Who Owns the Media: News Corp

News Corp 🐔🐔

Capitulation Rank: Compromising
Category: Newspaper & Publishing
Market Cap: $19.678 billion

During a 2025 quarterly earnings call, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson portrayed Donald Trump’s win over Kamala Harris in celebratory terms: “There is the confluence of economic optimism and the cultural awakening with the yoke of woke having been lifted,” he said. “We believe these trends should lead to less superfluous, gratuitous regulation [and] greater capital formation.”

The on-again/off-again relationship between Trump and the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing conglomerate (which he split off of the broadcasting and cable company Fox Corporation in 2013) is now on again. “Murdoch, in the manner of newspaper barons the world over, found it necessary, comfortable, and therefore easy to occupy a place close to a political leadership throne,” one of Murdoch’s deputies told Australia’s Financial Review.

After spending much of 2023 backing Ron DeSantis’ bid to become president, News Corp pivoted to Trump as its preferred leader with coverage that overall favored him first during the campaign and later during his presidency. That said, the company-owned Wall Street Journal continues to maintain high standards of independence, objectivity and truth seeking on its news pages — though its editorial pages are an entirely different story.

What It Owns:

News Corp’s U.S. newspaper and news-service holdings include dozens of local titles. Its national brands include Dow Jones Newswires, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. News Corp’s book-publishing holdings include Harper Collins (and all of its imprints, including Amistad, Harlequin Enterprises and William Morrow, among dozens of others), Inspirio and Zondervan. News Corp is the dominant print publisher in Australia, controlling dozens of newspaper outlets. Other international publishing holdings include The Sun (published in Scotland as The Scottish Sun and in Ireland as The Irish Sun) and The Sunday Times. News Corp’s magazine holdings include Modern Boating, Modern Fishing, Inside Out, Parents and The Weekly Standard. See the entry on Fox Corporation for the bulk of the Murdoch Family Trust’s U.S. broadcast and cable network holdings. News Corp also owns several Sky News subsidiaries and controls a number of Ireland and UK-based broadcasting networks.

Money & Influence Game:

News Corp paid lobbyists $1,100,000 in 2024, and News Corp employees made $430,185 in contributions to political candidates (2024 cycle). (SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics)