Rupert: The last mogul

Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire is in decline - yet, as Malcolm Turnbull tells Paddy, he was still able to roll a sitting prime minister and be invited into cabinet. In this series finale, Paddy investigates Rupert’s relationship with Donald Trump and his ongoing impact on democracies around the world. Finally, with Lachlan taking over from his father, he explores how much longer the empire will survive without Rupert in control.

Around the turn of the century, Rupert’s empire hits a peak. But he’s about to face two of the biggest crises of his career - the phone hacking scandal and the downfall of Roger Ailes. To survive them he'll use his two most loyal assets - his sons, Lachlan and James. 

Paddy investigates the fraught relationship between Rupert and his two potential heirs. He explains how Lachlan ultimately won out, while James abandoned the family altogether.

By the 1990s, Rupert is cemented as one of the world’s most powerful and divisive men, but his unrelenting drive is beginning to take a toll. As Rupert makes his home in America, Paddy takes a closer look at two of his most consequential relationships. 

There is his alliance with the man behind Fox News, Roger Ailes. Then there is his 30-year marriage to his second wife, Anna Murdoch. One will lift Rupert to new heights of influence; the other will crumble, but not without a parting shot.

Off-the-record lunches, handwritten notes and a bouquet of red roses mark Rupert’s secret friendship with Britain’s most controversial PM, Margaret Thatcher. She helps drive Rupert to become the most powerful media mogul in the commonwealth. Together they will stoke wars against enemies both foreign and within. With Thatcher’s support, Rupert will pull off his most daring piece of business, and arguably the most cruel. 

Paddy pieces together the evidence that binds them together and examines the scars they left behind.

Rupert wields enormous influence over Australia’s political landscape, but it wasn’t always this way. In the 1960s and ’70s, Rupert's struggle to step out of his father’s shadow drives him to launch the first national broadsheet. His gamble pays off when the paper helps elect our most ambitious and progressive leader, Gough Whitlam. 

But as Rupert gets closer to power, he’ll learn just how far his papers can push the needle.

After his father’s death, a young Rupert inherits a small newspaper in 1950s Adelaide. There, he teams up with the paper’s editor to save a man sentenced to hang. When the paper is threatened, a ruthless streak emerges in the boy publisher. He brings down the man he saw as a father figure. 

In the present day, Paddy finds an unpublished manuscript that sheds new light on how Rupert’s relationship with his first great editor fell apart.

Rupert Murdoch is the media’s most powerful man. His newspapers and TV networks can topple leaders, change policies and throw into doubt the outcome of entire elections.

In this six-part series from Schwartz Media, investigative journalist Paddy Manning charts Rupert Murdoch’s rise from a small newspaper in Adelaide to his reign as the last global media mogul. Find out what drives Rupert Murdoch and what happens now he has handed over the empire.