The
Saturday read
Wall
Street Journal
The
inside story of the Murdoch editor taking on Donald Trump
Michael
Savage Media editor
The
Tucker enigma has re-emerged at the Journal, as staff note her mix of
personable demeanour, enthusiasm for stories and willingness to make cuts.
Since her
arrival at the Wall Street Journal, British editor-in-chief Emma Tucker has
shaken up not only her own newsroom but also the White House
Sat 2 Aug
2025 01.00 EDT
The
danger posed to Donald Trump was obvious. It was a story that not only drew
attention to his links to a convicted sex offender, it also risked widening a
growing wedge between the president and some of his most vociferous supporters.
The White House quickly concluded a full-force response was required.
It was
Tuesday 15 July. The Wall Street Journal had approached Trump’s team, stating
it planned to publish allegations that Trump had composed a crude poem and
doodle as part of a collection compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The claim
would have been damaging at any moment, but the timing was terrible for the
president. The Epstein issue was developing into the biggest crisis of his
presidency. Strident Maga supporters had been angered by the Trump
administration’s refusal to release government files relating to the late sex
offender.
Trump and
his loyal press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reached for the nuclear option.
From Air Force One, they called the Journal’s British editor-in-chief, Emma
Tucker.
They
turned up the heat. Trump fumed that the letter was fake. Drawing wasn’t his
thing. Threats were made to sue, a course of action he had previously unleashed
against other perceived media enemies.
Washington
DC began to hum with rumours that the Journal had a hot story on its hands.
When no article materialised on Wednesday, some insiders perceived a growing
confidence within the White House that their rearguard action had killed the
story. They were wrong.
DC’s
gossip mill had reached fever pitch by Thursday afternoon. The article finally
emerged in the early evening. The city collectively stopped to read.
In the
hours that followed publication, the tension intensified. Trump revealed he had
confronted Tucker, stating the story was “false, malicious, and defamatory”. By
Friday, he had filed a lawsuit suing the Journal and its owners for at least
$10bn (£7.6bn).
Tucker
was at the centre of a maelstrom of stress and political pressure. It was the
greatest challenge of her two and a half years heading the Journal, but far
from the first.
Two
months in, having been parachuted in from London, she was fronting a campaign
to have the reporter Evan Gershkovich returned from a Russian prison. She had
also faced denunciations from journalists as she pushed through a modernisation
drive that included brutal layoffs. Her plans focused on giving stories a
sharper edge. On that metric, the Trump call suggested she was overachieving.
Throughout
her rise, an enigmatic quality has surrounded Tucker. Friends, colleagues and
even some critical employees describe an amiable, fun and disarmingly grounded
person. Many regarded her ability to retain such qualities in the treacherous
terrain of the Murdoch empire as uncanny. The puzzle is exacerbated by the
assumption she does not share the rightwing, pro-Brexit views of Rupert
Murdoch, News Corp’s legendary mogul.
Yet
Murdoch doesn’t hand the Journal to just anyone. While the pro-Maga Fox News is
his empire’s cash cow, the Journal is his prized possession, giving him power
and respectability in wider US political circles, as the Times does in the UK.
So, why Tucker?
The
answer, according to people who have worked with her, is her possession of two
qualities Murdoch rates highly: a willingness to make unpopular decisions for
the sake of his businesses and a lust for a politically contentious scoop.
Lionel
Barber, a former Financial Times editor who also worked with Tucker for the FT
in Brussels, said: “She has a very sharp nose for a good news story – always
did.”
Tucker
edited the University of Oxford’s student magazine, the Isis, and joined the FT
as a graduate trainee. “She was a very convivial colleague, great company and
good on a night out, but you knew when it came down to the work, she would nail
it,” said a colleague. “Very hard-nosed.”
After
stints in Brussels and Berlin, she won a powerful ally in Robert Thomson, then
the FT’s foreign editor. Thomson became a close friend to Murdoch, a fellow
Australian, while working in the US for the FT. Thomson jumped ship to edit the
Times of London in 2002 and in 2008 was dispatched to New York to oversee
Murdoch’s freshly acquired Journal. Before he went, Thomson helped lure Tucker
to the Times, where she eventually became deputy editor.
It was
her elevation to editor of the Sunday Times in 2020 that seems to have
impressed Murdoch. She showed a willingness to make difficult staffing
decisions and widened the Sunday Times’s digital ambitions, recasting the
pro-Brexit paper to appeal to a wider audience.
