In a scene that could be seamlessly dropped into an episode of Succession, on September 10, Rupert Murdoch and his feuding heirs are set to begin a grueling two-week courtroom saga with major implications for the future of the right-leaning media empire. A Reno judge will consider a petition to amend Rupert’s irrevocable trust, and the 93-year-old mogul plans to take the witness stand to argue that giving total control to Lachlan, his eldest (and most politically simpatico) boy, in fact benefits the entire clan. Meanwhile, his other children, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence, will argue that their father’s so-called “Project Harmony” undermines the trust’s commitment to balanced governance, where each sibling has an equal vote in the direction of the company that controls Fox News. But before this high-stakes legal drama begins, the judge must resolve a contentious preliminary dispute: Should the battle over a vast television empire be televised? 

The Murdochs, whose outlets have often argued in court on behalf of media access to courtroom proceedings, would vastly prefer that their personal drama remain private. Just days ago, one of the parties—“Doe 9,” presumably a trustee—backed efforts to barricade the courtroom doors, following up on local Probate Commissioner Edmund Gorman’s move to not only seal the proceedings, but also scrub the local court’s public logs of all traces of this dispute. The rationale, as presented to Washoe County Judge David Hardy, is that allowing press access “will, with absolute certainty, … harm the Parties’ legislatively protected confidentiality rights.”