Age, Biography and Wiki
Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia. He took over his family's newspaper business in Adelaide after his father's death in 1952 and expanded it into a global media empire. Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in 1985 and later renounced his Australian citizenship. He is known for his influential presence in the media industry, owning prominent brands like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Times.
| Occupation | Billionaire |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 11 March 1931 |
| Age | 94 Years |
| Birth Place | Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Horoscope | Pisces |
| Country | Australia |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited public information available about Rupert Murdoch's specific height, weight, or body measurements. However, he is often recognized for his distinctive public presence and business acumen rather than physical attributes.
Murdoch owns a controlling interest in Sky Italia, a satellite television provider in Italy. Murdoch's business interests in Italy have been a source of contention since they began. In 2009 Murdoch won a media dispute with then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the then prime minister's media arm Mediaset prevented News Corporation's Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying advertisements on its television networks.
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Dating & Relationship status
Rupert Murdoch has been married four times:
- Patricia Booker (married 1956–1967)
- Anna Torv (married 1967–1999)
- Wendi Deng (married 1999–2013)
- Jerry Hall (married 2016–2022)
After his father Keith Murdoch died in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World, followed closely by The Sun. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the American market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 1981, Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized American citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for American television network ownership. In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch consolidated his British printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes. His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989), and The Wall Street Journal (2007). Murdoch formed the 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.
As of September 2024, the Murdoch family is involved in a court case in the US in which his three children Elisabeth, Prudence, and James are challenging their father's bid to amend the family trust to ensure that his eldest son, Lachlan, retains control of News Corp and Fox Corp, rather than the trust benefiting all of his six children, as is specified in its "irrevocable" terms.
He is of English, Irish and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. Murdoch's father was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate; he owned two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia and a radio station in a remote mining town and was chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company. Murdoch has three sisters: Helen (1929–2004), Anne (born 1935) and Janet (born 1939). His paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who emigrated to Australia in 1884.
After his father's death from cancer in 1952, Murdoch's mother did charity work as the 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. While his father was alive, Murdoch worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father to take over the family business. After his father's death, he began working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.
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. 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.
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.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At the end of the Thatcher/Major era, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party and its leader, Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a political issue in Britain. This later changed, with The Sun, in its English editions, publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and lending its support to David Cameron's Conservative Party, which soon afterwards formed a coalition government. In Scotland, where the Conservatives had suffered a complete annihilation in 1997, the paper began to endorse the Scottish National Party (though not yet its flagship policy of independence), which soon after came to form the first-ever outright majority in the proportionally elected Scottish Parliament. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman said in November 2009 that Brown and Murdoch "were in regular communication" and that "there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch".
In 1987, Murdoch created his global television special, the World Music Video Awards, a special music ceremony award where winners were chosen by viewers in eight countries. In Australia, during 1987, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., the company that his father had once managed. Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox bought out the remaining assets of Four Star Television from Ronald Perelman's Compact Video in 1996. Most of Four Star Television's library of programs are controlled by 20th Century Fox Television today. After Murdoch's numerous buyouts during the buyout era of the eighties, News Corporation had built up financial debts of $7 billion (much from Sky TV in the UK), despite the many assets that were held by NewsCorp. The high levels of debt caused Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.
Murdoch is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies. In October 2010, the Anti-Defamation League in New York City presented Murdoch with its International Leadership Award "for his stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against antisemitism". However, in April 2021, in a letter to Lachlan Murdoch, ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote that it would no longer make such an award to his father. This was in the immediate context of accusations made by the ADL against Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson and his apparent espousal of the White replacement theory.
As of December 2024, the whole Murdoch family is involved in a court case in Reno, Nevada, in which James, his sister Elisabeth and half-sister Prudence are challenging their father's bid to amend the family trust to ensure that his eldest son, Lachlan, retains control of News Corp and Fox Corp, rather than benefiting all of his six children, as is specified in the "irrevocable" terms of the trust. According to The New York Times, Murdoch Senior wants his companies to remain politically conservative, and sees his other children as too politically liberal.
The irrevocable family trust was set up after Rupert and Anna Murdoch's divorce in 1999, to hold the family's 28.5% stake in News Corp. It relates only to the children born before then, giving them equal say in the fate of the business after Rupert's death. Chloe and Grace Murdoch, Rupert's children with third wife Wendi Deng, will have no say in the business, although will share the stock proceeds. The case follows Rupert's attempt to change the trust in 2023, and the Nevada probate commissioner's finding that he was allowed to amend the trust "if he is able to show he is acting in good faith and for the sole benefit of his heirs". Rupert Murdoch is arguing interference by the other siblings would cause a financial loss to Fox, and therefore "in their own best interests if they have their votes taken away from them". He argues that preserving the outlet's conservative editorial stance against interference by the more politically moderate siblings would better protect its commercial value.
The case has led to the three children becoming estranged from their father, with none of them attending his wedding to his fifth wife, Elena Zhukova, in June 2024.
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 mi north-east of Reading.
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, 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.
Murdoch became engaged again in March 2024, to retired Russian molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, who is also the ex-wife of Russian businessman Alexander Zhukov. Their wedding was held in June 2024 at Murdoch's estate in California. Murdoch was 93 and Zhukova 67 years old. Through the marriage he became stepfather to Dasha Zhukova, ex-wife of Roman Abramovich.
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.
Murdoch has two children with Wendi Deng: Grace (b. New York, November 2001) and Chloe (b. New York, July 2003). It was revealed in September 2011 that Tony Blair is Grace's godfather. There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his oldest children over the terms of a trust holding the family's 28.5% stake in News Corporation, estimated in 2005 to be worth about $6.1 billion. Under the trust, his children by Wendi Deng share in the proceeds of the stock but have no voting privileges or control of the stock. Voting rights in the stock are divided 50/50 between Murdoch on the one side and his children of his first two marriages. Murdoch's voting privileges are not transferable but will expire upon his death and the stock will then be controlled solely by his children from the prior marriages, although their half-siblings will continue to derive their share of income from it. It is Murdoch's stated desire to have his children by Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it. It does not appear that he has any strong legal grounds to contest the present arrangement, and both ex-wife Anna and their three children are said to be strongly resistant to any such change.
Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire (2023), by Walter Marsh, has been praised for the high quality of its research. It focuses on Murdoch as a child and young man, in particular his early career at The News in Adelaide and his relationship with the editor-in-chief Rohan Rivett. Several commenters on the book remarked on Murdoch's embrace of socialism in his early years.
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| Husband | Patricia Booker (m. 1956-1967) Anna Maria Torv (m. 1967-1999) Wendi Deng (m. 1999-2013) Jerry Hall (m. 2016-2022) Elena Zhukova (m. 2024) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Rupert Murdoch's net worth is estimated to be approximately $23.1 billion. His wealth primarily stems from his stakes in News Corp and Fox Corporation, two influential media companies. In previous years, his net worth was reported to be around $19 billion.
Keith Rupert Murdoch (born 11 March 1931) is an American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing 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 the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation). He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine. Due to his extensive wealth and influence over media and politics, Murdoch has been described as an oligarch.
Murdoch's British-based satellite network, Sky Television, incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As with many of his other business interests, Sky was heavily subsidised by the profits generated by his other holdings, but convinced rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990. The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since, pursuing direct to home (DTH) satellite broadcasting. By 1996, BSkyB had more than 3.6 million subscribers, triple the number of cable customers in the UK.
In response to print media's decline and the increasing influence of online journalism during the 2000s, Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining revenue from online news, although this has been criticised by some.
In 1993, Murdoch's Fox Network took exclusive coverage of the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL) from CBS and increased programming to seven days a week. In 1995, Fox became the object of scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), when it was alleged that News Ltd.'s Australian base made Murdoch's ownership of Fox illegal. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corporation launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra. In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Ratings studies released in 2009 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category at that time. Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (founder and former owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals. In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34% stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD). His Fox movie studio had global hits with Titanic and Avatar.
