Australian-American business magnate (born )
Keith Rupert Murdoch (MUR-dok; born 11 March ) is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media mogul.[3][4] 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 ), 21st Century Fox (until ), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$&#;billion as of 2&#;March&#;,[update] Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine.[5] Due to his extensive wealth influence over media and politics, Murdoch has been described as an oligarch.[6]
After his father Keith Murdoch died in , Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the s and s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in , taking over the News of the World, followed closely by The Sun. In , Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the UK. In , Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in , became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.[7] In , 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 (), HarperCollins (),[8] and The Wall Street Journal (). Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in and, during the s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By , Murdoch's News Corporation owned more than companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion.[9]
In July , 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.[10][11] On 21 July , Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.[12][13] In September , Murdoch announced he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp.[14]
Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests[15][16][17] and political allies,[18][19][20] and some have linked his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia.[18][21][22]
As of September&#;[update], 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.[23]
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the second of four children of Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch (–) and Dame Elisabeth Joy (née&#;Greene; –).[24][25]:&#;9&#; 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.[7][26]:&#;16&#;[27] Murdoch has three sisters: Helen (–), Anne (born ) and Janet (born ).[28]:&#;47&#; His paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister.[29]
Murdoch attended Geelong Grammar School,[30] where he was co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived.[31][32] 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,[26]:&#;34&#;[33] stood for secretary of the Labour Club[34] and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell.[35]
After his father's death from cancer in , 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 (in ), she had 74 descendants.[36] 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.[7][33] After his father's death, he began working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.[7]
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 [26]:&#;16&#; Rupert Murdoch turned its Adelaide newspaper, The News, its main asset, into a major success.[33] He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia () 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 (). The Economist describes Murdoch as "inventing the modern tabloid",[37] as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.[7]
Murdoch's first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January , 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 year-old Murdoch was ultimately successful.[38] Later in , Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney.[39] In , Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him.[40] In , Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to publishing.[41][42]
After the Keating government relaxed media ownership laws, in Murdoch launched a takeover bid for The Herald and Weekly Times, which was the largest newspaper publisher in Australia.[43] There was a three-way takeover battle between Murdoch, Fairfax and Robert Holmes à Court, with Murdoch succeeding after agreeing to some divestments.
In , 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.[44]
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 , 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.[45]
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[46] 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[45] newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[47]
Asked about the Australian federal election at News Corporation's annual general meeting in New York on 19 October , 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."[48]
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 financial crisis of – as unnecessary.[49] In , in response to accusations by Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was "oversensitive".[50] 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.[51]
Murdoch is a supporter of the formation of an Australian republic, having campaigned for such a change during the referendum.[52]
In , Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in with the purchase of the struggling daily The Sun from IPC.[53] 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 The Sun attracted 10 million daily readers.[7] In , Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet.[53] 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.[54] 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 , was switched to the daily Times, though he stayed only a year amid editorial conflict with Murdoch.[55][56]
During the s and early s, Murdoch's publications were generally supportive of Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.[57] 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.[58] 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 , 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 that Brown and Murdoch "were in regular communication" and that "there is nothing unusual in the prime minister talking to Rupert Murdoch".[59]
In , 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.[60] The bitter Wapping dispute started with the dismissal of 6, 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.[61][62][63] In , the dismissed workers accepted a settlement of £60 million.[7]
In , Murdoch made an attempt to buy the football club Manchester United F.C.,[64] with an offer of £&#;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 [7] The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since, pursuing direct to home (DTH) satellite broadcasting.[65] By , BSkyB had more than million subscribers, triple the number of cable customers in the UK.[7]
Murdoch has a seat on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil and Gas, having jointly invested with Lord Rothschild in a % stake in the company which conducted shale gas and oil exploration in Colorado, Mongolia, Israel, and the occupied Golan Heights.[66]
In response to print media's decline and the increasing influence of online journalism during the s, Murdoch proclaimed his support of the micropayments model for obtaining revenue from online news,[67] although this has been criticised by some.[68]
In January , 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.[69]
News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From , News Corporation's annual tax bill averaged around seven percent of its profits.[70]
In Britain, in the s, Murdoch formed a close alliance with Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.[71] In February , 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.[72][73][74] 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 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.[72][73][75]
The Suncredited itself with helping her successor John Major to win an unexpected election victory in the general election, which had been expected to end in a hung parliament or a narrow win for Labour, then led by Neil Kinnock.[71] In the general elections of , and , Murdoch's papers were either neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair.[citation needed]
The Labour Party, from when Blair became leader in , had moved from the centre-left to a more centrist position on many economic issues before 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."[76]
In a speech he delivered in New York in , Murdoch claimed that Blair described the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which was critical of the Bush administration's response, as full of hatred of America.[77]
On 28 June , the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation were considering backing new Conservative leaderDavid Cameron at the next General Election – still up to four years away.[78] In a later interview in July , when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much".[79] In a blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, which might yet have transatlantic implications,[80] Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron.[81] Despite this, there had already been a convergence of interests between the two men over the muting of Britain's communications regulator Ofcom.[82]
In August , Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[83] Cameron declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch's son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron did not reveal his talks with Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud's Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30, Other guests attending the "social events" included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC UniversalBen Silverman. The Conservatives did not disclose what was discussed.[84]
In July , 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.[85] 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 [86] 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 Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian.[87] Coulson resigned his post in 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.[88]
In June , The Sun supported Vote Leave in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. Murdoch called the Brexit result "wonderful", comparing the decision to withdraw from the EU to "a prison break….we're out".[89] Anthony Hilton, economics editor for the Evening Standard but describing a period when he interviewed Murdoch for The Guardian, quoted Murdoch as justifying his Euroscepticism with the words "When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice".[90] Murdoch denied saying this later in a letter to the Guardian.[91][92]
With some exceptions, The Sun has generally been supportive of the government of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Murdoch and his employees were the media representatives ministers from the Cabinet and Treasury