Early life

Murdoch was born in Melbourne, Australia. His father was Sir Keith Murdoch. The elder Murdoch was a well-connected member of the Australian gentry, working as a journalist and adviser to Billy Hughes, the Prime Minister of Australia during World War I, and became Australia's most influential newspaper executive and media owner, directing the Melbourne-based Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. He was reportedly often frustrated by the slowness of young Murdoch's early progress and despaired of his son being able to take over from him. Rupert Murdoch was deeply influenced by his father, and although he clearly wished to emulate him, he often rebelled.

Murdoch's mother is Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, née Elisabeth Greene. Dame Elisabeth, at 97, remains a strong influence on Rupert, usually in the direction of moderation. The young Murdoch was educated at Geelong Grammar School and later at Worcester College at the University of Oxford, where he sold advertising for the student newspaper Cherwell.

Start of business career

After his father's sudden death in 1952, Rupert returned to Australia to take over the running of his father's business. Although he had expected to inherit a considerable fortune and a prominent position, he was left with a relatively modest inheritance—after death duties and taxes, the main legacy was ownership of the Adelaide News (which gave its name to his company). His early publishing career was notable for the News' campaign against the murder conviction of Aborigine, Max Stuart, for which Murdoch took much credit, although the real hero of the story was Murdoch's crusading editor, Rohan Rivett.

Over the next few years, Murdoch gradually established himself as one of the most dynamic media proprietors in the country, quickly expanding his holdings by acquiring a string of daily and suburban newspapers in most capital cities, including the Sydney afternoon paper, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based recording company, Festival Records. His acquisition of the Mirror proved crucial to his success, allowing him to challenge the dominance of his two main rivals in the Sydney market, the Fairfax Newspapers group, which published the hugely profitable Sydney Morning Herald, and the Consolidated Press group, owned by Sir Frank Packer, which published the city's leading tabloid paper, the Daily Telegraph.

In 1964, Murdoch made his next important advance when he established The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, based first in Canberra and later in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet, gave Murdoch a new respectability as a "quality" newspaper publisher, and also greater political influence since The Australian has always had an elite readership, if not always a large circulation.

In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney-based Daily Telegraph from Sir Frank Packer, making him one of the "big three" newspaper proprietors in Australia, along with Sir Warwick Fairfax in Sydney and his father's old Herald and Weekly Times Ltd in Melbourne. In the 1972 elections, Murdoch swung his newspapers' support behind Gough Whitlam and the leftist Australian Labor Party, but by 1975 he had turned against Labor, and since then has almost always supported the rightist Liberal Party.

Over the next ten years, as his press empire grew, Murdoch established a hugely lucrative financial base, and these profits were routinely used to subsidize further acquisitions. In his early years of newspaper ownership Murdoch was an aggressive, micromanaging entrepreneur. The popular myth regarding this period suggests that his standard tactic was to buy loss-making Australian newspapers and turn them around by introducing radical management and editorial changes and fighting no-holds-barred circulation wars with his competitors. For an alternative view see Bruce Page's ([1] The Murdoch Archipelago).

By whichever methods his success was achieved, by the 1970s, Murdoch's power base was so strong that he was able to acquire leading newspapers and magazines beyond Australia in both London and New York, as well as many other media holdings.

Murdoch's desire for dominant cross-media ownership manifested early—in 1961 he bought an ailing Australian record label, Festival Records, and within a few years it had become the leading local recording company. He also bought a television station in Wollongong, New South Wales, hoping to use it to break into the Sydney television market, but found himself frustrated by Australia's cross-media ownership laws, which prevented him from owning both a major newspaper and television station in the same city. Since then he has consistently lobbied, both personally and through his papers, to have these laws changed in his favour.

Acquisitions in Britain

Murdoch moved to Britain in the mid 1960s and rapidly became a major force there after his acquisitions of the News of the World, The Sun and later The Times and The Sunday Times, which he bought in 1981 from the Thomson family, who had bought it from the Astor family in 1966. Both takeovers further reinforced his growing reputation as a ruthless and cunning business operator. His takeover of The Times aroused great hostility among traditionalists, who feared he would take it "downmarket." This led directly to the founding of The Independent in 1986 as an alternative quality daily.

Murdoch has a particular genius for tabloid newspapers. The Sun in London, reputedly makes a million pounds cash a week for News Corporation. Despite his personal conservatism, he allowed his editors to exploit the selling power of soft-core erotica in the form of topless page three girls (such as Samantha Fox and Jordan) to increase circulation. As a result, Auberon Waugh of Private Eye dubbed him "The Dirty Digger", a nickname that has endured. ("digger" was originally a colloquial term for an Australian soldier).

In 1986 and 1987, Murdoch moved to adjust the production process of his British newspapers, over which the printing unions had long maintained a highly restrictive grip. This led to a confrontation with the printing unions NGA and SOGAT. The move of News International's London operation to Wapping in the East End resulted in nightly battles outside the new plant. Delivery vans and depots were frequently and violently attacked. Ultimately the unions capitulated and other media companies soon followed Murdoch's lead.

Moving into the United States

Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio News. Soon afterwards he founded the National Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976 he purchased the New York Post. On September 4, 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only United States citizens could own American television stations. In 1987 he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd in Australia, the company that his father had once managed. By 1991, his Australian-based News Corp. had amassed huge debts, which forced Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s. Much of this debt came from his British-based Sky Television satellite network, which incurred massive losses in its early years of operation, which (like many of his business interests) was heavily subsidized with profits from his other holdings until he was able to force 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 since).

