Original subtitles

This is Rupert Murdoch's motorcade, moving through Aberdeenshire.

He's showing his eldest son, Lachlan,

where the Murdoch family originated from, before Australia.

INDISTINCT

You'd think so. Oh, right there. There it is. That's it.

He's being tailed by a Scottish news crew.

Hi, g'day.

Can you tell me your views on Scottish independence?

No. Read The Sun. That's not on!

THEY LAUGH

Recently, so much of the power and influence he once enjoyed has gone.

His reputation damaged by the phone hacking scandal.

The old church is just there, I think, OK?

But Rupert is about to mastermind his comeback.

A comeback that will cause a step change in politics across the world.

Thank you to my very good friend Rupert Murdoch.

There's only one Rupert - that, we know.

REPORTER: Did you close the paper down because of the criminality?

Yes, we felt ashamed at what had happened

and thought we ought to bring it to a close.

At the start of the 2010s,

Rupert Murdoch is at an all-time low.

I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give

shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Thank you.

Your full name, please, Mr Murdoch. Keith Rupert Murdoch.

I also have to say that I failed.

His company is engulfed in scandal,

and a once-friendly prime minister addresses the nation.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming.

Over the past few days,

the whole country has been shocked by the revelations

about the phone hacking scandal.

Murder victims, terrorist victims,

families who've lost loved ones,

sometimes defending our country.

That these people could have had their phones hacked into

in order to generate stories for a newspaper is simply disgusting.

It's a particularly tricky line for the Prime Minister to have to take,

having hired the former editor of Murdoch's News Of The World himself.

He resigned from the News Of The World

because of the things that happened on his watch.

I decided to give him a second chance,

but the second chance didn't work out

and he had to resign all over again.

For people watching this scandal unfold,

just think of who they put their trust in -

the police to protect them,

the politicians to represent them,

and the press to inform them -

and all of them have been let down.

And all this has caused problems inside Murdoch's family.

James had looked most likely to be Rupert's successor,

but that was before the failures which happened on his watch.

The phone hacking scandal was a real turning point,

because this is the moment where James loses his footing.

Rupert Murdoch sees James' experience in the UK as indicative

that James can't really manage things on his own.

What Elisabeth does here is violate the rule of the Murdochs,

which is that she's publicly criticising

both her father and her brother,

and that's just not something you're allowed to do in the family.

Writing in MacTaggart has been quite a welcome distraction

from some of the other nightmares much closer to home.

Yes, you have met some of my family before.

LAUGHTER

You're quite forceful in offering your opinion

that James should take a step back. Is that true?

Um... Er, yes. Yeah, it is.

Lis' disapproval even infects the relationship

between James and Rupert,

and James and Rupert are at each other.

When he leaves London,

it seems like James is going to have to wander in the wilderness

for a long time.

Which only leaves Lachlan.

He seems to fit the bill.

He had been working for the American arm of his father's company.

He shares many of his father's right-wing views,

and he seems to dislike governments

interfering in their media businesses.

"Trust us, we're from the government,"

seems to be a common theme when attempting to censor the media.

But trust is something that should not be a consideration

when restricting our fundamental freedoms.

But there are problems with him, too.

He doesn't get on with Rupert's wife, Wendi Deng.

And he's fallen out with the founder of Fox News, Roger Ailes,

a man who constantly undermined Lachlan's position

within the company.

And so Lachlan has left the Murdoch empire and returned to Australia.

So for Rupert, it's bad.

And then it gets worse.

CHURCH BELLS RING

In 2012, his mother dies.

Looking out before me at this great cathedral,

filled to the brim with friends and loved ones,

I cannot help but think of Cruden Farm,

the gardens my mother planted and nurtured

so carefully and beautifully.

He speaks of his mother's passion for Australia's nature.

We are, each one of us, gardeners,

cultivators of our own life,

of our family and of our society.

And then his marriage hits the rocks.

Over the years, investigative reporter Sarah Ellison

has spent time with both Rupert and his children.

Wendi was always a bit of a divisive figure.

She gained more and more influence over him over time.

She was someone who could be quite sharp with him.

James and Lachlan Murdoch talked to their father about

Wendi not being trustworthy

and not being someone that he should be married to any more.

Wendi Murdoch described Tony Blair as one of Rupert's closest friends.

She talked about that in an article

where she also discussed that Tony Blair was the godfather

to one of her daughters. The two of them were very close,

and the families started to spend time together.