According to Forbes ' 2017 real-time list of world's billionaires, Murdoch was the 34th richest person in the US and the 96th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$13.1 billion as of February 2017.
Career, Business and Investments
Murdoch's career began when he took over his family's newspaper business in Adelaide. He aggressively expanded his empire through strategic acquisitions and new ventures across different continents. Key assets in his portfolio include:
- Newspapers: The Times, The Sun, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post.
- TV Networks: Fox News, Sky News Australia.
- Publishing: HarperCollins.
- Film: Significant stakes in film studios through 21st Century Fox before its sale to Disney.
In July 2011, Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the United States. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International. In September 2023, Murdoch announced he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp.
Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of right-wing biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have linked his influence with major political developments in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia.
Asked about the 2007 Australian federal election at News Corporation's annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said: "I am not commenting on anything to do with Australian politics. I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that." Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should continue as prime minister, he said: "I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists who decide that – the editors."
Murdoch described Howard's successor, Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as "more ambitious to lead the world [in tackling climate change] than to lead Australia" and criticised Rudd's expansionary fiscal policies in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as unnecessary. In 2009, in response to accusations by Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was "oversensitive". Although News Limited's interests are extensive, also including the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser, it was suggested by the commentator Mungo MacCallum in The Monthly that "the anti-Rudd push, if coordinated at all, was almost certainly locally driven" as opposed to being directed by Murdoch, who also took a different position from local editors on such matters as climate change and stimulus packages to mitigate the effects of the 2008 financial crisis.
In 1998, Murdoch made an attempt to buy the football club Manchester United F.C., with an offer of £625 million, but this failed. It was the largest amount ever offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have "hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football".
Murdoch has a seat on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil and Gas, having jointly invested with Lord Rothschild in a 5.5% stake in the company which conducted shale gas and oil exploration in Colorado, Mongolia, Israel, and the occupied Golan Heights.
In January 2018, the CMA blocked Murdoch from taking over the remaining 61% of BSkyB he did not already own, over fear of market dominance that could potentialise censorship of the media. His bid for BSkyB was later approved by the CMA as long as he sold Sky News to the Walt Disney Company, which was already set to acquire 21st Century Fox. However, it was Comcast who won control of BSkyB in a blind auction ordered by the CMA. Murdoch ultimately sold his 39% of BSkyB to Comcast.
News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986, News Corporation's annual tax bill averaged around seven percent of its profits.
The Labour Party, from when Blair became leader in 1994, had moved from the centre-left to a more centrist position on many economic issues before 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian, saying "What does libertarian mean? As much individual responsibility as possible, as little government as possible, as few rules as possible. But I'm not saying it should be taken to the absolute limit."
On 28 June 2006, the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were considering backing new Conservative leader David Cameron at the next General Election – still up to four years away. In a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much". In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, which might yet have transatlantic implications, Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron. Despite this, there had already been a convergence of interests between the two men over the muting of Britain's communications regulator Ofcom.
On 15 July, Murdoch attended a private meeting in London with the family of Milly Dowler, where he personally apologised for the hacking of their murdered daughter's voicemail by a company he owns. On 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain's national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the "serious wrongdoing" that occurred. The second was titled "Putting right what's gone wrong", and gave more detail about the steps News International was taking to address the public's concerns. In the wake of the allegations, Murdoch accepted the resignations of Brooks and Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones who was chairman of Murdoch's British newspaper division when some of the abuses happened. They both deny any knowledge of any wrongdoing under their command.
In testimony on 25 April, Murdoch did not deny the quote attributed to him by his former editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans: "I give instructions to my editors all round the world, why shouldn't I in London?" On 1 May 2012, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report stating that Murdoch was "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".
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.
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corporation headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a American domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-American companies.
On 20 July 2005, News Corporation bought Intermix Media Inc., which held Myspace, Imagine Games Network and other social networking-themed websites, for US$580 million, making Murdoch a major player in online media concerns. In June 2011, it sold off Myspace for US$35 million. On 11 September 2005, News Corporation announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).
