Rupert Murdoch Biography

Rupert, the son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1886–1952), a famous Australian war correspondent and publisher, studied at Worcester College, Oxford (M.A., 1953), and briefly worked as an editor on Lord Beaverbrook's London ‘Daily Express’. This is where he first gained practical experience in the sensationalist journalism that would be a major influence early in his career as a publisher. On the death of his father, he returned to Australia in 1954 to take over his inheritance, the ‘Sunday Mail’ and ‘The News’. He quickly converted the latter into a paper dominated by news of sex and scandal, often writing its banner headlines himself. ‘The News's’ circulation soared, and he then went about instituting similar changes in papers that he bought in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

By the time that Murdoch acquired his first British newspaper in 1969, the Sunday paper, the ‘News of the World’, he had put together a proven formula for boosting circulation. It entailed an emphasis on crime, sex, scandal, and human-interest stories with boldface headlines, prolific sports reporting, and outspokenly conservative editorializing. This formula was equally successful with the daily he bought the next year, ‘The Sun’.

In 1973 Murdoch entered the American newspaper business by purchasing two San Antonio, Texas, dailies, one of which, the San Antonio News (later the Express-News), he transformed into a sex-and-scandal sheet that soon dominated the city's afternoon market. In 1974 he introduced a national weekly sensationalist tabloid, ‘The Star’, and in 1976 he purchased the afternoon tabloid ‘New York Post’, both of which he later sold in the 1980s for a healthy profit.

Overall in the 1980s and '90s he bought and later sold a number of American publications—such as the ‘Chicago Sun-Times’, the New York City ‘Village Voice’, and ‘New York’ magazine. Among Murdoch's diverse publications were a number of more conventional and respected newspapers, such as ‘The Times’ of London and the ‘Sunday Times’ (both acquired in 1981) and the ‘Australian’ (a national daily that he established in 1964). Murdoch took residence in the United States in 1974 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985, based in New York City.

In 1986, Murdoch revolutionised Fleet Street and took on the immensely powerful print unions at Wapping. After over a thousand arrests, 400 plus police injuries, and a year long dispute, he won. Fleet Street was dead, and the Docklands has now become the centre of computerised journalism.

In the 1980s and '90s Murdoch amassed major holdings in other communications ventures, including radio and television stations and video, film, and record companies, as well as book publishing. In 1985 he acquired the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation and bought several independent American television stations from Metromedia, Inc., consolidating both these ventures into a new company, Fox, Inc., which has since become a major broadcast television network in the United States, rivalling ABC, CBS, and NBC.

In 1986, Murdoch revolutionised Fleet Street and took on the immensely powerful print unions at Wapping. After over a thousand arrests, 400 plus police injuries, and a year long dispute, he won. Fleet Street was dead, and the Docklands has now become the centre of computerised journalism.

He bought the Australian news group the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. in 1987. He thereafter purchased a number of book-publishing companies including, in the United States, the prestigious Harper & Row Publishers (1987), the religious publisher Zondervan (1988), and the giant textbook and trade publisher Scott, Foresman & Company (1989), and, in the United Kingdom, the venerable William Collins PLC (1989); these companies and some operations in Australia and New Zealand were merged in 1990 as HarperCollins Publishers. In Britain in 1989 Murdoch inaugurated Sky Television, a four-channel satellite service, which merged with the rival British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990 to become British Sky Broadcasting.

This heady expansion burdened Murdoch's international media conglomerate with a heavy debt, which he reduced by selling off New York, Seventeen, the Daily Racing Form, and several other American magazines. In 1993 he purchased Star TV, a pan-Asian television service based in Hong Kong, as part of his plan to build a global television network.

In 1994, he appointed Piers Morgan, aged just 28, as the editor of The News of the World, making Piers the youngest editor in Fleet Street for more than fifty years.
In 1995 the News Corporation entered into a partnership with MCI Communications Corporation, a major provider of long-distance telecommunications services in the United States.

He divorced his wife and mother of his four children in 1998 after more than 30 years of marriage. Nearly 40 years his junior, his next wife was one of his workers, Wendi Deng.
Murdoch looked to increase his company's Internet holdings, and in 2005 he bought Intermix Media, owner of MySpace.com, a social-networking site that had more than 30 million members. Two years later he made news with the announcement that the News Corporation was acquiring Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion.

And at the height of his power, when his empire quite literally stretched around the world, he announced that he would make his entire corporation carbon neutral and use his many, many media outlets to spread the word on climate change.

In 2011, Murdoch and his empire News International was catapulted into the spotlight amid claims of phone hacking and police bribery by his British tabloid News Of the World (NoW).

The claims were not new, and began around 2003 when editors of The Sun and NoW, Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, admitted in front of a parliamentary committee, to paying police for information. At the time, allegations of phone hacking were limited to public figures such as celebrities, royalty and politicians.

Public outrage really began however, when in the summer of 2011, it emerged that hacking had extended to relatives of deceased British soldiers, victims of the 7/7 London bombings and most notably, the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose case had been ubiquitous in the press.

Two public inquiries were launched, which led to some dramatic events for the wider News International corporation. The chief executive of Dow Jones, Les Hinton, resigned along with legal manager Tom Crone and Rebekah Brooks. NoW itself was closed as a publication, leading to many job losses.

Murdoch and his son James were brought before a public inquiry, but both denied any knowledge of the scandals.