The big thing that happened in that moment

was a letter that Wendi had written to herself.

It was sort of a diary entry about Tony Blair

and how attractive Tony Blair was.

There was allegations about a relationship

between Tony Blair and Wendi... Wendi Deng

which Tony has avidly, relentlessly denied.

But that did, at least so far as I'm aware,

that did damage their relationship, yes.

Rupert and Wendi issue a statement

saying they won't be commenting on the allegations.

She made a real bad mistake.

She was sending e-mails on News Corp e-mail,

so it's easy for one of Murdoch's minions, lawyers,

to extract those e-mails and see what they said. And they did.

She was dead. He just killed her, figuratively, and it was over.

And I know that Blair has tried on numerous occasions to reach out

and talk to Murdoch, and those calls go unreturned.

So Murdoch's private life is in tatters.

He's been publicly shamed, and the political establishment shuns him.

Rupert thrived on conflict.

He would go on and on about being against the establishment,

and it gave him, I think, the extra edge.

In this, like so many things,

he takes inspiration from his father.

In World War I at Gallipoli,

Keith Murdoch witnessed thousands of Australian soldiers

sent to their deaths.

His devastating report led the British to change their strategy.

I've always kept in mind very much the, if you like,

the legacy of my father

and the influence he had on me. And, you know,

I have his picture prominently on the wall in my study at home.

My father certainly shook up the establishment,

and I think I've shaken them up over a longer period and a lot more.

In 2013, when most of the current British establishment

don't want to be associated with Murdoch,

there is one political figure who does seek his help.

DOORBELL RINGS

I was invited to go to his apartment in St James',

and we had dinner and we drank some wine from a winery that he owned.

And he was very generous, actually, cos I said,

"Excuse me, I want to go out

"and have a cigarette after the main course,"

and he said, "Just do what you like and smoke here."

So he was very tolerant in that sense!

And he was... I think he was quite impressed

that I knew about his father,

and the Keith Murdoch story from Gallipoli.

I don't think he met many people in politics

who kind of understood that background.

I mean, he was interested in, you know, "Who is Nigel Farage?

"What is UKIP?

"What do they really intend to do? Where are they going?"

What always happens in business, in politics,

if something new comes along,

automatically those that are playing on the pitch say,

"They're mad, they're bad, they're dangerous, they're crazy,"

and I wanted to try and impress upon Rupert Murdoch that,

"Yeah, we might have a few oddballs in UKIP. Doesn't every party?"

But to impress upon him that actually what we represented,

what we were trying to do wasn't dangerous, wasn't extreme.

And I was just hoping that we would get a reasonable run.

In Farage, Murdoch has a politician who wants to do business with him,

and his family life also starts to improve.

Wendi Deng's exit leads to a better relationship

with sons Lachlan and James...

..who both come back into the fold...

..with Lachlan returning to a senior role in America.

That means he will have to work alongside the powerful founder

of Fox News,

Roger Ailes...

REPORTER: Mr Ailes, how are you?

..a man with an undesirable reputation.

Roger created a kind of political machine

masquerading as a news channel,

and Fox ended up exceeding everyone's expectation.

Fox News was incredibly powerful, politically,

and incredibly profitable for the company.

Fair, balanced and unafraid.

No-one covered it all like Fox News Channel.

You have to understand about Fox News, it doesn't just take the

temperature of the country, it heats up the temperature of the country.

At least ten Isis fighters have been

caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas.

Roger Ailes knew how to connect with the fears in the country

and how to stir them up.

The Chinese are the single biggest threat to the national

security of the United States. They have been and they will be,

and they can wait - they're very patient.

You know what they just did? As usual...

James and Lachlan have both had their run-ins with

Roger Ailes over the years.

Ailes did not think highly of the Murdoch children.

He really resented them.

He thought they were, you know, born with a silver spoon

in their mouth, that they were, you know, dilettantes.

That they were, you know, he was the one making the money

and they were just, you know, making boneheaded business decisions

to spend his money.

So there was just not an ounce of respect between

Ailes and the Murdoch children.

Roger Ailes' office was on the second floor

of the News Corp tower in Midtown Manhattan,

and he had the entire Fox News offices wired with security cameras.

