Rupert Murdock

Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK ('' The Sun'' and ''The Times)'', in Australia (''The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun'', and ''The Australian)'', in the US (''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 billion , Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world.

After his father's death 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 US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the UK. In 1981, Murdoch bought ''The Times'', his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.

In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, Murdoch consolidated his UK 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 over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.

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 US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.

Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have credited his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia.

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 (; 1909–2012). 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 faraway mining town, and chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company.''The encyclopedia of the history of American management'' (2005) Morgen Witzel Continuum International Publishing Group p. 393 Murdoch had three sisters: Helen (1929–2004), Anne (born 1935) and Janet (born 1939). 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 took his school's cricket team to the National Junior Finals. 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, 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 Childrens Research Institute; at the age of 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants. Murdoch completed an MA before 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. 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.

Murdoch's first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily '' The Dominion''. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counter-bid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch was ultimately successful. Later in 1964, Murdoch launched ''The Australian'', Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney. In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid ''The Daily Telegraph'' from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him. In 1984, Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to publishing.''Rupert Murdoch: News Corporation Magnate'' (2011) Sue Vander Hook. ABDO Publishing p88

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.

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.Don Garden, ''Theodor Fink: A Talent for Ubiquity'' (Melbourne University Press 1998)

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.

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." In 2009, in response to accusations by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was "oversensitive". Murdoch described Howard's successor, Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as "more ambitious to lead the world n tackling climate changethan to lead Australia" and criticised Rudd's expansionary fiscal policies in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 as unnecessary. 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 combat the financial crisis.

Murdoch is a supporter of an Australian republic, having campaigned for such a change during the 1999 referendum.

Activities in the United Kingdom

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.

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 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 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'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.

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, controversially, the occupied Golan Heights.

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 on-line news, although this has been criticised by some.

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.

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.

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."

In a speech he delivered in New York in 2005, Murdoch claimed that Blair described the BBC
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