Last Wednesday, Vanity Fair reported Gabriel Sherman published a lengthy cover story titled “Inside Rupert Murdoch Succession Drama” in which he makes some startling revelations about the Fox Corp CEO and Fox News.
According to Sherman, after the 2020 presidential election, Murdoch told his son Lachlan and Fox News CEO Suzanne Smith that on-air hosts should just say Joe Biden won the election and move on.
Sherman highlights an email from Scott in which she writes that she privately told Rupert Murdoch that the hosts agree, but “we need to be careful” on how to do that without “pissing off the viewers.”
Sherman also notes that a source claimed that Murdoch spoke with then-President Trump before Biden’s inauguration asking him to graciously accept defeat. Murdoch reportedly told Trump that his presidency left a “good legacy” and continuing to promote the stolen election narrative “would drag everyone down.” According to the source, in response, Trump threatened to create a news channel to “put Fox out of business.”
Sherman also writes that the Dominion lawsuit is “the worst crisis” for Fox News that he has ever seen in his decade of reporting on the network. He said Fox’s coverage after the 2020 election “has led to an existential threat” to the network.
According to Sherman, the revelations that have emerged from Dominion’s court filings have done severe damage to Fox’s brand among others in the media. He writes that a senior Fox News staffer told him that if Fox loses the case, “it’s f*cking bad.”
Sherman also reveals that Murdoch told his former wife Jerry Hall by email that he wanted a divorce.
According to Sherman, last June, Hall was waiting for her husband to meet her at their estate in Oxfordshire, England when she checked her cell phone and found an email from Murdoch telling her that he decided to “call an end to our marriage.” He told her his lawyer in New York would be contacting Hall’s lawyer “immediately.”