And on his desk he kept a monitor where he could toggle through any

of the screens of the CCTV cameras that were placed all throughout the

News Corp building. And what really freaked people out is that

Roger Ailes also wired his own homes so he could be at his desk at work,

click on the screen and watch his wife, Beth,

and his young son, Zachary,

you know, whatever they were doing at home in New Jersey at the time.

So it is really this Orwellian, Big Brother mind-set

that Ailes had.

But one day Ailes was in his office with his cronies, Bill Shine

and other top executives, and he spotted James Murdoch

smoking a cigarette out front of the News Corp building,

and he looked at the camera and he just, you know,

chuckled and he said, you know,

"Tell me that mouth hasn't sucked cock."

And I think, you know,

in that one moment you saw, you know, everything Ailes

thought about James, on top of his own homophobia,

and just, you know, this was...

That was the, like, sort of the quintessential Roger Ailes moment.

What Ailes built with Murdoch in Fox News is so powerful

and influential that in New York

another person is seeking Murdoch's help.

And the approach comes through a trustee

of Murdoch's two youngest daughters' fortunes...

..Ivanka Trump...

..on her father's behalf.

Is this shot...? You look at the shot, the shot's from here up?

Yeah, I will. Cut this.

And get... Where's Jack?

I had him go fill up the car. OK, fine.

He'll be back in like 20 minutes. Perfect.

So, introduce yourself, please, Steve.

Steve Bannon.

Sloppy Steve. It's just... You know, former...

I was the CEO of the Trump campaign and I was the strategist

and senior counsellor to the President at the White House.

Trump respects success, cos he understands success.

At the end of it, it's just not kind of deemed on you, you've had

to go through an entire difficult weaning process to get there.

He admires Murdoch as someone that's very successful and built something

that's quite complicated, which is a diverse global media empire.

And in admiring that, he's going to listen to Murdoch,

because Murdoch, by his position, deserves to be listened to.

Trump went to have lunch with Murdoch before he ran,

before he announced. I think it was set up by Ivanka.

And they just wanted to take his temperature, and Ivanka announces

that her father's made a decision to run for president,

and Murdoch doesn't take his face out of the soup,

and he goes, "No, he's not."

And then she goes, "No, no, you don't understand, he is.

"He's really thought this through." And he goes, "No, he's not."

And she goes, "No, he is."

He mumbles into the soup, "No, he's not."

And that was the conversation - it didn't change a lot over lunch.

Murdoch, to me, should have been the guy above all that understood

how you actually communicated to a mass audience, particularly

communicated to a working class audience. And he was, it seemed

to me at the beginning, the most anti-Trump of all of them.

DONALD TRUMP: Sadly, the American Dream is dead.

But if I get elected president, I will bring it back,

and we will make America great again.

Trump's great for ratings.

He's like an uncontrolled car crash -

you don't know what's going to come out of his mouth,

he has the impetuosity of a ten-year-old,

he's got this sort of low-level, grunting,

vulgarian intellect, and so people are fascinated by him.

But he didn't come down the escalator and Rupert Murdoch

and Roger Ailes says, "Yeah,"

I mean, "we're going to vote... let's vote Trump."

I think they were way... way more sceptical.

Pretty soon after Trump started running,

the Wall Street Journal, which is really the premier paper,

newspaper, that Murdoch owns in America - it's his baby -

and its editorial page described Trump's candidacy as a catastrophe.

LAUGHTER

Whoa! With our partner, Facebook,

we welcome you to the Republican

primary debate night on Fox,

the first debates of

the 2016 presidential campaign.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I think they're fired up.

The first real test of Trump's presidential ambitions comes at

the first debate, which is on Rupert Murdoch's right-wing Fox News.

In the centre of the stage tonight, businessman Donald Trump.

CHEERING

Normally, Fox News' tone towards Republicans is almost

reverential, but the questions Trump gets are brutal.

Fox tried to kneecap him at the first... at the first debate.

And particularly Megyn Kelly clearly laid a trap for Trump

and attacked him.

Mr Trump,

one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind

and you don't use a politician's filter.

However, that is not without its downsides,

in particular when it comes to women.

You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs,

slobs and disgusting animals.

Your Twitter account... Only Rosie O'Donnell.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

No, it wasn't.

CHEERING

Your Twitter account...

CHEERING CONTINUES

Thank you.

For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell.

Yes, I'm sure it was. Your Twitter account has several disparaging

comments about women's looks.

You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be

a pretty picture to see her on her knees.

Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man

we should elect as president?

