Rupert Murdoch has lost control of Fox as hosts go all-in on Trump: biographer

In an interview with Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson, author Michael Wolff claimed the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch loathes former president Donald Trump and that he has no idea how to rein in his hosts who continue to hype up Donald Trump despite the fact that he lost the 2020 presidential election.

According to Wolff, who has written three books on Trump and a biography of Murdoch, the Australian-born American billionaire has chosen to do nothing about the conservative network's direction because it is highly profitable and he prizes money over everything else.

After explaining that Murdoch loves "Money, money, money," Wolff was asked why the media mogul doesn't insist his employees not lie on the air.

"This is Rupert Murdoch. I know of no instance in the past 70 years when he's ever set out that as a guideline. That's not the way Rupert runs an organization. It's not the way Rupert sees the function of a news organization. The news organization is something meant to create a narrative that speaks to an audience," he explained. "I mean, there's no other journalistic standard, really, that goes along with Rupert's idea of journalism. He doesn't really have an idea of journalism."

Wolff went on to note that Murdoch doesn't want to do anything that might affect the network's profitability -- and therefore value -- because he would also like to sell it off.

"I think he knows that it makes an enormous amount of money now. He would not know how to change it in a way that would do what he wants to do and yet continue on its current financial trajectory," Wolff speculated. "And I think that this is a transition period. They want to get rid of Fox. They do not see Fox as a long-term asset for them. So don't muck it up."

As for controlling the Fox News hosts who continue to push out stolen election lies and dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, Wolff said the billionaire doesn't have the skill set to run a network --and that things have gone downhill since the departure of Roger Ailes.

"I think Fox is, in many ways, largely unmanaged now. What has happened here is largely the transition since Roger Ailes' ouster. Remember, Rupert never was very involved with Fox News. This was entirely Ailes' division, or really his separate company, in many respects," he explained. "And since then, the one thing that Ailes was always against — letting Republican politicians run the network instead of the network running Republican politicians — has dramatically reversed. The business model now is Trump. Trump all the time. Only Trump."

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