McKay Coppins on The Murdochs

Summary

On the Media: McKay Coppins on The Murdochs
Host: Brooke Gladstone | Guest: McKay Coppins
Release Date: July 30, 2025

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Introduction

In the July 30, 2025 episode of the Peabody Award-winning podcast On the Media, hosted by Brooke Gladstone from WNYC Studios, Brooke welcomes McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic. The episode delves into the intricate dynamics of the Murdoch family, particularly focusing on the recent legal battles, internal power struggles, and the implications for the global media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Trump’s Lawsuit Against Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal

The episode opens with a discussion of a high-profile lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump against Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal (00:38). Trump's lawsuit centers around an exclusive story published by the Journal detailing a birthday card he sent to Jeffrey Epstein, which depicted a naked woman with Trump's signature in a controversial and explicit manner. Trump sought to leverage his long-standing relationship with Murdoch in an attempt to suppress the story, but his efforts were unsuccessful. As Trump escalates the matter, he has requested that Murdoch be compelled to answer questions under oath within 15 days, marking Murdoch as the sole individual he wishes to testify (00:38).

Murdoch Family Dynamics and Project Family Harmony

McKay Coppins introduces the internal family conflict within the Murdoch dynasty, emphasizing the impact of a secretive family trust known as "Project Family Harmony" (03:05). Originally established around 25 years ago during Rupert Murdoch's divorce from Anna Murdoch, the trust was intended to equally split control of the media empire among their four children to foster unity and cooperation. However, this plan has led to a bitter legal dispute as Rupert, now 94, attempts to revise the trust to favor his eldest son, Lachlan, effectively marginalizing his other children (03:07).

Coppins explains, “liz and his sisters would team up against Lachlan to force some changes to the companies that Rupert believes would devastate his legacy as this singular voice in conservative media” (03:36).

James Murdoch’s Career and Struggles Within News Corp

The focus shifts to James Murdoch, Rupert's son, whose career within the family empire has been fraught with challenges. Initially positioned as the head of digital publishing at News Corp, James struggled to implement innovative ideas, often feeling undermined and dismissed within the organization (07:00). His tenure was further complicated by the infamous phone hacking scandal that erupted in 2011, severely tarnishing his reputation and leading to his relocation back to New York in disgrace (12:21).

James's attempts to revitalize News Corp's presence in Asia by pivoting towards the Indian market showcased his capability, yet internal family politics and his father's reluctance to appoint a clear successor hindered his progress (09:36).

The Phone Hacking Scandal and Its Impact

A significant turning point discussed is the 2011 phone hacking scandal involving News of the World, a Murdoch-owned publication. The scandal emerged when it was revealed that journalists had hacked into the voicemails of public figures, including the tragic case of Millie Dowler, a British teenager who was murdered in 2002 (10:04). Although the hacking occurred before James took charge, the fallout forced him to take responsibility and contributed to the strained relationships within the family, particularly between James and his sister Liz (11:34).

Liz's role in attempting to fire James on behalf of their father, following Liz's suggestion to Rupert, led to a significant rift, leaving James isolated and estranged from his sister for years (11:50).

Influence of HBO’s "Succession" on Murdoch Family Perceptions

An intriguing aspect of the episode is the parallel between the real-life Murdoch family dynamics and the fictional portrayal in HBO’s Succession. Coppins notes that the Murdochs are both inspired by and sensitive to the show's depiction of family power struggles (14:04). The murky interplay between fiction and reality heightened Rupert Murdoch’s paranoia, leading him to believe that his children might be plotting against him, much like the characters in the show (15:15).

Liz Murdoch’s reaction to an episode where Logan Roy dies without a clear succession plan spurred her to proactively draft potential plans for Rupert’s passing, further intensifying the family's legal disputes over the trust (15:43).

Legal Battle Over the Trust and Implications for News Corp

The heart of the episode revolves around the ongoing litigation concerning the family trust, which Rupert's plan to amend is currently pending appeal as of December 2024 (16:37). Coppins reveals that James and his sisters are pushing for significant changes within the media empire, especially targeting Fox News, which James views as a threat to democracy due to its biased reporting and influence on political discourse (17:10).

