voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. hello and welcome to the media show, with me, katie razzall. on this week's programme... rupert murdoch's legal battle to keep editorial control of his outlets even after his death. also, the furore around the dance competition strictly come dancing, and the downfall of one of the bbc�*s most high—profile former presenters. rupert murdoch is locked in a legal battle with three of his children over the editorial stance of his outlets after his death. the up—to—now secret court case was revealed by the new york times. on the show, i spoke to claire atkinson, who's writing a biography of rupert murdoch, and first tojim rutenberg, the writer at the new york times

who broke the story. jim, i'm absolutely delighted to have you on the programme, not least because when your story broke, i was making a lot of calls trying to find out exactly what the story was. and now we've got you. you've got your eyes on a document from a probate court in nevada. just tell us what it contains. thank you for having me. extraordinarily, this document indicated that for some time, many months at least, rupert murdoch has been locked in a court battle with three of his four eldest children over the future of his empire, and it involves a change to his trust, the family trust, and who will control the empire after rupert's death. and it's just straight out of the show succession, just like everything a scriptwriter would dream of. absolutely. and i have to say, when i heard about it, i thought, "my goodness!" this has been going on, i think, for several months, many months, and yet certainly from my end as a media editor

of bbc news, i had not had one whiff of this. was it totally new information for you? orwas it... did it confirm rumours you'd already heard? i'll tell you what it did confirm was my suspicion all along that there had been talk for some time that when rupert murdoch named as his main heir... he has named an heir, his son lachlan, his eldest son. not his eldest child. elisabeth murdoch is his eldest child, but his eldest son lachlan was his chosen successor. although prudence is older, is she not? prudence is the oldest. oh, sorry. thank you. forgive me. prudence, by his first wife, is older. has always been less part of the business. uh, at least less publicly showing interest in the business, but elisabeth very much has been in the succession mix. but anyway, so, uh, there had always been a lot of talk around the three children who weren't chosen that when rupert died, uh, they could conspire or come together — it wouldn't be conspiring. they're allowed to do this under the terms of the trust and vote their brother out if they so chose. and one of them, and presumably james is the most sort

of bullish to do this, would take over the company and perhaps redirect its political orientation. and rupert himself set this up many years ago after his divorce from his second wife, anna. he said on charlie rose in a famous interview in 2006 it will be, "if i go under a bus tomorrow, it's between them." but i always suspected, as this talk was going around, that rupert could not stand to see his legacy taken over by his sonjames, with whom he's actually estranged. stay with us, jim. i just want to bring in claire atkinson, who's a journalist and host of the media mix podcast. and, claire, you're currently writing a biography of rupert murdoch, so you're the perfect person, of course, for us to have on this show. and just give us a bit more of that legal context of this,

because my understanding is that this was a trust that was set up after the divorce between anna murdoch, as she then was — the mother ofjames, lachlan and elisabeth — and rupert murdoch, and that she went for this over taking half his money, half his company. yes. um, you know, i've been writing about rupert for 30 years, and he is one of the most fascinating people of the last century. anna, as you said, wanted to make sure that the kids got equal say in the company, that each of them would have a vote. she famously wanted to make sure that wendi deng, who was then rupert's wife, that the children he has with her did not get a vote. they got, you know, a financial piece of the trust but they didn't get a vote. and so the four eldest children did. anna always felt like the succession and family business, which is one of the names of a book she wrote, would destroy the relationship between them all. and i guess what we're seeing is it certainly has harmed his relationship with his son, james. we learned from jim's story that, um, the kids other than lachlan didn't go to his latest wedding to elena zhukova. and so, you know, what we're learning here is that rupert, from the very beginning of his career, was about control. and this is rupert attempting

to maintain control, maintain editorial stability, so to speak, even after he passes away. he's... andjim, i... oh, sorry. i didn't mean to interrupt, claire. i was just going to say, jim, i'm sure you won't tell me where you got that, er, court documents, but they were definitely secret documents that you managed to get your hands on. we're going to hear, are we, some legal argument in september about it? but he's just trying to make... he's claiming, rupert murdoch, i think, that it's just a little alteration as opposed to a big, significant shift. is that right? yeah. well, first of all, to the first part of the question, i hope we'll get to hear this case...this trial. i don't think we will. this is all taking place in secret. um, so presumably there will be a trial in september.

