Summary of The Fall by Michael Wolff: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty

By GP SUMMARY

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.
 
Summary of The Fall by Michael Wolff: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty
 
IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:
 

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Michael Wolff's Succession explores the dysfunctional family of Fox News, which has formed the most powerful media and political force in the US for almost three decades. The family's empire is cracking up and crashing down, with Rupert Murdoch, his contentious progeny, star anchor Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity all competing for power. The book follows the final days of Fox News, as lawsuits and lawsuits threaten the network's financial stability and reputation. The heirs, including the infamous Roys of TV's Succession, make the Roys of TV's Succession seem downright Brady Bunch. Wolff's book provides an unforgettable glimpse into the complexities of the Murdoch family's empire and the political landscape of the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Sep 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755454403

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page title

Summary of

The Fall

A

Summary of

Michael Wolff’s Book

The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty

GP SUMMARY

Summary of The Fall by Michael Wolff: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

All rights reserved.

Author: GP SUMMARY

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Cover, illustration: GP SUMMARY

Editing, proofreading: GP SUMMARY

Other collaborators: GP SUMMARY

NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Michael Wolff’s The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty designed to enrich your reading experience.

DISCLAIMER

The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Fox News, a conservative station, has been a source of inspiration for various TV sitcoms and sitcoms. While Fox News is a successful agitprop outlet, its primary mission is television, ruled by unique considerations and the battles of power, personality, and money. Critics argue that Fox News is not just a subject, but the enemy. Journalists have written extensively about the snake pit of traditional network and cable television, exposing the backstabbing and the Faustian bargain that has been made to be on the air. However, they have not covered conservative media with a similar professional understanding.

The worlds of mainstream media and conservative media do not cross, with conservative media remaining the other. The author, Gabriel Sherman, suggests that Fox News's refusal to speak to him for his book was a sign of his contempt for real journalism and an indication of his hiding something. The author also notes that the discussion in the journalism world is not necessarily about quality, but about the crisis in which everyone in the news business is at the center. The discussion would be different only in quality, not kind.

Fox News, under the leadership of Ailes, was less fraught with envy and bitter rivalries than most television news operations. However, after Ailes's defenestration in 2016, Fox began to revert to power struggles and standard acrimony. Fox's prime-time anchors have become among the most dominant political figures of our time, with Trump being a Fox manifestation. The nation's bitter divide is a Fox divide, and what happens to Fox happens to the nation.

The author's interest in Fox began with happenstance factors, such as visiting Ailes in 2001 and being invited to lunch. In 2008, Rupert Murdoch, Fox's owner and Ailes's boss, agreed to cooperate in a biography I proposed to write about him. The author had carte blanche to interview every member of his family, including his mother and all his executives, past and present. Murdoch hated my book about him, but as Ailes's troubles with the Murdoch family intensified, I was welcomed back to lunch.

The author's relationship with Ailes and his friendly words about Trump and his people helped gain observer status in the first year of the Trump White House, resulting in books Fire and Fury and Siege and Landslide. The author aims to bring to life the contradictory forces that now tear at the network, focusing on the private life of Fox News and the doubts and fears keeping everyone at Fox up at night.

Keith Rupert Murdoch

1931–202

Keith Rupert Murdoch, an Australian princeling and heir to generations of Calvinist clergymen, has died at the age of __ after a brief illness. Murdoch was an Australian princeling who became a publisher of working-class, down-market newspapers, transforming the British publishing world with his pictures of bare-breasted girls on Page 3 of the Sun newspaper. He was a dedicated newspaperman, perhaps the last on earth, in love with his newsrooms and presses, whose real fortune would be made from television that he didn't watch and movies that he didn't see, in a Hollywood that he disdained.

Murdoch was born into an elite circle more attached to high British culture than egalitarian Australia. His father, Sir Keith Murdoch, was cold and withholding, while his mother was poorly handled by her. Murdoch learned from his own days as an interloper publisher that power is an insider's game. He expanded his business from Australia to the UK by astutely playing, if not tricking, the family that owned the down-on-its-heels British tabloid the News of the World and followed shortly after using similar backdoor tactics to acquire the beleaguered Sun.

Murdoch sought always to turn his business power into political power. He was responsible for a succession of Australian prime ministers and was a pivotal supporter of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. In 1985, Murdoch agreed to buy the movie studio, Twentieth Century Fox, which transformed the media industry and ultimately American politics.

In the late 1980s, George W. Murdoch launched the Fox Network, becoming a significant figure in the American media business and a political power. However, the financial crisis of the early 1990s nearly bankrupted him, and he regrouped in California, feeling ill-suited to the entertainment business. He wanted to get back to news and away from entertainment, but CNN was sold to Time Warner, the biggest power in media. Murdoch decided to start his own around-the-clock cable news station, Fox News, with Roger Ailes as his partner.

Fox News launched in 1996, staying within budget and beating early projections. Murdoch had more pressing concerns than entertainment, and at the age of sixty-five, he met Wendi Deng, daughter of a provincial couple in post-Cultural Revolution China. The announcement of the split surprised the Murdoch world, but Anna agreed to a $100 million settlement instead of extracting billions. The early years of his marriage to Wendi were a constant negotiation between his new life and old, with his sons bound to him with outsize authority in his company.

Fox News became the number one and most profitable cable news station in America, with its big blondes and emphasis on talk radio-type broadcasters. By 2005, Fox was a brand name greater than Murdoch's own. Ailes, a schemer and plotter, focused much of his ever-boiling resentments on Murdoch's children and the power Murdoch was extending to them. In 2005, Ailes rushed to Murdoch and issued an ultimatum: him or me. Murdoch chose Ailes, leaving Lachlan to pack up and move his family back to Australia. James was then elevated to running all Murdoch operations in Europe.

In 2007, James Murdoch realized his dream of acquiring the Wall Street Journal, but the global financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama transformed Fox News into a