James advocates for Fox News to be managed by professionals committed to truth and integrity, criticizing instances where the network has promoted misleading information, such as endorsing oil company interests or propagating unfounded claims about election fraud (16:53).

Potential Changes to Fox News and the Media Landscape

Coppins discusses the broader implications of potential shifts within Fox News. Should James and his siblings succeed in restructuring the trust to limit Lachlan's control, Fox News might undergo significant transformations that could alter the American media and political landscape (18:07). However, the entrenched nature of conservative media suggests that even substantial changes might be mitigated by the network’s established influence and the proliferation of similar outlets.

Notable Quotes

• Brooke Gladstone (00:38): “Murdoch is the only person Trump is asking to appear in person.”
• McKay Coppins (02:05): “He wants to from the grave, manipulate and govern not just his media outlets, but the politics of the countries where they are most influential.”
• Brooke Gladstone (04:21): “James said Rupert's a misogynist.”
• McKay Coppins (07:06): “Everything that I do, everything I do it to protect this family.”
• Brooke Gladstone (07:28): “Except that if he wanted to leave it to his children, then why does he want to control it from the grave?”
• McKay Coppins (07:42): “It's ultimately about him.”
• Coppins on 'Succession' (15:15): “Rupert sees that on screen, you know, various kids are plotting against him, and he somehow becomes convinced that his real life kids are maneuvering against him.”

Conclusion

The episode of On the Media provides an in-depth exploration of the Murdoch family’s internal struggles, the legal battles shaping the future of a global media empire, and the profound impact these dynamics have on media integrity and political discourse. McKay Coppins effectively unpacks the complexities of legacy, power, and familial loyalty within one of the world's most influential media families, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of how personal relationships and corporate interests intertwine in the upper echelons of global media power.

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For those interested in media studies, corporate power dynamics, or the intersection of family and business, this episode offers valuable insights into the ongoing saga of the Murdoch empire and its implications for the broader media landscape.

Transcript

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[Brooke Gladstone]

This is the on the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Brooke gladstone. This week NPR's media reporter David Folkenflick had a story with the headline Trump's Lawsuit Against Murdoch and Wall Street Journal Turns Personal. The lawsuit in question is over the Journal's exclusive about a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein signed by Donald Trump with a message about sexy sounding quote secrets inside the doodled outline of a naked woman with Donald Trump's signature scrawled where the pubic hair would be. Mr. Trump tried to cash in on his long relationship with his pal and journal owner Rupert Murdoch to have the story squashed, but to no avail. Now, as Folken Flick reports, Trump is asking a federal judge in Miami to compel the man once called my very good friend Rupert Murdoch to answer the President's lawyers questions under oath within 15 days of the order. Murdoch is the only person Trump is asking to appear in person. The decades long relationship between the President and the media mogul has had its share of ups and downs, but both have been invested in each other's continued success. Now at the age of 94, Murdoch has started to think about his legacy and it seems he'd like to retain his position of power even in the afterlife.

[Mackay Coppins]

That is part of what made this story so compelling to me.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Mackay Coppins is a staff writer at the Atlantic.

[Mackay Coppins]

He wants to from the grave, manipulate and govern not just his media outlets, but the politics of the countries where they are most influential.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Coppens conducted a series of interviews with the Murdochs, most notably Rupert's son James and his wife Catherine. When I spoke to Coppens in May, his he told me he discovered that the family was embroiled in a legal battle that would define the future of the Murdoch media empire. The focus was a plan settled decades.

[Mackay Coppins]

Ago, about 25 years ago when Rupert was divorcing his then wife Anna. Anna basically agreed to give up a lot of the money that she was entitled to in the divorce in exchange for a restructuring of the family trust that would essentially split control of the Murdoch empire equally among their four children.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Do you know why she did that?

[Mackay Coppins]

James actually told me the idea was that it would incentivize us all to work together. Instead, it ended up being the subject of this bitter legal battle at the end of Rupert's life, which is he has tried to rewrite this family trust to control the future of the empire with Lachlan, his eldest son, and essentially disenfranchise the rest of the kids. They would still get money, but they would have no vote.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This secret plan, this was called Project Family Harmony, right?

