For some Australians, the exit yesterday of Australian-American Rupert Murdoch from the leadership of the global populist conservative media empire News Corp and Fox Corpwas an occasion to reflect on the country’s biggest business “success story”.

For others, it was a welcome reduction in the influence of a man they believe is a danger to democracy and even the planet.

But as the country that produced the most powerful media personality of modern times processed the news that he was stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp and News Corp, everyone soon agreed there would never be another like him.

The toxic News Corp with huge influence worldwide and also in Australia

“It’s amazing how one guy led the most powerful family in the world, built a family fortune of A$30 billion (€18 billion) and influenced world affairs for decadessaid Stephen Mayne, a former News Corp journalist turned activist shareholder who has grilled Murdoch exhaustively about the company’s deals at 15 annual shareholder meetings since 1999.

“Unfortunately, certainly in recent years, too much of that legacy has been toxic,” Mayne added, citing, among other things, Murdoch’s media exposure of false about the 2020 US presidential election and the climate change dispute.

The media empire Murdoch built over seven decades from a single newspaper in Adelaide spans three continents

Even at a time when the way people “consume” media is abandoning traditional avenues, particularly among young people, Murdoch’s influence appears to have become embedded in the country’s information ecosystem because of his mass reach, media experts say. media.

News Corp’s influence remains unparalleled in Australia, where about 60% of daily newspapers, including the national broadsheet newspaper The Australian, are owned by News Corp.

Its Australian holdings include Sky News Australia, a cable television channel modeled after America’s Fox News.
“What’s published in The Australian gets a second airing through Sky and a third airing through the local dailies,” says Shane Honan, head of Monash University’s School of Media, Film and Journalism.

“Murdoch’s papers still have a large working-class audience and are still influential,” he adds. That’s why Australian politicians from across the ideological spectrum continue to maintain friendly relations with the companyunlike in other markets where left-wing MPs were more likely to avoid it, according to Honan.

“He did enormous damage to the democratic world”

THE federal finance minister Asked by the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) whether Murdoch’s papers had wronged his centre-left Labor Party, Jim Chalmers said he did not want to discuss “whether or not I feel that issues or reportage it was fairly».

“The body of the work is here and everyone can see it,” Chalmers told the television network. “He was in many ways a controversial figure, but he was also influential and it’s about the end of an era in News».

THE Secretary of State Penny Wongasked by reporters in New York about Murdoch’s departure, said that “any fair observer could say that some of the papers might not exactly have been cheering the Labor Party, but that’s what happens in a democracy”.
“I wish him a happy retirement“, he added.

Australian politicians, no longer in office, took a less moderate approach. THE former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulla moderate conservative, said “the financial pages will praise him” for the success of Fox and News Corp, “but did enormous damage to the democratic world».

“The ecosystem of anger that Fox News, above all, has created in the US has left behind an America angrier and more divided than it has ever been since the civil war,” Turnbull told ABC.

Murdoch’s exit breaks the genetic link between News Corp and Fox Corp and Australia, where Murdoch was born.

His son, Lachlan Murdoch, who now becomes the sole chairman of News Corp and continues as chairman and chief executive of Fox, was born in Britain.
But Lachlan Murdoch, whose wife is Australian, continues to live in Sydney with his family and commutes to the US, where the two companies are based, a spokesman said.
Australia, on the other hand, continues to play a large role in Murdoch’s companies.
A campaign by Australian newspapers is what prompted the country’s government in 2021 to force tech giants Meta and Alphabet, which owns Google, to pay media outlets for content they feature on their websites as long as they attract advertising revenue.
The US and Canada are now planning similar laws.
A year earlier, News Corp’s coverage of devastating bushfires in Australia questioned the role of global warming and drew criticism from Murdoch’s other son, James Murdoch. A few months later, he resigned from the company’s board, citing disagreements over editorial content.