The resignation of Rupert Murdoch comes amid a period of unprecedented turmoil at his embattled Fox News empire, and leaves a number of questions hanging over the future of the nation’s most-watched rightwing network.
Exclusive reporting by the Guardian this week revealed that Murdoch expected a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over 2020 election lies would cost Fox News $50m. It was settled for an eye-popping $797.5m, the media mogul reportedly left “frothing at the mouth” in anger at Donald Trump, whose conspiracy theories over the 2020 election Fox personalities repeatedly amplified.
Murdoch, according to Michael Wolff, author of the new book The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, often wished for the former president’s death.
Now, Murdoch is bailing out as other, perhaps more costly lawsuits are still pending, including a $2.7bn damages claim from Smartmatic, another voting machine manufacturer savaged by Fox’s on-air talent in similar fashion to Dominion.
Beside the financial cost of the news channel’s allegiance to Trumpworld was something that will have wounded the billionaire far more: the stripping of much of Fox’s prestige and luster in conservative circles.
A succession of scandals have swirled around the network, none greater than the sudden and much-publicized departure in April of the popular host Tucker Carlson, a rightwing extremist and one-time Republican powerbroker.
Fox’s previously most-watched anchor has claimed Murdoch fired him as part of the Dominion settlement, which both Fox and Dominion have denied. But Carlson’s continuing digs at his former employer would appear to be further evidence of turbulence within the organization.
Fox’s ratings suffered an immediate drop in the wake of Carlson’s exit, viewership in his 8pm primetime slot falling by about 50% in the following two weeks, but have since partially rebounded, with both Carlson’s replacement, Jesse Watters, and Laura Ingraham, who hosts the preceding hour, seeing upticks.
In March, before Carlson was ousted, CNN reported that Fox staffers were “shocked and disgusted” at being kept in the dark over Dominion developments, and said they were expected to show up for work as if nothing had happened.
Yet on-air talent including Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, continued to broadcast their rightwing messaging. Court documents in the Dominion case showed Fox presenters knew the claims about rigged voting machines, and the wider falsehood of a stolen election, were lies, but that network leaders, including Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, Fox Corp’s chief executive, were fearful of losing their pro-Trump audience.
“The messages revealed that some of the channel’s most high-profile messengers were effectively paid actors playing the part to juice the network’s ratings,” CNN’s senior media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote at the time. “And they have made it clear that at its core the network is not a news organization.”
Also in April, a Washington Post analysis cast shade over Fox’s claims to be the nation’s most trusted news network, pointing out that Democratic viewers were diluted among a number of left-leaning networks, while Fox was the sole “mainstream” outlet for viewers on the right.
A 2022 Trust in Media survey found that Americans in general trusted the output of Fox News less than other outlets including CNN, and even below OAN (One America News), a far-right, pro-Trump extremist cable network dropped by all major carriers for spreading lies and conspiracy theories over the 2020 election, the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues.
Whether Fox will see any major shift in direction following Rupert Murdoch’s resignation remains to be seen. Lachlan Murdoch, 52, was already executive chair and chief executive of the Fox Corporation, and succeeds his father as chair of News Corp, the print media arm of the Murdoch empire.
Among his first priorities will be assessing how Fox handles the continuing popularity of Trump, the runaway leader in the race for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination despite facing 91 charges in four separate indictments over the 2020 election, illegally retaining classified documents and paying off an adult movie star.
Fox, the long-time banner waver for Trump before and during his single-term of office, appeared to cast him aside amid the tumult of the Dominion lawsuit, and refused to have him on the network after he announced his re-election bid last November.
Instead, Republican challengers such as Florida’s rightwing governor Ron DeSantis and, initially, the former vice-president Mike Pence, were afforded substantial airtime while Murdoch soured on Trump.
But with DeSantis’s campaign tanking, and Pence mired in single digits with others in the crowded primary field, some 50 points below the leader, Fox must decide to what degree it attempts to mend bridges, and reassess the amount and nature of the coverage it dedicates to Trump. Ignoring him is no longer an option.
Murdoch, in his resignation message to employees on Thursday, insisted the companies he leaves behind, including Fox, are in “robust health” and that his son was “absolutely committed to the cause” in what he framed as a battle for “freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought”.
Without any hint of irony, Murdoch asserted that “most of the media” was fixated on “peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth”.
With the Trump conundrum still to solve, and the dark cloud of the Smartmatic lawsuit looming, Murdoch seems to be abandoning ship just as the network sails towards particularly choppy waters. As Fox likes to expound in its marketing messaging: America is watching.
