The world-sprawling media empire Rupert Murdoch built on the soft foundation of two properties he inherited 66 years ago—the Adelaide News and a radio station in a New South Wales mining town—has begun to shrink like a tumor spritzed with chemo and toasted with radiation. Sighting his own end, the 88-year-old Murdoch has been tidying up his estate as if preparing it for probate. He just unloaded his movie studio, 21st Century Fox, and his interest in European satellite broadcaster Sky, in a $71.3 billion deal with Disney.
He also composed the final act in his version of King Lear, ending decades of speculation over which of his children would succeed him by crowning his son Lachlan as the new emperor of his remaining print and TV holdings, most conspicuous among them Fox News Channel, the most watched news channel in America.
The press hasn’t fully digested the Murdoch wind-down. Quite the contrary. In the past month, several of the nation’s top reporters expanded the media’s longstanding myth that Murdoch and Fox possess frightening clout. The New York Times Magazine devoted 20,000 words to Murdoch’s scary “empire of influence.”
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