It was
there she made an enemy of her first populist world leader. Just months into
her tenure, the Sunday Times published a damning account of how Boris Johnson,
the then UK prime minister, had handled the Covid pandemic.
Downing
Street erupted, taking the unusual step of issuing a lengthy rebuttal,
denouncing “falsehoods and errors”. The paper was called “the most hostile
paper in the country” to Johnson’s government, despite having backed him at the
previous year’s election. Rachel Johnson, the former prime minister’s sister,
is one of Tucker’s closest friends.
“I don’t
think she was ever reckless,” said one Sunday Times staffer. “But I think she
absolutely wanted to push the boundaries of getting as much into the public
domain as she possibly could.”
Many
assumed Tucker’s destiny was to edit the Times, but she was catapulted to New
York to run the Journal at the start of 2023, immediately embarking on a
painful streamlining process.
Senior
editors were axed. Pulitzer prize winners ditched. The DC bureau, the most
powerful, was particularly targeted with layoffs and new leadership.
One
reporter spoke of people crying, another of the process’s serious mental
impact. It made Tucker’s editorship divisive, leading to the extraordinary
spectacle of journalists plastering her unoccupied office with sticky notes
denouncing the layoffs.
Even some
who accepted cuts questioned the methods. Several pointed to the use of
“performance improvement plans”, with journalists claiming they had been handed
unrealistic targets designed to push them out the door. One described it as
“gratuitously cruel”.
A Journal
spokesperson said: “Performance improvement plans are used to set clear
objectives and create a development plan that gives an employee feedback and
support to meet those objectives. They are being used exactly as designed.”
The
Tucker enigma re-emerged at the Journal, as staff noted the same mix of
personable demeanour, enthusiasm for stories and willingness to make cuts.
“She’s
very emotionally intelligent – like, the 99th percentile,” said one. They said
morale had improved more recently. New hires have followed.
A
cultural shift on stories also arrived. What emerges is a Tucker Venn diagram.
At its overlapping centre lie stories with two qualities: they cover legitimate
areas of public importance and aim squarely at eye-catching topics with digital
reach.
Tucker
gave investigative reporters the examples of Elon Musk and China as two
potential areas. Some complained the topics were “clickbaity”. However, one
journalist who had had reservations conceded: “Musk turned out to be a pretty
good topic.” Tucker’s use of metrics around web traffic and time spent reading
a story irked some reporters.
Headlines
were made more direct. Honorifics such as “Mr” and “Mrs” were ditched. There
was a ban on stories having more than three bylines. “She loosened a lot of the
strictures that we had,” said one staffer. “We’re encouraged to write more edgy
stories.”
Positioning
the Journal as a punchy rival to the liberal New York Times juggernaut may be a
good business plan, but doing so while not falling foul of Murdoch’s politics
remains a delicate balance.
“There’s
a particular moment now where the Wall Street Journal has to prove its mettle
as the pre-eminent business and financial markets media organisation,” said
Paddy Harverson, a contemporary of Tucker’s at the FT, now a communications
executive. “They’re up against Trump, yet they have an historically
centre-right editorial view. She has guided the paper along that tightrope
really well.”
Allies
said Tucker laid a marker of intent in terms of punchy stories when she
published an article on the alleged cognitive decline of Joe Biden. It was
initially described as a “hit piece” by the Biden administration. Some see the
Epstein story as the latest evidence of Tucker’s shift.
There are
journalists, however, who blame Trump’s response for giving the story attention
it simply didn’t warrant. Others disagree about the extent of Tucker’s changes,
pointing to the Journal’s history of breaking contentious stories, including
the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. However, the net result of the Epstein
letter saga has been to draw attention to Tucker’s attempted change in tone.
Trump’s
lawsuit means the furore may only just be beginning. Many seasoned media
figures assume Murdoch, who does not respond well to bullying, will not back
down. However, neither billionaire will relish having to face depositions and
disclosures. Any settlement from Murdoch could put pressure on Tucker,
depending on its details.
Dow
Jones, which publishes the Journal, has said it has “full confidence in the
rigour and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any
lawsuit”. The courts may yet reject Trump’s case.
“I don’t
think [Murdoch] will just flop over,” said Barber. “The issue here is that
Trump went around boasting that he killed the story … For an editor, that’s
very difficult. But I’m pretty damn confident there’s no way [Tucker] would
publish without having it properly sourced.”
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