Improve the world we live in, the departing Rupert Murdoch urged staff today. So why didn’t he? | Jane Martinson

This is a media and political age that he himself has shaped. It's hardly a legacy to be proud of

It should come as no surprise that Rupert Murdoch has decided to step down from the top of his media empire. Yet the news that the 92-year-old, no longer in the best of health, will not die in the job, as he always suggested he would, came as a huge shock.

After a lifetime spent transforming the relatively small Australian print newspaper business he inherited from his father into a global corporation, which spans one of the biggest newspaper businesses in the UK and one of the most controversial television channels in the US, he stands down ahead of two hugely important elections in both his adopted homelands, Britain and the US.

Jane Martinson is a Guardian columnist