Lachlan
Murdoch

Murdoch won the behind-the-scenes sibling struggle for succession when his father, Rupert Murdoch, tapped him, and not his younger brother, James, to lead the newly rebranded Fox Corp. in 2019. And, in the years since, he’s been learning firsthand how uneasy the head that wears the crown can be. He’s currently facing down a pair of defa­mation suits from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic for $1.6 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively, both accusing Fox News of airing false allegations that their voting machines were rigged to favor President Biden in the 2020 election. In August, Murdoch filed a defamation suit of his own in Australia, against independent news site Crikey for an article it published calling his family an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the January 6 Capitol riots. On the plus side, Fox News is consistently the most watched basic-cable channel.