At a posh party held at a downtown Manhattan brownstone on Wednesday night, notable journalists like Carl Bernstein and the New York Times’ op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg converged to toast Michael Wolff‘s upcoming book, “The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty.” The timing couldn’t have been more apt given that the author foretold what would happen hours later with Rupert Murdoch‘s surprise announcement that he was stepping down from the head of Fox Corp. and News Corp.
“It is unsustainable,” Wolff said of the Murdoch era that relied on the Donald Trump ratings juggernaut. “When liberals such as ourselves think about Fox News, we shudder. I kind of come from a different school. I’m ultimately not that interested in politics. I’m a writer, and I’m interested in stories, and, Jesus, this is a hell of a story. The old guy walking into walls, the kids having too many drinks and doing what they do and screaming at each other, Tucker going off the deep end and Sean Hannity packing heat. It’s a great story.”
Some who are familiar with the inner workings of Fox tell PvNew that they believe today’s news of Murdoch stepping down was timed to serve as a distraction from “The Fall’s” publication next Tuesday. Wolff, who spoke with PvNew after the announcement, says that assessment isn’t farfetched.
“The people I’ve spoken to this morning are saying that internally,” Wolff notes. “They saw my book as the bus coming right at him.”
Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, is taking the reins at both companies as chairman, steering a media empire that includes Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal as well as the U.K.’s The Times and The Sun in the U.K.
While Murdoch’s reign as one of the most influential media moguls in the modern era comes to an end, he leaves behind a messy Fox News roiled in controversy. Earlier this year, the network settled a defamation lawsuit with earlier this year with Dominion Voting Systems and was forced to pay the voting-technology company a staggering $787.5 million. Shortly after, Tucker Carlson was pulled from the airwaves. The star anchor, who boasted the network’s highest ratings, was told by a News Corp. board member that the move was a condition of the Dominion settlement as a way to best maim the conservative network. (Both Fox and Dominion have denied that there was a connection.) But Wolff says his reporting led him to the same conclusion.
“Tucker was absolutely a settlement condition,” Wolff says. “There were certain soft promises made. The first soft promise was, ‘We’ll get rid of Hannity.’ And then [Dominion] said, ‘Well, no. We’d prefer the guy with better ratings. It wasn’t even really a side deal. It was a kind of a gentleman’s agreement. ‘Listen, we can’t go to a billion dollars. If you do it for under a billion dollars, we’ll get rid of Tucker this week.’ Which is effectively what happened.”
Meanwhile, a source familiar with the current legal battle between Fox and Carlson says that talks are ongoing between the network and his high-profile lawyer, Bryan Freedman, but the company’s recent parting of ways with general counsel Viet Dinh in the middle of negotiations has slowed down any resolution.