if you could watch it, it would be one of the most fascinating trials of — to borrow claire's language — of the century, for sure. but, as you say, we're just going to have to watch succession instead on repeat. it's the same. but, yes, rupert, uh, his lawyers have argued in these documents we've seen that he's making an alteration. he's amending it. it's something that's within his rights. and his argument�*s very interesting. his argument is that all he's doing is maintaining the value in the trust, which is tied to his media properties, which have a certain editorial bent. and that, should the other three move that editorial bent after his death, they will devalue. they will affect the value of the trust. therefore he's basically arguing he's protecting them from their own worst instincts by disenfranchising them from the vote that claire laid out was set very clearly in the earlier version of the trust. 0k. and claire atkinson, i know you've interviewed lachlan. this is essentially about political stances and political views.

how does lachlan murdoch compare to rupert murdoch in his outlook? are they very aligned? 0h, they absolutely are, and that's the reason that james, despite running the company for quite some time and running operations in asia and running the newspapers and bskyb in the uk, he was not the candidate to take over in large part because of his politics. and i think that rupert felt like lachlan was much more aligned with very conservative views, views that fox news espouses on tv every day, and that to have james running fox news would really kind of neutralise the cash cow of the company, and that that would not be good for business. and at the end of the day, that's what rupert's about. because, jim, what we're... what's being suggested there and what perhaps we know about his sonjames, he's already broken publicly with his father. what might that faction — if indeed it is factions

and it's james on one side, perhaps with elisabeth, and prudence and then lachlan on the other — what can we glean about what that side of things might want to do with the business, if anything? well, james has been most public about his views. he's actually criticised the company, along with his wife, kathryn, here orthere publicly about its stance on climate change. he's kind of more elliptically implied that he thought that fox had a role in the chaos we saw in our elections in 2020. so... and, as my colleague jonathan mahler and i have reported in the past, uh, james, when he was in the company, had wanted to ground fox news a little bit more in a journalistic sort of setting, kind of make it more bound to the rules of journalism than it is in some of its opinion programming. he never, as we understand it, proposed turning fox news into the bbc or cnn.

it was always... he apparently always saw this as a conservative network, just something a little more grounded. and if you have that in a fox news, you could see, in rupert's view, the argument would be, "well, you'll lose "some trump people because they want to see you fully behind "former president trump." and james clearly wasn't going to take the network in that direction. james's argument was short—term ratings gains for getting behind trump, long—term problems in terms of lawsuits, as we saw with the company and the like. yes, absolutely. because of course, they had to settle out of court with the dominion voting system over claims made on fox that the system was rigged to steal votes from donald trump in 2020. i think fox paid out 800 million. there's obviously also here in the uk been the phone hacking scandal compensation cases. but i wonder, you know, this is clearly... rupert murdoch, you know, bottom line, he's a great businessman. he always thinks about business. would a more liberal stance cost fox and cost his business money, do you think? uh, july, fox newsjust had its highest—rated month in its history because of the presidential attempted assassination, because of joe biden stepping down and kamala stepping up. uh, they, uh... three times as many viewers in the us watched fox news that month than watched cnn. and so i think to argue that

changing it, which i think is what the siblings would like to do, wouldn't affect its financial power, i think is churlish at best. ithink, uh, you know, there are... there's viewers in the us that like what fox news is offering. and to put some context around the two companies that lachlan runs, he's essentially ceo of fox in the states, which houses fox news, and he's also chairman of news corporation, which runs the newspaper business, essentially. they're around... their valuation is around 16 billion each. and just to put that into context, you know, these are companies that are under siege from social media giants, from youtube.

we have, you know, google reporting quarterly earnings just last week of $85 billion in a quarter. and so they have power for sure. they do influence how people think. but, you know, we're talking today about elon musk and the influence of x and misinformation. yeah. because i'd like to talk about that. just to interrupt for a second. you know, we do talk a lot on this programme about the decline of newspapers and linear broadcasters, and the unstoppable rise of social media and other big tech. so i suppose the question is, does what the murdochs do... do they even matter any more in this era of elon musk, a trump supporter who's running x? how would you distinguish, both of you, maybe starting with you, jim, on the influence that musk holds over... ..as compared with rupert murdoch's influence? i have to say that i agree with everything claire said. but i want to say one thing, though, that in that changing world, if you have a huge array

of properties that reach a huge cross—section of people, you still, by having at least some of that old cachet and some of that old reach, i would argue you still have more influence. does x break through in the everyday conversation the way, in the us, fox news does? i would say it does not. it matters a lot. it's taken up some of the activist energy that fox used to have only to itself, but it still has a lot of cachet, and maybe they're managing that down, but for right now, in this media environment, nobody still has what rupert murdoch has across three continents, the concentration of newspapers. even if they're losing some influence, who comes close? huw edwards was the man who announced the death of queen elizabeth. he was once the bbc�*s most senior news presenter. but this week, in london, he pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children —

