The Murdoch in Waiting

As Rupert Murdoch nears 80, many see his son James as the heir apparent.

By TIM ARANGO
NYT

LONDON

ON a night in late January when he should have been in the Swiss village of Davos, James Murdoch went to dinner here with his father, Rupert, and several journalists from The Sun, the tabloid that the Murdochs have owned since 1969.

In the private room at Wheeler’s of St. James’s, father and son politely argued about the lesser of the public controversies swirling around the Murdoch empire: the firing of Andy Gray, the chief soccer pundit for their Sky Sports network, for making sexist comments.

“Can we stop firing people for making a joke?” Rupert Murdoch asked.

James Murdoch defended the decision to fire Mr. Gray and later stood up, tapped a glass and reminded the gathering that it was 25 years ago that his father had busted London newspaper unions, a seminal event in both British labor history and the historical narrative of the Murdoch media kingdom, the News Corporation.

(More here.)