In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones & Company. At the time, the Bancroft family, who had owned Dow Jones & Company for 105 years and controlled 64% of the shares at the time, declined the offer. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale. Besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the other interested parties. In 2007, Murdoch acquired Dow Jones & Company, which gave him such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's Magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review (based in Hong Kong) and SmartMoney.
Murdoch considered merging News Corp and Fox Corporation, but in January 2023 announced to the board that he had withdrawn the idea, stating the that he and his son Lachlan had "determined that a combination [was] not optimal for shareholders of News Corp and FOX" at that time. The Special Committee of the Board of Directors of News Corp that had been set up to investigate the matter was dissolved. In September 2023, Rupert Murdoch retired, and handed over the leadership of his businesses to his eldest son Lachlan.
In 2010, News Corporation gave US$1 million to the Republican Governors Association and $1 million to the US Chamber of Commerce. Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute. Murdoch is also a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.
In 1993, News Corporation acquired Star TV (renamed as Star in 2001), a Hong Kong company headed by Richard Li, from Hutchison Whampoa for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. The deal enabled News International to broadcast from Hong Kong to India, China, Japan, and over thirty other countries in Asia, becoming one of the biggest satellite television networks in the east; however, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China.
In 2009, News Corporation reorganised Star; a few of these arrangements were that the original company's operations in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East were integrated into Fox International Channels, and Star India was spun-off (but still within News Corporation).
Until September 2023, it was not known how long Murdoch would remain as News Corporation's CEO. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family's control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone's company in exchange for its stock. In 2007, the company issued Murdoch's older children voting stock.
In 1999, the Ted Turner-owned TBS channel aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as "a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone's favourite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel". Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner.
Towards the end of his touring career, Eagles drummer and lead singer Don Henley would often dedicate his 1982 hit "Dirty Laundry" to Murdoch and Bill O'Reilly.
In August 2013, Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, wrote an article for the Conversation publication in which he investigated a claim by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that Murdoch owned 70% of Australian newspapers in 2011. Flew's article showed that News Corp Australia owned 23% of the nation's newspapers in 2011, according to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, but, at the time of the article, the corporation's titles accounted for 59% of the sales of all daily newspapers, with weekly sales of 17.3 million copies.
* Ellison, Sarah. War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle To Control an American Business Empire, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. ISBN 978-0-547-15243-1 (Also published as: War at The Wall Street Journal: How Rupert Murdoch Bought an American Icon, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 2010.)
* McKnight, David. "Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation: A Media Institution with A Mission", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Sept 2010, Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp 303–316
* McKnight, David. "Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation: A Media Institution with A Mission", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Sept 2010, Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp 303–316
* McKnight, David. "Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation: A Media Institution with A Mission", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Sept 2010, Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp 303–316
Social Network
Rupert Murdoch is not known for having a strong social media presence. His influence is more pronounced through his media outlets than through personal online interactions.
In 1999, Murdoch significantly expanded his music holdings in Australia by acquiring the controlling share in a leading Australian independent label, Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Records; he merged that with Festival Records, and the result was Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch's son James Murdoch for several years.
In July 2011, it emerged that Cameron had met key executives of Murdoch's News Corporation a total of 26 times during the 14 months that Cameron had served as prime minister up to that point. It was also reported that Murdoch had given Cameron a personal guarantee that there would be no risk attached to hiring Andy Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, as the Conservative Party's communication director in 2007. This was in spite of Coulson having resigned as editor over phone hacking by a reporter. Cameron chose to take Murdoch's advice, despite warnings from the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian. Coulson resigned his post in 2011 and was later arrested and questioned on allegations of further criminal activity at the News of the World, specifically the phone hacking scandal. As a result of the subsequent trial, Coulson was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
On 14 July 2011 the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons served a summons on Murdoch, his son James, and his former CEO Rebekah Brooks to testify before a committee five days later. After an initial refusal, the Murdochs confirmed they would attend, after the committee issued them a summons to Parliament. The day before the committee, the website of the News Corporation publication The Sun was hacked, and a false story was posted on the front page claiming that Murdoch had died. Murdoch described the day of the committee "the most humble day of my life". He argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that News of the World was "just 1%" of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid. He added that he had not considered resigning, and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking.