41 images that had been shared with him by another man on whatsapp. his downfall began after the sun newspaper ran a series of stories about him last summer that he'd been paying a young person for explicit images, beginning when that person was 17 years old. my colleague david sillito has been following the story from the beginning. for people who only vaguely remember it or weren't aware of it, it was about an allegation, against an unnamed presenter, from the sun. the sun weren't naming him, we understand, because of defamation law and avoiding being sued. they simply said there was a high—profile bbc presenter had been giving a young person more than £35,000 since they were 17, in return for sordid images. now, the implication was that this was happening below the age of 18, and many people said, "well, this is clearly an allegation of illegality." of course, it now transpires that huw edwards was engaged in criminal behaviour, different criminal behaviour. does that mean the sun has good reason to feel vindicated today? this is an advert, if you like,

for tabloid journalism. there were many people who, when huw edwards announced his resignation april of this year, said, "the police said there was no evidence of illegality. "this was a private matter." it may have crossed some people's ideas of proper behaviour or personal morality, but he had a right to privacy and a personal life, and his life had been utterly destroyed and his reputation tarnished forever because of this. this changes absolutely everything. and all the way through, us both and many others in our team covering this story, there's been quite an unusualfeature, which has been the total absence of huw edwards from our reporting. he never said anything on the record. he never replied to messages, certainly not from me. he did manage to garner a degree of sympathy from some quarters when his wife issued that statement, confirming it was him back last summer and referring to his serious mental health issues, and then all the journalists covering the story seemed to back off. i suppose there was this balance of sort of public

interest against the right to privacy. it's really interesting. the law of privacy has changed dramatically over our careers. issues about your personal life — drink, drugs, especially if you are seeking help for drink and drugs, and also whether you've been questioned by the police, all these now have case law that say that is private. and the issue — what used to be in tabloid newspapers as their bread and butter stories of 25 years ago now really the lawyers say, "no, you can't do that." and once there was no question of illegality with regards to huw edwards and what he'd been doing, it was pretty much, "no." the lawyers were saying, "you can't touch this and go anywhere further." and also there was the issue — the only statement from his wife about his mental health and a mental health episode and that he was suffering, i think there was a degree of sympathy as well for him amongst many people of what had actually happened there. suddenly, well, everything changed when the announcement

of these charges came this week. and i wonder what you think about questions for the bbc, because clearly the sun's original story was about how the bbc had reacted to a complaint about edwards that the parents of the young person involved had allegedly made, or had made. is the bbc under pressure, do you think, now? what are the questions for the bbc? should it be clawing back some of his huge salary, for example, that was paid while he was off air? i always feel a large part of my career has been reporting on bbc investigations into the bbc. there has already been one looking at how the complaint that was brought by this young person's parents was dealt with. was it escalated fast enough? was it escalated to the right people? they concluded that perhaps it should have gone further and faster in the process there. but that was an issue about complaints handling by the bbc. i mean, there were questions raised about the fact that huw edwards was there in the top paid list when the announcement of the annual report came out, and that he'd had a big £40,000 pay increase. there is process there. if you are under suspicion, you're suspended, suspended on full pay, and that is the law. and i think there's also

a wider question of the bbc reporting on the bbc. well, that's what i was going to say to you because, actually, both you and i spent a lot of time last summer reporting on this. we were under a great deal of scrutiny and pressure, not surprisingly, quite rightly, but it was a time and, you know, still is, we're still reporting on it today. i was outside the bbc doing a live on the one o'clock news talking about it, so a journalist from the bbc reporting on the bbc, and sometimes people can't quite get to understand sort of where the line is. yes, it's an interesting question. the bbc and bbc news are strangely different organisations. they sort of sit in the same building, but, essentially, i treat the bbc as any other organisation and we go after it with gusto. in fact, we probably report on it more than almost any other organisation. there is a great deal of sort of internal pressure as well of your own reputation — to be seen to be challenging your own organisation, your own employers as if they were, you know, completely separate. something that we're paid to do by the taxpayer because of the licence fee.

entirely. so i think you cannot overestimate that. this, though, raises quite interesting questions, because normally it's the bbc corporate. it's kind of distant managers, people i don't actually bump into very often. this is about bbc news. and you cannot get away from the issue that, you know, i've sat down at a desk and i have been chatting to huw edwards. i have been on the news programme. this is a person i knew, not particularly well, and you're reporting on them. and also the editorial chain of command are also his employers. there are interesting questions there. so certain people essentially who are responsible for a duty of care to him, the fact that you had to be treated fairly when there are allegations made

there, they have to step aside and there's a separate chain of command. it's complicated. it is. absolutely. and i know, david, you need to go on and carry on reporting on this story, so i'll let you go, but, david sillito, thank you so much. also here in the studio is krishnan guru—murthy, lead presenter of channel 4 news, the face of the channel's election programme and a contestant on last yea r�*s strictly come dancing. we're going to talk all about that in a moment, but i wonder, i can't not ask you about huw edwards. what's your reaction to him pleading guilty? i'm utterly shocked. i mean, jaw—droppingly, gobsmackingly shocked, and have been since it was revealed that he was being charged. i honestly couldn't have imagined that we'd end up in a situation like this, and it's very, very sad. and i've said all the way through, you know, this isa man... you can't overestimate

the significance of huw edwards, if you like, because he was the person, from the bbc�*s perspective and so many audiences' perspective, whojust held our hand through so many things — royal weddings, elections, the queen's death. you know, that role did put him in a special relationship with viewers. yes. he was the man the bbc chose and groomed to be their number one news presenter, the man who would hold the hand of the nation through these major state occasions. you know, supposedly, in bbc terms, the most trusted man in the country. and so, yes, i mean, that's what makes it all the more shocking. well, look, krishnan, you agreed to come on today before the huw edwards news emerged. yes. and it was to talk about, in the first instance, strictly come dancing. i think i need to do a full disclosure. we were colleagues for many years at channel 4 news and are still good friends. yeah. exactly this time last year, you were unveiled as a strictly come dancing contestant.

0bviously, since the competition ended, the show has faced claims of inappropriate behaviour by some of the professional dancers. last week you got the interview that we were all chasing, with the actress amanda abbington, who told you more about her allegations against her dance partner, claims he denies, and an investigation is ongoing — that's worth saying. butjust in terms of that interview, did you think about, you know, whether you could do it objectively, or is it... i wasn't worried about that. ..you knew so much that actually it was more helpful? i mean, yes. obviously, i mean, it wasn't a normal interview. it wasn't sort of an objective journalistic interview. i was part of this and i was there and there was lots of stuff that i knew that i...that i wasn't going to reveal cos they weren't my secrets to reveal, and so sometimes i was asking her questions that i knew what the answers were, but what i was intrigued to hear was what she wanted to say and what she wanted to put into the public domain. so i wasn't worried about that. it wasn't a normal interview, but i was doing myjob as much as possible in giving her the space and asking her the questions and trying to clarify things, cos i think there's been a lot of confusion and misinformation around what's been going on, and so i wanted tojust try and get to the bottom of things a bit.

and you, all the way through and afterwards, have always made clear you had the most wonderful... yes. i mean, as a friend, i watched you becoming more and more... i mean, you're always smiley when we're friends, but, you know, your on—screen persona went from being a sort of tough news guy to a really smiley, happy, joyful man. it was genuinely revelatory and extraordinary and wonderful and i loved every minute of it, and people didn't believe me. and people now keep saying, "well, you know, i mean, what was your real experience? "you know, what did you really think? "because, you know, we've seen what other people have said "at the time and then are saying now, "so maybe you weren't telling us the truth." no. everything i said was absolutely true. i had a marvellous experience. i was cared for, you know, and looked after and felt very safe. and as we're the media show, i mean, i do want to get your perspective about the relationship between the programme and the media because, you know, usually when strictly is on, we're getting these overwhelmingly positive stories. 0bviously then there's the stories around the curse of strictly when people start having affairs or leaving their wives or husbands or whatever. but what were you told when you were on the show? were you put up for interviews? what was your understanding of how that relationship with the entertainment media works? i found this absolutely

jaw—dropping, i have to say, as a journalist on strictly. the bbc has extraordinary power over the tabloid press when it comes to strictly. it is its one great property. the tabloids need strictly because it drives clicks, it drives readership, and so they become very compliant when it comes to strictly... compliant how? we would do loads of press, we would do round tables, we would do, like, speed dating and... well, for example, the week that amanda left... every week we would do a sort of round...you know, a chat with the press, and you'd go in as a couple and you'd have a few minutes with, you know, whichever publication. and... i said, "well, what do we say if they ask us about amanda?" and they said, "it won't come up." and it didn't. and what does that tell you? well, i mean, you know, someone had said, "don't ask about that. " and they didn't. or maybe itjust didn't occur to them. i mean, i may be reading more into this than is real, but, i mean, i suspect, you know, there is an unwritten understanding that they need access and if you cross