[Mackay Coppins]

Yes. Kind of all time euphemism, I think. And Lachlan is the one Murdoch child who shares his father's politics. James and his sisters are frankly embarrassed by a lot of the content that's put out by Fox News. And Rupert suspects, I think correctly, that if the trust is left as is, James and his sisters will team up against Lachlan to force some changes to the companies that Rupert believes would devastate his legacy as this singular voice in conservative media.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Let's talk about the family dynamic for a second. You have the two older sisters, Prudence and Elizabeth, never serious contenders to run the business because James said Rupert's a misogynist. Right.

[Mackay Coppins]

Mm.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And then you've got the two brothers 15 months apart, Lachlan being the older one, this masculine guy, whereas sitting at the dinner table, you had the sort of nerdy hipster type. That was James. So he was typecast as the outsider from the start.

[Mackay Coppins]

This is something that happens in maybe every family.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Did that happen to you?

[Mackay Coppins]

Yeah, I think so. I'm the oldest of four, actually. I was the one who was seen as like, the good kid that's always on the oldest. Yeah. Do you feel like this rings true to you?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, yeah, I'm the third of six.

[Mackay Coppins]

It is actually very natural for kids to get typecast in their families.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And so how were they typecast?

[Mackay Coppins]

Prudence was the daughter of Rupert's first marriage and she was a peacemaker. Liz was seen as the temperamental artist and she once pierced James ear in their bath and there was a bloody mess everywhere. Liz was three years older than Lachlan, who was older than James. And so what's interesting is that by the time James was 13 or 14, he was effectively living by himself in the Murdaugh's penthouse on the Upper east side in Manhattan. James parents had moved to Los Angeles. They would, you know, come back every couple weeks.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So I guess just him and the servants.

[Mackay Coppins]

Yes. There was a butler named George, who attended to his needs. And the fact that he was allowed to run wild for most of his adolescence, I do think allowed him to carve out a distinctive identity. He had an interest in archeology and he got really into underground hip hop. And he was forced one summer to intern at one of his dad's newspapers in Australia, and he hated it. There's this famous moment where he went to a press conference and actually fell asleep and a rival newspaper snapped a picture of him.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Murdoch would spread the daily newspapers out at the table and give his kids a masterclass. Family dinners featured visits from politicians, dignitaries, and he insisted that his animating motivation, his conglomerate's entire reason for being, was his children.

[Mackay Coppins]

Right.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This reminds me a little of Breaking Bad, but never mind.

[Mackay Coppins]

Everything that I do, everything I do it to protect this family.

[Brooke Gladstone]

But you know what, Walt? Someone has to protect this family from.

[Mackay Coppins]

The man who protects this family or succession. Everything I've done in my life, I've done for my children. I know I've made mistakes, but. But I've always tried to do the best by them. This is something you hear from a lot of hyper ambitious, powerful men.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Except that if he wanted to leave it to his children, then why does he want to control it from the grave?

[Mackay Coppins]

Well, he sees his kids primarily as nodes of immortality, right? As vehicles for his own dynastic ambition.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So it's not really about them at all.

[Mackay Coppins]

It's ultimately about him.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Okay, so James, he goes to Harvard, he drops out his senior year, and he moves to New York to start a hip hop label with his friends. And the offices for that company, Raucous Records, featured a poster of Chairman Mao. That company was later folded into News Corp. I have never heard of it.

[Mackay Coppins]

Well, that's probably by design on Rupert's part. It was basically a way to buy James. And James was made the head of digital publishing at News Corp.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Which was kind of a backwater.

[Mackay Coppins]

Yeah, James was immensely frustrated in this job. He found that every kind of innovative idea he had was pooh poohed. He was seen as like, you know, a little princeling who was given his fiefdom.

[Brooke Gladstone]

But then in 2005, Lachlan took himself out of the running and moved back to Australia with his family, driven apparently by. By constant and losing battles with his dad's lieutenants.