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.

I've been...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It was pretty shocking. People that were watching it

were absolutely shocked that Fox would go to that technique.

What I say is what I say, and honestly, Megyn, if you don't

like it, I'm sorry. I've been very nice to you, although I could...

Trump's responses are so winning that some believe he had help.

I interviewed somebody who claimed to have seen Roger Ailes

tipping off Trump about this.

Fox, I have to say, has forcefully denied this, but I had

a couple of pretty good sources who...

One of whom claimed that he'd...

..was a first-hand witness.

And so it's a disputed territory but,

according to at least a couple of people,

Trump got some help.

We need strength, we need energy,

we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around.

I know that people were angry - we were angry, everybody was angry

the way it had come across, yes.

I think he wasn't sitting there going,

"Oh, that was great, I was tipped off and knocked it out of the park."

I think, like I said, that's natural ability.

He had a very small staff at the time, it was two or three people,

they were very upset about it, so I'd be very surprised

if he was tipped off. I think it was...

This sounds, to me, insane.

It was a cheap shot.

It was... what the left does.

But he was so good, had such command,

he came back with humour. To do that in the moment, that's

when you sit there and look and say, "That guy's got the right stuff."

The primary debate is the most watched in US history,

a fact not lost on Murdoch,

and Trump's candidacy no longer seems quite so far-fetched.

PA: Ten, nine, eight, seven...

CROWD: ..six, five, four, three, two...

BIG BEN CHIMES

CHEERING

2016 was a turning point for Rupert Murdoch.

SHUTTERS CLICK Hey, Jerry, Rupert, how you doing?

He's dating model Jerry Hall...

Let's get a nice shot of you.

How are you, Rupert?

Can I take a picture of you, sir?

..and going out with Mick Jagger's ex-wife

brings a new kind of attention.

Thanks, Rupert.

A wedding to Jerry Hall represents a public rehabilitation for Rupert,

and the first stage of his comeback.

The celebrities and politicians come out for him again.

Rebekah Brooks, who left the company after the phone hacking scandal,

is now back working as the CEO of the British arm of Murdoch's empire.

His daughter Elisabeth is there.

She's now running her own media company.

Good morning, Elisabeth. This way, please.

Lachlan is also there with his wife Sarah, a model and TV presenter.

And James is there with his wife Kathryn,

a climate change activist.

Rupert has found his fourth wife, Jerry Hall.

They went to the trouble of actually getting married

with all of their children.

How was the ceremony? Beautiful.

Both of Murdoch's sons have recently been

given a promotion within the company.

It really matters to him to have his darlings,

as he calls them, around him.

Rupert sets up once again a scenario where

James and Lachlan need to kind of battle it out

and they're both at, you know, nearly the very top of the company,

together, in a power-sharing arrangement.

An executive said to me, "He's going to try to make James the CEO

"and Lachlan the chairman, can you believe it?"

Almost no-one could really make that work, not...

Least of all two brothers who had competed with one another

for their father's affection and for dominance in the company

for almost their entire lives.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon.

We are approaching one of the biggest decisions this

country will face in our lifetimes -

whether to remain in a reformed European Union or to leave.

Feeling confident, Mr Farage?

I'm always feeling confident.

And how's the team been doing so far?

All right.

Rupert asked me whether I thought Brexit was possible,

whether I thought Brexit was achievable,

whether it could be done

or whether we were trying to push water uphill.

I said, "Yeah, it's possible. It won't be easy, but it is possible."

Rupert Murdoch has always been a Eurosceptic.

You know, in Canberra in Australia, everybody listened to him.

In London in the United Kingdom, everybody listened to him.

Now, in Washington, everybody listened to him.

But nobody really listened to him in Brussels.

He had very little clout there,

he really didn't matter very much there.

Mr Murdoch?

He was in at The Sun day after day,

with the current editor, marshalling the coverage.

NEWSREADER: Buckingham Palace is insisting the Queen is politically

neutral in the EU referendum debate,

despite claims in The Sun newspaper that she backs a British exit.

The paper says she spoke out against the EU in a conversation with

Nick Clegg five years ago, when he was deputy prime minister.

As for the story in The Sun, it's nonsense, it's not true,

I couldn't be clearer than that.

I think Murdoch helped create an environment in which...

..in which Brexit could happen, with The Sun's pretty constant,

Eurosceptic criticism.

