Rupert Murdoch - the sucession

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Among the many repercussions of the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, the most mysterious has been its effect on Rupert Murdoch’s children. Their 80-year-old father’s double-edged dream of dynasty has dominated the lives of three of the six: the Australia-based Lachlan, the well-networked Elisabeth, and the currently embattled James. But the balance of power continues to shift, with Rupert’s third wife, Wendi, a formidable x factor, and his second wife, Anna, still weighing in. Talking to News Corp. and family insiders, Sarah Ellison discovers how the Murdochs coalesced and splintered as the crisis raged, and assesses the complex allegiances that remain.
Two weeks earlier, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s oldest son, had been with him at Herb Allen’s annual retreat for media moguls and Wall Street tycoons in Sun Valley. Rupert arrived just as the story broke of Milly Dowler, a kidnapped and murdered girl whose cell phone had been hacked by the News of the World in 2002. The story set off a media firestorm. Inside the seemingly unified Murdoch family, it broke open tensions that had been simmering for months. And it forced the patriarch to face the possibility that he might be the last Murdoch at the helm of his own company.

Rupert and Lachlan huddled together in Sun Valley for most of the week following the Milly Dowler revelations. They avoided the press and almost everyone else. James was on the phone from London continually. So was Elisabeth, who also lives in London. Murdoch had described the phone-hacking allegations as “deplorable and unacceptable,” but seemed inclined to do little else. He had voiced support for Rebekah Brooks, the C.E.O. of his British newspaper division, News International. Elisabeth told him that Brooks needed to resign.
Rupert Murdoch has fathered six children in the course of three marriages. He married his first wife, Patricia Booker, in 1956, and they had one daughter, Prudence, before divorcing. Prudence lives today in Australia, avoids the spotlight, and takes no role in her father’s company. (One person in the News Corp. circle described her as the Pete Best—the “fifth Beatle”—of the Murdoch family.) Murdoch then married Anna Torv, a Scottish journalist who worked for him in Australia. They had three children: Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James. The marriage to Anna lasted more than 30 years. In 1999, 17 days after finalizing his divorce from Anna, Murdoch married Wendi Deng, a Chinese-born staff member at his Star TV operation, who is 38 years his junior. They have two daughters—Grace, 10, and Chloe, 8. Fonte/Vanity Fair