After disagreement over editorial choices, James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of News Corp.
47-year-old James Murdoch has been considered his father’s successor in what is one of the world’s largest media groups. In recent months, however, he has sharply criticized the editorial line of several of the media owned by the group, not least when it comes to covering climate change.
He is now leaving the company that the now 87-year-old Rupert Murdoch founded in his time. In a letter, he writes that he resigns due to “disagreement about certain parts of the editorial content published by the company’s news media and certain other strategic decisions”.
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forest fires
News Corp owns billions of dollars in media, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times and the tabloid Sun, but not Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, which is President Donald Trump’s favorite channel.
In January this year, James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, criticized the climate skepticism that characterized some of the Murdoch media, especially the coverage of Australian media in connection with the forest fires. He also expressed frustration over the coverage of some of the company’s media in the US, as well as Fox News.
Rupert Murdoch i 2014.
Photo: Rick Wilking (Reuters)
– Climate skeptic
The father has responded by saying that he does not employ climate deniers, while he has previously described himself as a climate skeptic.
While father Murdoch has long supported Republican Trump, his son has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of Democrat Joe Biden’s election campaign.
Rupert Murdoch remains chairman of News Corp. Together with his son Lachlan, he says in a statement that he wishes James all the best.
– We are grateful for James and his work in the business for many years, the two say according to BBC.
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Cuts paper
Rupert Murdoch has created the entire worldwide media group after he himself inherited his father’s newspaper publisher News Limited in Australia. The company is currently headquartered in New York.
Due to declining advertising revenues during the corona pandemic, the group announced in May that it would cut paper editions to more than 100 Australian newspapers, many of them local, and only publish the newspapers online.
However, the company was able to record a profit of 23 million dollars in the first quarter due to good figures from the publisher HarperCollins.
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