Mckay Coppins reports on James Murdoch, presenting a detailed examination of his life and his complex relationship with his father, Rupert Murdoch, and the family's media empire. The intense sibling rivalry between James and Lachlan and Rupert's favoring of Lachlan as his successor are focal points. James also made efforts to distance himself from the family's conservative media outlets and establish his own identity. Did Rupert Murdoch's drive for dynastic control damage his family, leave behind strained relationships and unresolved conflicts?
I wanted to press him on this point—to suggest that it might not actually be normal for your father to conspire to destroy your career and place you in legal jeopardy in order to give your job to your older brother. But James surely knew all this. Maybe he just didn’t want to dwell on his father’s cruelty, or the fact that he’d never been the favorite. James wasn’t protecting Rupert, I realized. He was protecting himself.
In Rupert’s conception of the family empire, the empire always takes precedence over the family.