Keith Rupert Murdoch
Former Chairperson of FOX News
| Date of Birth | : | 11 Mar, 1931 |
| Place of Birth | : | Melbourne, Australia |
| Profession | : | Businessperson, Media Proprietor, Entrepreneur, Investor, Publisher |
| Nationality | : | Australian, American |
| Social Profiles | : |
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Keith Rupert Murdoch AC KCSG is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor and media owner. Through his company News Corp, he owns hundreds of local, national and international editorial outlets around the world, including in the United Kingdom (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian ), in the United States (The Wall Street Journal and New York Post), the publisher HarperCollins and the television channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through Fox Corporation). He also owned Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019) and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of $21.7 billion as of March 2, 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest person in the world according to Forbes magazine.
After his father's death in 1952, Murdoch took over the editorship of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired several newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding to the United Kingdom in 1969, acquiring the News of the World, closely followed by The Sun. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City to expand into the American market; However, he maintained interests in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 1981, Murdoch purchased The Times, his first British newspaper, and, in 1985, he became a naturalized American citizen, renouncing his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement of owning an American television network. In 1986, eager to adopt new electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch consolidated his UK printing operations in London, sparking bitter industrial disputes. His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). Murdoch formed British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch's News Corporation owned more than 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion.
Early life
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, the second of four children of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Dame Elisabeth (née Greene; 1909–2012). 9 He is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. His father was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide and a radio station in a remote mining town, and chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company. Murdoch had three sisters: Helen (1929–2004), Anne (born 1935) and Janet (born 1939). 47 His Scottish-born paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Presbyterian minister. Later in life, Murdoch chose to go by his second name, the first name of his maternal grandfather.
He attended Geelong Grammar School, where he was co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived. He worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father to take over the family business. Murdoch studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford, in England, where he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms and came to be known as "Red Rupert". He was a member of the Oxford University Labour Party, 34 stood for Secretary of the Labour Club and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell. After his father's death from cancer in 1952, his mother did charity work as life governor of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and established the Murdoch Children's Research Institute; at the age of 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants. Murdoch then began working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.
Activities in Australia and New Zealand
Following his father's death, when he was 21, Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of what was left of the family business. After liquidation of his father's Herald stake to pay taxes, what was left was News Limited, which had been established in 1923.16 Rupert Murdoch turned its Adelaide newspaper, The News, its main asset, into a major success. He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia (1956) and over the next few years acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid The Daily Mirror (1960). The Economist describes Murdoch as "inventing the modern tabloid", as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.
Political activities in Australia
Murdoch found a political ally in Sir John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party (now known as the National Party of Australia), who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt-Gorton Liberal Party. From the first issue of The Australian, Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, 15 July 1964, first edition, front page: "Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row flares.") It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources. Rupert Murdoch's backing of Whitlam turned out to be brief. Murdoch had already started his short-lived National Star newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.
Business activities in the United Kingdom
In 1968, Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in 1969 with the purchase of the struggling daily The Sun from IPC. Murdoch turned The Sun into a tabloid format and reduced costs by using the same printing press for both newspapers. On acquiring it, he appointed Albert 'Larry' Lamb as editor and – Lamb recalled later – told him: "I want a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it". In 1997 The Sun attracted 10 million daily readers. In 1981, Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet. Ownership of The Times came to him through his relationship with Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of an extended period of industrial action that stopped publication. In the light of success and expansion at The Sun the owners believed that Murdoch could turn the papers around. Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times from 1967, was switched to the daily Times, though he stayed only a year amid editorial conflict with Murdoch.
Political activities in United Kingdom
In Britain, in the 1980s, Murdoch formed a close alliance with Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In February 1981, when Murdoch, already owner of The Sun and The News of the World, sought to buy The Times and The Sunday Times, Thatcher's government let his bid pass without referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which was usual practice at the time. Although contact between the two before this point had been explicitly denied in an official history of The Times, documents found in Thatcher's archives in 2012 revealed a secret meeting had taken place a month before in which Murdoch briefed Thatcher on his plans for the paper, such as taking on trade unions.
The Sun credited itself with helping her successor John Major to win an unexpected election victory in the 1992 general election, which had been expected to end in a hung parliament or a narrow win for Labour, then led by Neil Kinnock. In the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair.
Activities in the United States
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.
In March 1984, Marvin Davis sold Marc Rich's interest in 20th Century Fox to Murdoch for $250 million due to Rich's trade deals with Iran, which were sanctioned by the US at the time. Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge's Metromedia television stations. Rupert Murdoch bought the stations by himself, without Marvin Davis, and later bought out Davis's remaining stake in Fox for $325 million. The six television stations owned by Metromedia formed the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company, founded on 9 October 1986, which later had great success with programs including The Simpsons and The X-Files.
Political activities in the United States
McKnight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to liberal bias in other public media.
In The New Yorker, Ken Auletta writes that Murdoch's support for Edward I. Koch while he was running for mayor of New York "spilled over onto the news pages of the Post, with the paper regularly publishing glowing stories about Koch and sometimes savage accounts of his four primary opponents."
According to The New York Times, Ronald Reagan's campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election. Reagan later "waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market," allowing Murdoch to continue to control The New York Post and The Boston Herald while expanding into television.
Personal life
Residence
In 2003, Murdoch bought "Rosehearty", an 11 bedroom home on a 5-acre waterfront estate in Centre Island, New York. In May 2013, he purchased the Moraga Estate, an estate, vineyard and winery in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California. In 2019, Murdoch and his new wife Jerry Hall purchased Holmwood, an 18th-century house and estate in the English village of Binfield Heath, some 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Reading.
In late 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported that Murdoch and Hall had been isolating in their Binfield Heath home for much of the year. He received his first COVID-19 vaccine in nearby Henley-on-Thames on 16 December.
Marriages
In 1956, Murdoch married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne; the couple had their only child, Prudence, in 1958. They divorced in 1967.
In 1967, Murdoch married Anna Torv, a Scottish-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Mirror. In January 1998, three months before the announcement of his separation from Anna, a Roman Catholic, Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great (KSG), a papal honour awarded by Pope John Paul II. While Murdoch would often attend Mass with Torv, he never converted to Catholicism. Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia on 22 August 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK on 8 September 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in London on 13 December 1972). Murdoch's companies published two novels by his wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991). They divorced in June 1999. Anna Murdoch received a settlement of US$1.2 billion in assets.
On 25 June 1999, 17 days after divorcing his second wife, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Wendi Deng. She was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV. Murdoch had two daughters with her: Grace (born 2001) and Chloe (born 2003). Murdoch has six children in all, and is grandfather to thirteen grandchildren. Near the end of his marriage to Wendi, hearsay concerning a link with Chinese intelligence (which was later proven to be unfounded) became problematic to their relationship. On 13 June 2013, a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed that Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City, US. According to the spokesman, the marriage had been irretrievably broken for more than six months. Murdoch also ended his long-standing friendship with Tony Blair after suspecting him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married.
Children
Murdoch has six children. His eldest child, Prudence MacLeod, was appointed on 28 January 2011 to the board of Times Newspapers Ltd, part of News International, which publishes The Times and The Sunday Times. Murdoch's elder son Lachlan, formerly the Deputy Chief Operating Officer at the News Corporation and publisher of the New York Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent before resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's departure left James Murdoch, Chief Executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003 as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.
After graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth and her husband purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations in California, KSBW and KSBY, with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit in 1995, Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty. But, after divorcing Pianim in 1998 and quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She has since enjoyed independent success, in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, whom she met in 1997 and married in 2001.
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