the rules, you get excluded from future access, and so they don't. i mean, i did interviews. you know, i did lots of interviews, you know, one—on—one interviews. i remember one of them, um... i actually got copy approval and headline approval. so, for people who don't understand what that means is they couldn't print anything that you weren't happy with. yes! which, i mean, goes... anathema to any proper journalist, surely? absolutely bizarre. but, i mean, it shows you the power the bbc has when it comes to strictly and the press. and has being in it changed your relationship with audience, the audience of channel 4 news? massively, yes. how? imean... well, because i revealed so much of myself. i mean, news is a very formal environment, as you know. you know, you don't... the whole point of news is you're not supposed to reveal what you think about anything, whereas strictly is the opposite. and when you go into it, you say, "i'mjust going to reveal. i'm just going to be myself." and that changes your

relationship with the audience. they feel that they know me a lot better, and i get that, a sense of that pretty much every day from people who stop and talk to me about the news and strictly, and even interviewees. you know, mps in the house of commons. it kind of changed my relationship with tory mps, who would normally be very wary of seeing me in the house of commons but, you know, suddenly now had some small talk to make with me about strictly. so, yes, i think it's been a really good thing for me, personally, because it has made me more of a human being and more ofa norm... in this extraordinary, weird show that you do, in which you do extraordinary, weird things, strangely, the result of it has been that i seem more like everybody else. that's all we've got time for this week. i'll be back next week. thank you so much for your company. goodbye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts.

hello there. much of central, southern, and eastern england yet again saw another warm and very humid day. but as we move through the weekend, certainly after saturday, it'll be fresher for all, with pleasant conditions in the south. but there will be rain at times, particularly across northern and western areas, thanks to atlantic low pressure systems. so, we start saturday off with this weather front that's been crossing the country, taking the cloud and any showers with it and the warm air. so, into saturday afternoon, it'll be much fresher across the south and east. a bright day for many with sunshine and blustery showers — these mainly across scotland and northern ireland, where it will be quite windy. mid—to—high—teens here, but much fresher across the south — 21—24 celsius with lower humidity. that takes us then into saturday night, which will be a cooler, fresher one for many. cloud building out west as the next weather front starts to approach scotland and northern ireland. it'll be a fresher night to come — 8—12 celsius across the south. now, this ridge of high pressure will build in for sunday — that will bring fine weather for england and wales. next low pressure system will start

to push into scotland and northern ireland through the day, the winds picking up here, the cloud building, outbreaks of rain pushing into northern ireland and western scotland. but for eastern scotland, much of england and wales will see variable clouds, some good sunny spells — best of the sunshine towards the southeast corner, and it will feel very pleasant, with 23—24 celsius here with lower humidity, high teens further north with the wind and the rain. we tap into some warmth and humidity again into monday — this moving off france into much of the midlands, southern and eastern england. so here, a warm and humid, rather sunny day — further north and west, very different, windy, cloudy outbreaks are pretty heavy and persistent rain for northern ireland, southern and western scotland. could give rise to some localised flooding in places, but a warmer day to come even further north — we could be up to the mid—to—high—205 again across the southeast. that weather front eventually starts to push across the country on tuesday, eventually reaching the east and southeast with a few showers as it weakens and moves off into the north sea. and then, it introduces fresher air to much of the country once again.

a bright day to come for northern and western areas with some sunshine — vast improvement to how monday is looking. 19—24 celsius from northwest to southeast. as we move through the new week, it looks like much of the north and west of the country will see the wind and rain at times — whereas, further south and east you are, tending to stay warmer, drier, and sunnier.

live from london. this is bbc news. the us is set to deploy additional warships and fighterjets to the middle east, amid fears of escalation over the killing of hamas political chief ismail haniyeh. three police officers have been hurt in sunderland in the latest violence following the killing of three young girls in southport — the home secretary has condemned those taking part. us vice president kamala harris earns enough support to become the democratic party's nominee for president. she'll be officially nominated on monday. hello, i'm lukwesa burak. the us says it will deploy more defensive military support to the middle east. the department of defence says it aims to strengthen protection for us troops in the region and israel —

in response to growing threats from iran and iranian—backed fighters.