[Mackay Coppins]

This was a running frustration with both James and Lachlan. At various points, both of them were groomed to be Rupert's successor. But Rupert clearly had no interest in having a successor.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is so succession.

[Mackay Coppins]

When will you be ready to step down? I don't know, five, five years? 10? 10? Dad, seriously, it's my company. This is actually drawn directly from the Murdoch family. The more successful his sons became, the more he seemed to resent them on some level. You know, for Lachlan, by 2005 he basically realized, I don't want to spend my entire adult life waiting for him to retire.

[Brooke Gladstone]

What was James doing at this point?

[Mackay Coppins]

He was sent to Hong Kong to take Star, a struggling satellite TV company in Asia. And then to the surprise of pretty much everyone at News Corp's headquarters, he did succeed. He pivoted the growth strategy from Hong Kong to India. He greenlit a bunch of splashy Hindi language dramas and within a couple years the company had turned a profit.

[Brooke Gladstone]

James got a major promotion running all of News Corps operation in Asia and Europe. And then 2011 brought a stark turning point in the Murdoch family and in the fortunes of James. That was when the phone hacking scandal happened at the Murdoch owned News of the World. Journalists realized very few people changed the PIN codes for their voicemail. So they guessed the codes and listened in to the personal secrets of the royals and the famous, the powerful and many who are none of these. Tell me about Millie Dowler.

[Mackay Coppins]

She was a British teenager who went missing in 2002. And it was one of these cases that became a huge national fixation. There was this six month search for her. She was found dead. She had been murdered. The News of the World had directed a private investigator to hack into Dowler's voicemail and published the contents of some of her private messages.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Was there any point?

[Mackay Coppins]

You know, it's one of these stories that had become so big that there was just a massive competition for any little scrap of information. But obviously, nearly a decade later, when the Guardian revealed that News of the World had done this, there was an enormous public outrage.

[Brooke Gladstone]

James was in charge of News of the World, but the hacking had taken place before the newspapers were his responsibility, but he would have to take the fall. And it was his sister Liz who suggested it to Rupert.

[Mackay Coppins]

That's right. And her father then told her, go tell him. And so she actually went down the hallway and essentially tried to fire her brother on her dad's behalf. Liz and James had grown up pretty close.

[Brooke Gladstone]

She pierced his ear for goodness sake.

[Mackay Coppins]

That's right. And then for years they barely spoke to each other. And what Liz, is that one of the greatest regrets of her life is that she allowed her father to drive this wedge between herself and her brother.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So James leaves London in disgrace in 2012 moves back to New York.

[Mackay Coppins]

That's right. The idea was still that he was being groomed to take over, but he.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Wasn'T because Lachlan rejoined the family business supplanted James as Rupert's successor.

[Mackay Coppins]

That's right.

[Brooke Gladstone]

When Donald Trump was elected the next year, the family rifts became chasms. And you said that James had assumed that his Princeton educated older brother would balk when Trump, say, proposed a Muslim ban, but that whenever James mentioned any of these outrages, Lachlan would bristle and immediately go into a nasty knee jerk, anti Hillary stance. But you said the most surprising thing to James was that his father seemed to have no ideology at all.

[Mackay Coppins]

Right. Rupert seemed willing to just go wherever the audience wanted to go. And he actually, in that first Fox News debate, reportedly told Megyn Kelly to really go after Trump. Trump was furious with Kelly over her questions in last week's great debate and said this. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever. Once it became clear that that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination, that the audience for Fox News in particular loved Trump, Rupert lined up behind Trump. For James, this was really revealing that his dad actually, beneath it all, didn't have some core set of ideas. It was really just power and profit all the way down.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Some of these events are beyond familiar to viewers of the HBO show succession.

[Mackay Coppins]

He's talked about burning Qurans and licensing press credentials.

[Brooke Gladstone]

He's shifting the Overton window. I'm surprised.

[Mackay Coppins]

You know I do. He's opening it and throwing union organizers out of it.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Stop chicken Littleing us.

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Stop being a dirty little pixie and.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Whispering swastikas in dad's ear. The show loomed large in the lives of the Murdoch children as both a cautionary tale and, it seems, a playbook.

