James Murdoch has a last name that many people will forever associate with some of the most pernicious influences on American politics and society. But at 46, Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son is now rewriting his own script, with a new company entirely outside the family business, and a public persona that has effectively cast him as the progressive face of the family behind Fox News. He cares about things like the environment and maternal mortality and affordable health care. He speaks about the future with an earnest sense of hope. He wears sneakers. He says “golly.”
“As we continue to make, as a society, bad decisions on a number of things,” Murdoch proclaimed Wednesday at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in Beverly Hills, “as we continue to not act aggressively on climate change, on providing appropriate and competitive health care to our people, on allowing income inequality to bloom in the way that it has, the more you leave that stuff unsolved, the more draconian the solution is going to have to be.... Today, I feel there is an urgency to find solutions…. That means spending, it means regulation, it means government intervention in a variety of sectors.”
Tell that to Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. James Murdoch, of course, has nothing to do with those guys anymore, ever since he left the company now known as Fox Corporation, following the sale, to Disney, of Fox’s long-held film and entertainment assets. James doesn't watch Fox News. (Though he said he was “disappointed” to learn of Shep Smith’s departure from the network.) He doesn’t talk about business with his father or brother, Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corporation and cochair of sister company News Corp. Would he ever go back to Fox? “I don’t think so,” James told Vanity Fair editor in chief Radhika Jones, chuckling. Likewise, was he interested in being Bob Iger’s successor at Disney? “I really wasn’t.”
Rather, Murdoch is focused on Lupa Systems, the new holding company through which he has been sinking money into a variety of ventures including comic books, virtual reality, Tribeca Enterprises, and Vice, an investment that Murdoch confirmed onstage. “The way I looked at it was: if I put myself in my 2020 self or 2050 self,” said Murdoch, describing his investment strategy, “what would I look back on and and think, These are interesting themes or interesting developments?”
Murdoch also talked about his support for Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary. “I think Mayor Buttigieg seems to have the composure, the character, and the thoughtfulness to handle some of the hardest challenges that we have, but we have to see how it all plays out,” he said. “My wife and I have both been very enthusiastic about his leadership, but also about a new generation of leaders.… The generation that’s been in power for a while now has really not delivered on a variety of issues.”
What about Murdoch’s 445-acre property in the wilds of British Columbia? A safe haven in which to weather the Trumpocalypse? “That’s just for fishing,” he said.
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