Murdoch v Trump: why the flawed media titan could be the final protector of press freedom | Jane Martinson

His companies may have hacked phones and broadcast lies, but Murdoch appears ready to battle the president to uphold editorial freedoms

Years before Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal, the writer John Lanchester suggested that his primary motivation - more than ideology or even money - was a love of crises, of the point when everything seems about to be lost".

More than two decades later, is the crisis in the US media, one in which everything seems about to be lost, motivating Murdoch to take on the most powerful man in the world? It is as good a reason as many of those given over the past week for the fact that the billionaire whose Fox News channel has acted as a Trump cheerleader throughout is now, alone among US media titans, preparing to do battle in the courts.

Jane Martinson is professor of financial journalism at City St George's and a member of the board of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group