In 1995, Murdoch's Fox Network 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. The FCC, however, ruled in Murdoch's favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the public's best interests. In the same year Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website as well as funding a right-wing magazine, The Weekly Standard. In the same year, News Corp. launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in a partnership with Telstra.

In 1996, Fox established the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Since its launch it has consistently eroded CNN's market share, and it now bills itself as "the most-watched cable news channel." This is due in part to recent ratings studies, released in the fourth quarter of 2004, showing that the network had nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category.

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 the two as Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). Both Festival and FMR were managed by Murdoch's son James Murdoch for several years.

Los Angeles Dodgers

On March 19, 1998 Murdoch purchased the Major League Baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers from Peter O'Malley for what was reported as $311 million. In 2004, he sold his controlling interest in the team.

Personal life

Murdoch has been married three times. His first marriage in 1956 was to Patricia Booker, with whom he had one child, Prudence Murdoch McLeod. They were divorced in 1967. Very little is known about their marriage, and Murdoch himself has never spoken about it publicly.

In the same year, he married an employee, Anna Tõrv, a Roman Catholic of Estonian extraction. The timing (and Murdoch's subsequent behaviour) suggests that he had begun the relationship with Tõrv well before his marriage to Patricia ended.

Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch. Anna and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in 1998.

Anna Murdoch received a settlement of some reported US$1.7 billion in assets. Seventeen days after the divorce, Murdoch, 70 at the time, married Wendi Deng, a then-30 year old recent college graduate and newly appointed Vice-President of Star TV, in June 1999.

Murdoch has since had two children with Wendi: Grace (born 2001) and Chloe (born 2003). This marriage and the legal regalngs of his family, claiming that Deng was only after his money, was used as an episode idea for Law and Order Criminal Intent entitled Proud Flesh with Murdoch being transformed into Jonas Slaughter, played by Malcolm McDowell, a radio mogul with a strange devotion to his sons.

Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent prior to resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's surprise departure left James, the chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch child still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.

There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his oldest children over the terms of a trust holding the family's 28.5 percent 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 Wendi Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it. However 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 (see [2]).

Murdoch and politics

Murdoch is generally seen as a political conservative, though the true picture is somewhat more complicated. In the early 1970s, Murdoch actively supported the Australian Labor Party. Since 1975, however, he has generally supported the Liberal Party of Australia (which is a center-right party). In the US he has been a long-time supporter of the Republican Party and was a friend of Ronald Reagan. Regarding Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, he said, "He's right on all the issues." Murdoch's papers strongly supported George W. Bush in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In Britain, he formed a close alliance with Margaret Thatcher, and The Sun was widely credited with helping John Major win an unexpected election victory in the 1992 general election. However, in the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair. This has led some critics to argue that Murdoch simply supports the incumbent parties (or those who seem most likely to win an upcoming election) in the hope of influencing government decisions that may affect his businesses; though it should be noted that the Labour Party under Blair had moved significantly to the Right on many economic issues prior to 1997. In any case, Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian.[6]

Murdoch is often accused of running partisan media coverage for political parties that promote policies and decisions which favour his commercial interests. For example, it is believed that Murdoch tried to suppress publication of the memoirs of Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, in an attempt to curry favour with China. Patten's book was critical of the Chinese government. Whatever the motives, the book was dropped from publication by Murdoch's HarperCollins publishing company. It was only because of Patten's political influence that the story came to light and the book was published by another firm. It is speculated that Murdoch wanted to please the Chinese government because it happened around the time he was attempting to get a foothold in the Chinese market with the launch of STAR TV.

One way in which Murdoch has been accused of using his media to influence the democratic politics is in the revealing of damaging personal information about a particular political candidate. This may be illustrated by the case of Mark Oaten who is a representative of the Liberal Democrat party in the United Kingdom. The Murdoch-owned "News of the World" newspaper revealed in January 2006, that Oaten had been having a homosexual affair on an ongoing basis. Since the Liberal Democrat party holds political viewpoints contrary to Murdoch's current position (specifically, the war in Iraq), some have speculated that Oaten was targeted in order to destabilize the party to which he belongs.

In a speech in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was full of hatred of America. Mr. Murdoch is a strong critic of the BBC, which he believes has a liberal bias.

Murdoch's British media outlets generally support eurosceptic positions, and generally show contempt for the European Union. Murdoch publications worldwide tend to adopt anti-French, pro-Israeli and pro-American views. During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in favour of the war. [7] Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the Cato Institute.

On May 9, 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's Senate reelection campaign. Murdoch's New York Post newspaper opposed Hillary's senate run in 2000.

Common characteristics of newspapers

The newspapers frequently contain cross promotions and endorsements of other Murdoch products and business interests. For example, The Times newspaper has been accused of devoting a disproportionately large number of book reviews to books from a Murdoch-owned publishing house such as HarperCollins.

Events which may be contrary to Murdoch business interests may not be reported on, or may be given very small exposure in Murdoch newspapers. For example, a protest march in Sydney, Australia involving approximately 50,000 people (a large figure for an Australian protest) against the exclusion of the South Sydney Rugby League Club from the News Corporation controlled Super League rugby league competition was reported in Murdoch's Sydney papers in a very discreet manner.

Murdoch tabloid papers commonly provide potentially embarrassing details about the personal lives of individuals. Revelations of this nature, if challenged on an ethical level, are generally defended as being warranted as the individuals concerned were or are "public figures".