[Mackay Coppins]

The weirdest thing about reporting this story was that I would say that sounds really familiar. Like, are you sure this hasn't been published somewhere else? And then I would realize that it was a plot line in succession. And James claims that he's never watched beyond the first episode. He found it too painful. But the Murdochs in general are obsessed with this show. And James and Catherine believed that Liz had leaked to the writers. Liz was adamant that she didn't, but suspected that her ex husband, Matthew Freud had leaked to the writers. Matthew Freud had offered his services to Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession. But Jesse Armstrong claims that he turned him down.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And you said it seemed to induce higher levels of paranoia in the.

[Mackay Coppins]

Rupert sees that on screen, you know, various kids are plotting against him, and he somehow becomes convinced that his real life kids are maneuvering against him. It kind of reminds me that, you know, the real life mafia started taking cues from the Godfather movies once they became so popular.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Didn't Logan Roy in the show inspire his daughters to make post Rupert plans?

[Mackay Coppins]

Yes, actually. Spoiler alert. Liz apparently watched the episode in the final season of Succession where Logan Roy dies. And in the show, the family is caught off guard. And it occurred to Liz that the real life Murdochs didn't have a plan either. And so she actually asked the managing director for her in the trust to draft potential funeral plans for Rupert. And who would announce the death and who would make a statement and how they would communicate, et cetera. Meanwhile, Rupert and Lachlan, when they found out about this, saw it as evidence that James and his sisters were plotting a coup. This actually became a major subject of debate in the litigation over the trust. And it all started with an episode of Succession.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And so they tried to stop it with the change in the Trust. It failed in December of 2024, pending appeal. Did you get any glimpse of how James and his siblings might use their power once Rupert is gone?

[Mackay Coppins]

This was the thing that, frankly, James was most cagey about because it was this subject of active litigation. Right. But I did get glimpses. Specifically when it comes to Fox News, James believes that this network has become the menace to democracy. Now, again, he' he says that doesn't mean it can't report from a center right perspective, but it should be run by professional news executives who care about the truth. Some examples he gave is Fox News should not be putting a shill for the oil companies on air and presenting him as an expert on climate change. And certainly they should not be advancing the idea that an election was stolen when all evidence is to the contrary. These things to him just taint the rest of the media outlets that are owned by them. Remember, this media empire also owns the Wall Street Journal, which is a credible newspaper. They own the Times of London, another credible newspaper in the British media landscape, Harper Collins. It's clear that he and his sisters want major changes to happen. They would reject the idea that they're plotting any kind of coup against Lachlan. But if nothing changes and it comes down to there are only four people who can decide the fate of this EMP empire, and three of them see things one way and one of them sees things the other, it's easy to do the math.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Well, I guess that's democracy. Do you have thoughts about what it would mean if Fox were to change.

[Mackay Coppins]

Fox News has been probably the most influential news outlet in America on the right in the last two decades. So if Fox News changed, it could dramatically change the political and media landscape of this country. Though you could also make the case that at this point, Fox News has inspired so many imitators that there are plenty of other outlets that would be happy to fill that void.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Now, you've noted that James is the literary type and he told you that he'd re read the memoirs of Hadrian. He said, I hate to use Roman emperors as a metaphor because it's totally douchey, but he came across a passage about a dying ruler in search of an heir, and he said that he finally understood something about his dad.

[Mackay Coppins]

Yeah. Yeah. So Hadrian, his imperial predecessor, is refusing to face his end, and this is what it says. We were too different for him to find in me what most people who have wielded total authority seek desperately on their deathbeds, a docile successor pledged in advance to the same methods and even to the same errors.

[Brooke Gladstone]

McKay, thank you very much.

[Mackay Coppins]

Thank you.

[Brooke Gladstone]

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at the Atlantic. I spoke to him in May. Thanks for listening to the Midweek podcast. This week, tune in for the big show where I talk to the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum about Molly Goldberg, a true media innovator, a Lucille Ball before Lucille Ball, but even more so, it's about the battles she fought over politics and art and how they resonate today. See you then. I'm brooke Gladstone.

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