The Woman Set to Take Over Murdoch’s Media Empire
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This reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
The top job in the Murdoch media empire will go to Rebekah Brooks, with insiders telling Confider she will take the reins of a remarried News Corp and Fox Corp if and when the much talked-about deal is complete.
Brooks is now positioned to take over for Robert Thomson, the current CEO of News Corp, who is expected to step aside on completion of the merger, people familiar with the matter told Confider.
The deal to remarry the two companies is the brainchild of Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, and his son Lachlan, the CEO of Fox Corporation who would sit on high as chairman of a newly reunited company.
Insiders told Confider that there is one more “big deal” the sprightly 91-year-old is keen to make before he departs to the big newsroom in the sky. Just what that deal is, well, it’s a tightly held secret within a massive media empire stretching from newspapers in Australia to the ever-lucrative cable giant Fox News.
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Brooks is currently the CEO of News UK and is something of a teflon figure in Murdoch land: After a stint atop Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun, she took over its parent company News International before resigning in 2011 amid the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. She returned to the empire in 2015 and is now poised to take over—the rewards of being a loyal and much-loved executive considered a second daughter to Rupert.
Sources told Confider that some recent changes within the empire, such as the elevation of Sunday Times editor Emma Tucker to run The Wall Street Journal, were spearheaded by Brooks.
Fox and News Corp split into two in 2013 after the phone-hacking scandal and while the reunion faces opposition from a large number of shareholders, sources emphasized to Confider that the Murdochs, both patriarch and heir, remain fully determined to rejoin the companies.
A rep for News Corp declined to comment.
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