We will win this war, we will get our country back, we will get

our independence back and we will get our borders back, thank you.

CHEERING

This is a foreigner interfering in British politics.

And I don't believe that any other country would allow

foreigners to have this sort of influence

and that drip, drip, drip of European poison, decade after

decade, had a most unfortunate effect on British public opinion.

I think The Sun actually mirrored the way that

many in this country had been feeling for years and years

and years, and yet there wasn't a political voice to articulate it.

Let's let June the 23rd go down in our history as our independence day!

CHEERING

I saw him some days afterwards. I was at a lunch

and we sat opposite each other, both, I think, sort of still

astonished...

..that kind of what we'd wanted to happen had happened.

But, no, he was very happy about it.

Take a quick picture...?

Yeah, well, I was told that he was...

Take a quick picture, the three of us?

Sure. Brilliant.

This is the official Leave party, no?

There was no Leave party.

It's the Leave party. Yeah. No-one ever celebrated.

You can call it that if you want to. Everyone was so sad, apart from you.

OK. We're celebrating. Yeah.

I tell you what, there's plenty of celebrations out in the country.

Rupert's finest moment - if you like, the most...

The moment when he achieved most power, his greatest moment,

actually, in British newspapers, was the Brexit vote.

And will change Britain - I think for the worse - forever.

Without Rupert, there would have been no Brexit.

HELICOPTER PROPELLERS WHIR

Donald Trump is busy running for the presidency of the United States.

His trip to Scotland seems like a visit to his golf resort...

..but he's here on business.

They both need each other, as it turns out, and Trump needed Fox

and Fox needed Trump. And so you see this by the end of the summer

of 2016, when it's clear that Trump's

going to be the Republican nominee.

Rupert Murdoch gets invited to go to Trump's golf course in Scotland.

REPORTER: Meanwhile, the candidate is spending part of the weekend

at his new golf resort in Scotland.

He was joined Saturday by Rupert Murdoch

and his new wife, Jerry Hall.

It's a kind of a powwow where out from... from that becomes

a kind of a working partnership. Things begin to change.

Rupert likes a gamble, he likes a risk, and he knew him -

they're old friends.

Never thought he'd be in this position,

but I think when he saw the way the wind was blowing he thought,

"Actually... Actually, given a choice

"of President Clinton or President Trump,

"I think I'd rather have Trump."

So Rupert now has eyes on the next phase of his comeback.

But just as he's about to put Fox News into battle

for Trump, Rupert has a problem...

..with his long-term collaborator

and co-founder of Fox News, Roger Ailes.

In the summer of 2016, in the midst of the presidential campaign,

there was just an explosion of scandalous news

about Roger Ailes' sex life.

Roger Ailes was accused by Gretchen Carlson, the former anchor

on Fox and Friends, of sexual harassment.

And that lawsuit opened a floodgate of allegations,

and dozens of women came forward to detail

years of sexual harassment, abuse,

horrific examples of misbehaviour on Ailes' part.

Ailes had even called one woman his slave.

The most tragic example was a victim

I interviewed, Laurie Luhn, who had worked in the booking department

for Fox News, and she detailed a 20-year psychologically and sexually

abusive relationship Ailes had coerced her into by blackmailing

her, videotaping her in a compromised position and basically

then forcing her to sexually service him at his, you know, at will.

Luhn talks candidly about the abuse she suffered.

He was sussing out your vulnerabilities?

Absolutely.

Like what? What would he tell you to do?

He said that I needed training.

You needed training?

He would have me get down on my knees and tell me,

"You're going to do whatever I tell you to do

"at any time, do you understand that?"

It sets off another bomb inside the company.

The case gets uglier and uglier by the day.

We believe more than 20 women came forward speaking to the

law firm about their experiences with Ailes.

Lachlan and James take the decision

out of their father's hands,

and Roger Ailes is forced out.

Irony of ironies. Who gave him the news that he was severed,

executed, gone?

Lachlan was in that room.

We received and accepted Roger Ailes' resignation

as the CEO of the business.

Throughout this process, we have moved quickly

and decisively to protect the business...

So Lachlan has taken down an old enemy...

..although Ailes is reportedly given a $40 million settlement.

When Roger Ailes was forced out, they could have looked for somebody

else to run Fox News, and they did think about it a little bit,

and the sons actually wanted them to reach out to somebody new.

But Rupert Murdoch instead

volunteered himself to become the replacement.

