Elisabeth Murdoch signals ambitions

Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, has moved to distance herself from her brother James and position herself to play a major role at the helm of News Corporation.

The divisions within the family became explicit for the first time as Murdoch accused her brother, the deputy chief operating officer of News Corp, of focusing on profit without addressing the issue of "purpose", something she described as "a recipe for disaster".

In the past, she has reportedly claimed that James and News International's former chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, "f----- the company" in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, but her criticism has always been behind closed doors.

However, she used the prestigious James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival last night (Thursday) to present herself as the friendly face of the Murdoch empire and draw a clear distinction between herself and her brother, who delivered the MacTaggart three years ago.

James Murdoch had used the platform to launch a blistering attack on the BBC and its "chilling" ambitions to expand, stifling private sector companies that needed to make a profit to survive.

Murdoch, chairman and founder of television production company Shine Group, said: "James was right that if you remove profit, then independence is massively challenged, but I think that he left something out: the reason his statement sat so uncomfortably is that profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster."

She added, "Profit must be our servant, not our master."

She also extended an olive branch to the BBC, praising outgoing chief executive Mark Thompson and hailing it as "the market leader for building new relationships and services with creatives from every sector".

In an hour-long lecture full of humour and personal anecdotes, Murdoch painted a picture of herself as someone who had worked hard to get to the top rather than having it handed to her on a plate, and who felt strongly that the company should have a moral compass.

Her early career outside the Murdoch empire helped her understand "that leadership is earned and not bestowed by titles or even share certificates," she said. It was a transparent appeal to those News Corp shareholders who think the Murdoch family exerts too much control over the company, and uses its dual-class shareholding structure effectively to dismiss the views of many of its investors.

She was also at pains to point out that the culture she created at Shine was very different from the corporate culture laid bare by the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

"A great creative organisation is like any successful community. It's a place of honesty, integrity?… that demands personal accountability, collective responsibility and true self-determination," she said.

She made just one direct reference to the phone-hacking scandal, which led to the closure of the News of the World and has left the reputations of its publisher, News International (NI), in tatters. The scandal has raised questions about corporate governance across NI's parent company, News Corp, and left it facing "very significant and difficult questions about how some behaviours fell so far short of its values," Ms Murdoch said. She did not explicitly declare that she wanted to lead News Corp in the future, but the message was clear: this was the start of a candidacy campaign.

Sources close to Murdoch say she could back Lachlan Murdoch as her father's eventual successor, rather than becoming chairman and chief executive herself, but she is determined to have a leading role.

Lachlan and James spent a long time as rivals to be Rupert Murdoch's heir apparent, but Lachlan ducked out of the race in 2005 when he left News Corp for Australia after clashes with senior executives. He is now chairman of Australian broadcaster Network Ten.

Either way, Murdoch did not want to be seen to be chasing a promotion. At one point she even went so far as to claim that she had not wanted to sell Shine Group, the television production company she founded in 2001, to News Corp.

"It became clear to me that News Corp was the best strategic home for us. Now, I can almost hear you thinking 'no shit, Sherlock', but in many ways it was the very last place I wanted to go," she said. Murdoch sold the company to News Corp last year for pounds 415m, collecting $214m (pounds 135m) for herself. The deal sparked the ire of shareholders.