was Fox News, which Sherman says is not of particular appeal to either Elisabeth or James, though he notes that James Murdoch is a businessman first and foremost, and loves the cable channel’s big profits:
The irony of the current conflict is that, until the phone-hacking scandal blew up, Liz and James had been the closest of the three siblings. They socialized together in London’s elite circle, imbibing the same ideas about where the culture was going and what News Corp. should become. They admired their father but shared a distaste for Rupert’s tabloid ventures, especially Fox News (even if James respected Fox’s nearly $1 billion profit). They had both grown to share the belief that News Corp. needed to shed its predatory, down-market image. “Liz and James talked all the time. They complained about Rupert together,” a London-based media executive tells me. Freud had cultivated a close relationship with Wendi Murdoch, who, like James and Liz, believes News Corp. should abandon its outlaw ethos.