And Rupert can now focus Fox News on the American presidential election.

APPLAUSE

Fox News is a model for radicalisation.

It's making people madder, it's stirring people up, it's upsetting

people, it's... And those upset people then turn to a leader

like Trump, who needs their anger in order to get them to the polls.

This has been a slugfest.

Crooked Hillary Clinton.

A roller-coaster ride.

I am your voice!

Oh, without question, you know, you don't get

Donald Trump as president without Fox News. I mean,

they transformed the politics in this country to be

a reality show spectacle,

to prize bombast and the volume of what

you're saying over the substance of what you're saying.

BARACK OBAMA: Mr President Elect, how are you?

Good to see you.

Congratulations.

And Murdoch's comeback is complete.

Having been out in the cold in 2011, now he has helped make Brexit happen

and he's been crucial in putting Donald Trump in the White House.

But just when he seemed to have it all,

he does something completely unexpected.

He decides to sell almost all of his empire...

..from his Asian TV network,

to Sky Television in Britain,

to his movie studio in Hollywood.

And it's Disney that pays $71 billion for the majority...

..with Murdoch also getting a substantial stake in Disney itself.

The family had gathered on Lachlan's yacht, Sarissa.

It's the middle of the night.

Rupert Murdoch, when he got up, he fell...

..and cracked multiple vertebrae.

Rupert Murdoch was on the floor of that yacht, couldn't move.

He has to be airlifted off the boat and flown to a Los Angeles hospital.

It brings the children to this moment that they have been

fearing and waiting for much of their adult lives...

..that they're going to have to face life beyond their father.

There's no other media figure that has had the kind of influence

that Rupert Murdoch has had...

..and they have to figure out what's going to happen next.

An e-mail is sent out saying that Rupert is merely working from home.

It's business as usual, and the deal goes through...

..and the lion's share of Rupert Murdoch's empire is finally sold.

He keeps just a few of his favourite companies...

..including his newspapers in the US, Australia and Britain.

It's the end of a long journey.

Rupert had expected to inherit his father's newspaper business,

but his dad died prematurely and the company was split up.

Rupert inherited just one Australian newspaper.

He went from Adelaide to Sydney, from Sydney to London,

from London to New York, from New York to Los Angeles and then

all over the place, each time virtually starting from nothing.

The ancient Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great

wept when he had no more worlds to conquer.

And over the years many of us were known to search

for that tear in Rupert's eye.

I often wondered whether or not...

..Rupert Murdoch's company was a personality cult.

He was and remains one of the most interesting

people in the world. And to be around him

even for five, ten minutes, I used to say at the time

I learned more from listening to him for five minutes

than I would two or three years at any other media company.

Who do I admire? Who would I look up to?

Certainly Rupert Murdoch comes top of the tree,

simply because of his... of his kind of, like, swashbuckling

ways of doing things, just getting on with it.

But as his empire grew, Murdoch became ever more controversial.

The playwright Dennis Potter,

in his last interview before he died,

famously said this...

I call my cancer, the main one,

the pancreas one, I call it Rupert,

so I can get close to it. Because that man, Murdoch, is the one who,

if I had the time - in fact, I've got too much writing to do

and I haven't got the energy - but I would shoot the bugger if I could.

There is no one person more responsible for the pollution

of what was already a fairly polluted press,

and the pollution of the British press is an important part

of the pollution of British political life.

It's difficult to think of a successful Prime Minister

in the last 40 years

who has won against the Murdoch instinct.

To speak objectively about him, even so...

..so many years after I worked for him, is difficult.

On the negative side, there are things that have happened,

particularly, you know, what's happened with Fox News,

which are such huge negatives, that have allowed

untruths and lies to be told across the US,

have actually fostered the far right

and allowed the far right to flourish.

And it is a great sadness to me as someone that worked

for the company for a long time that they cannot see that.

They don't seem to be able to see their negative traits.

When it was announced that Rupert Murdoch was selling to Disney,

the first thing that Donald Trump did was

get on the phone to make sure he wasn't selling Fox News.

And Rupert Murdoch... Murdoch assured him that he wasn't.

So Rupert Murdoch retains this most powerful piece of his empire,

Fox News.

And the question remains - who will take it over?

Family has always been very important to Rupert Murdoch,

particularly from the point of view of forming a dynasty.