On 3 July 2013, the Exaro website and Channel 4 News broke the story of a secret recording. This was recorded by The Sun journalists, and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation was one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison. He said: "Why are the police behaving in this way? It's the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing."
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 American 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 American citizens were permitted to own American television stations.
In June 2014, Murdoch's 21st Century Fox made a bid for Time Warner at $85 per share in stock and cash ($80 billion total) which Time Warner's board of directors turned down in July. Warner's CNN unit would have been sold to ease antitrust issues of the purchase. On 5 August 2014 the company announced it had withdrawn its offer for Time Warner, and said it would spend $6 billion buying back its own shares over the following 12 months.
Murdoch left his post as CEO of 21st Century Fox in 2015 but continued to own the company until it was purchased by Disney in 2019. A number of television broadcasting assets were spun off into the Fox Corporation before the acquisition and are still owned by Murdoch. This includes Fox News, of which Murdoch was acting CEO from 2016 until 2019, following the resignation of Roger Ailes due to accusations of sexual harassment.
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.
On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign. In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries". Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida [...] but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."
In November 1986, News Corporation purchased a 35% stake in the South China Morning Post group for about US$105 million. At that time, SCMP group was a stock-listed company, and was owned by HSBC, Hutchison Whampoa and Dow Jones & Company. In December 1986, Dow Jones & Company offered News Corporation to sell about 19% of share it owned of SCMP for US$57.2 million, and, by 1987, News Corporation completed the full takeover. In September 1993, News Corporation have agreed to sell a 34.9% share in SCMP to Robert Kuok's Kerry Media for US$349 million. In 1994, News Corporation sold the remaining 15.1% share in SCMP to MUI Group, disposing the Hong Kong newspaper.
In June 1993, News Corporation attempted to acquire a 22% share in TVB, a terrestrial television broadcaster in Hong Kong, for about $237million, but Murdoch's company gave up, as the Hong Kong government would not relax the regulation regarding foreign ownership of broadcasting companies.
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.
In late 2015, The Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou began a series of investigative articles on Theranos, the blood-testing start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes, that questioned its claim to be able to run a wide range of lab tests from a tiny sample of blood from a finger prick. Holmes had turned to Murdoch, whose media empire includes Carreyrou's employer, The Wall Street Journal, to kill the story. Murdoch, who became the biggest investor in Theranos in 2015 as a result of his $125 million injection, refused the request from Holmes saying that "he trusted the paper's editors to handle the matter fairly."
In November 2021, Murdoch accused, without providing evidence, Google and Facebook of stifling conservative viewpoints on its platforms, and called for "substantial reform" and openness in the digital ad supply chain.
Education
Murdoch attended Geelong Grammar School and later studied economics at Worcester College, Oxford. His educational background played a role in shaping his business acumen and strategic vision.
In conclusion, Rupert Murdoch's life is marked by his significant contributions to the global media landscape, making him one of the most influential figures in the industry. His vast wealth and business legacy continue to shape media and politics worldwide.
Murdoch 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. 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, stood for secretary of the Labour Club and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell.
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.
In 1986, Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States. The greater degree of automation led to significant reductions in the number of employees involved in the printing process. In England, the move roused the anger of the print unions, resulting in a long and often violent dispute that played out in Wapping, one of London's docklands areas, where Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse. The bitter Wapping dispute started with the dismissal of 6,000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles and demonstrations. Many on the political left in Britain alleged the collusion of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government with Murdoch in the Wapping affair, as a way of damaging the British trade union movement. In 1987, the dismissed workers accepted a settlement of £60 million.
In the 2012 United States presidential election, Murdoch was critical of the competence of Mitt Romney's team but was nonetheless strongly supportive of a Republican victory, tweeting: "Of course I want him [Romney] to win, save us from socialism, etc."
