Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian and American former 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, in Australia, in the United States, book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News. He was also the owner of Sky, 21st Century Fox, and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of billion as of 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.
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, HarperCollins, and The Wall Street Journal. 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.
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 bias 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.
The Murdoch family was involved in a U.S. court case in which his three children—Elisabeth, Prudence, and James—challenged his 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. In September 2025, they reached a settlement, giving Lachlan ownership of Murdoch's media empire.
Early life and education
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the second of four children of Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch and Dame Elisabeth Joy. 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, Anne and Janet. His paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who emigrated to Australia in 1884.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. He then studied philosophy, politics and economics in England at Worcester College, Oxford, 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, 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, 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.
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 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", 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 for services to publishing.
After the Keating government relaxed media ownership laws, in 1986 Murdoch launched a takeover bid for The Herald and Weekly Times, which was the largest newspaper publisher in Australia. There was a three-way takeover battle between Murdoch, Fairfax and Robert Holmes à Court, with Murdoch succeeding after agreeing to some divestments.
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. 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, 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. 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.
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 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.
Murdoch is a supporter of the formation of an Australian republic, having campaigned for such a change during the 1999 referendum.