Contributed by Jim Hayes

The method has used to guarantee control over his media empire is a window to the character and the way he sees the world. Unusual control measures began when he used his influence to persuade the Australian Stock Exchange in 1993 to give him the right to issue non-voting shares. He needed the money and wanted control. Those buying shares of this type contributed their money but didn’t get a say on how the company is run.

Control was tightened further. By 2006, Murdoch had 70 percent of the vote. Now he is pushing for even more control, and to keep on exercising it after he is dead. Rupert Murdoch is now 93 and not much longer for this world.

The latest move is to cancel the voting shares of members of his own adult children, James, Elizabeth, and Prudence. All are critical of his methods and politics. They are fighting him through the courts in Nevada.  Murdoch wants to shift control to his other son Lauchlan, who shares his father’s ambitions.

Image by Zennie/Private Media: Rupert Murdoch and his adult children

This family squabble isn’t the most important news About Murdoch, News Corp, Fox, and the Disney Corporation. Far more important is he use of control over media to shape the politics of the United Sates, Great Britain, and Australia. Murdoch has cemented himself as the maker of presidents and prime ministers. Winning an election has been impossible without his anointment for years.

Way back in 1995, an article by Ken Auletta (The Pirate) published in the New York Times revealed,

“Rupert Murdoch’s empire spreads across six continents and nine different media: newspapers (his company owns or has an interest in a hundred and thirty-two); magazines (he owns or has an interest in twenty-five, including TV Guide, which has the largest circulation of any weekly magazine in the United States); books (HarperCollins and Zondervan, the dominant publisher of religious books); broadcasting (the Fox network, twelve TV stations in the United States; fifteen per cent of the Seven network, in Australia; and Sky Radio, in Britain); direct-broadcast satellite television (Star TV, in Asia; forty per cent of BSkyB, in Europe; half ownership of Vox, in Germany; and a yet to be named joint venture with Globo, in South America); cable (the fX network, in the United States; Canal Fox, in Latin America; and half ownership of Foxtel, in Australia); a movie studio (Twentieth Century Fox); home video (Fox Video); and on-line access to the worldwide Internet (Delphi).”

If you’re out of favour, a campaign of stories splashed across our screens and print media, will do the damage to ensure defeat. And these stories are often manufactured.

Rupert Murdoch has tight editorial control. With this, the autocracy applied to the control of his media empire is applied to the way he sees society should be run. Murdoch is no champion of democracy. He puts his resources to manufacturing election wins and to destabilising and getting rid of governments he doesn’t approve of.

The fact that he has got away with this is testimony to the power he holds. Would be political leaders know they must seek his approval first. Once compromised, they don’t dare challenge him. In Australia, Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Abott, Turnbull, Morrison, and now Albanese are all Murdoch nominees.

Murdoch’s political ambitions have long been and continue to be to drive the train that takes us to the way he believes nations should be run. This is as an open dictatorship of his own making. Hr is now trying to keep this train rolling after his own death.

We should realise that the rise of the Kier Starmer government in Britain and Donald Trump in the United States has been his doing to a significant amount. Murdoch doesn’t leave it here. He is attempting to build a new fascism for the twenty first century. The character of this is to impose.

He can be stopped if enough people turn against him and actively reject his toxic politics.