I mean, I remember in the mid-'80s having dinner with him

one Saturday night after I'd put the Sunday Times to bed, and young

Lachlan and James were there - they were, I think, in their early teens,

and the talk was all then about how he was building a company for them.

And he used to like to play them off against each other,

to see how they would survive.

He always wanted at least one of his children to take over from him.

And, in a way, he's failed in that regard.

So Rupert, like his father before him,

will only hand down a fraction of his business.

And the question of who to is finally being resolved,

as James begins to find the politics that comes with his

father's empire increasingly problematic.

And there's one issue in particular that seems to be

a bone of contention.

This is Rupert Murdoch appearing on one of his

news programmes in Australia.

Rupert Murdoch, congratulations on 50 years of The Australian,

the national newspaper that you created.

You can see the esteem in which he's held here...

..as he's asked whether Australia

should be concerned about climate change.

Now, one of the great issues the papers have been wrestling

with in recent years is the balance between environmental concerns,

climate change concerns on the one hand,

and the need on the other hand to maintain a competitive economy

and to ensure that costs don't escalate too much.

What's the way one should approach this?

What's the way Australia should approach this issue?

We should approach climate change with great scepticism.

Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here,

and there will always be a little bit of it. At the moment, the....

Murdoch has strong views,

but his description of the science seems vague.

But how much are we doing...

..er, with emissions and so on? Well, as far as Australia goes,

nothing in the overall picture. China perhaps...

But if you're talking about environment and health and smoke...

He sounds unconcerned by global warming...

In terms of the world's temperature going up...

..the worst...

The most alarmist things have said

maybe 3%. Three cents. Three... Sorry.

Three degrees Centigrade in 100 years.

At the very most, one of those would come from man-made... be man-made.

..and he plays down the possible consequences.

Now, what it means is that, if the sea level rises six inches,

that's a big deal in the world. The Maldives might disappear or

something but, OK, we've got to learn to...

We can't mitigate that, we can't stop it,

we've just got to stop building vast houses on sea shores...

..and go back a little bit.

You know, the world had been changing for thousands

and thousands of years.

It's just a lot more complicated today

because we're so much more advanced.

REPORTER: With winds of more than 80mph,

the firefighting authorities simply can't keep up with the breakouts.

They're working in stifling heat, with temperatures

well over 40 degrees Celsius.

REPORTER: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp dominates the media landscape

in Australia. It publishes more than 140 newspapers,

employs around 3,000 journalists across print, broadcast

and online, and critics say Mr Murdoch's newspapers

and TV networks have continued to publish stories and opinion

pieces that dismiss widely accepted science about climate change.

And, at this point, James speaks out.

Rupert Murdoch's son, James Murdoch,

a spokesperson for him and his wife, Kathryn,

say their views on climate are well established

and their frustration with some of News Corp

and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known.

They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among

the news outlets in Australia, given obvious evidence to the contrary.

James is unafraid to be publicly critical of his family's business...

It's frustrating to see how news organisations kind of continue

to just preach to the choir. They have their audience that's going

to believe what they say etc, in these prime-time opinion shows.

That's a dialogue I think that's not doing a great... a great service.

There's plenty of stuff on Fox News that I disagree with.

..and he distances himself from them.

I'm not involved with the Fox... Fox Corp business.

My brother and my father run that,

and they're off doing their own thing there.

Do you watch Fox News? Er, no.

James buys a remote 450-acre retreat in the Canadian wilderness.

It's reported as being deliberately self-sufficient,

with its own water and energy supply.

When asked, he is reluctant to discuss it

and plays down its significance.

I'm wondering if it's true that you have built

a bunker in Northern Canada in case of the apocalypse.

No. No, no, it's not... it's not a bunker.

I... That's just for fishing up in the north.

OK.

Um, if you say so, James.

And so, for Rupert, of his three children who

were in line for succession,

two have now quit the family business.

Elisabeth went her own way in 2015.

She runs her own global media company.

James has also bowed out of the battle for succession.

Recently, he's been investing in attempts to combat fake news

and funding one of Trump's political opponents.

Which leaves Lachlan.

Rupert has promoted his son to be his equal.

They're now co-chairmen of the family business.

Lachlan is the chosen one.

He's a loyal son.

I think that's how Rupert Murdoch thinks.

In the hills above Los Angeles, Lachlan has just bought

one of the most expensive houses in America.

And he now runs Fox News.

Subtitles Diego Moraes(oakislandtk) www.opensubtitles.org