Rupert Murdoch

Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG,  born 11 March 1931 is an Australian American media mogul and the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation.

Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets. Although it was in Australia in the late 1950s that he first dabbled in television, he later sold these assets, and News Corp's Australian current media interests (still mainly in print) are restricted by cross-media ownership rules. Murdoch's first permanent foray into TV was in the USA, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet, and purchased a respected business newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.

Rupert Murdoch was listed three times in the Time 100 as among the most influential people in the world. He is ranked 13th most powerful person in the world in the 2010 Forbes' The World's Most Powerful People list. With a net worth of US$6.3 billion, he is ranked 117th wealthiest person in the world.

Early life

Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne, the only son of Sir Keith Murdoch and Elisabeth Joy (née Greene). At the time, his father was a regional newspaper magnate based in Melbourne, and as a result, the family was wealthy. Murdoch was groomed by his father from an early age, and attended the elite Geelong Grammar School. He later read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford University in the United Kingdom, where he supported the Labour Party.

Start in business

When Murdoch was 22, his father died, prompting his return from Oxford to take charge of the family business; becoming managing director of News Limited in 1953. He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion. He bought the Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia.

Over the next few years, Murdoch established himself in Australia as a dynamic business operator, expanding his holdings by acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, including the Sydney afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror, as well as a small Sydney-based recording company, Festival Records.

Personal life

Marriages

In 1956 he married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne with whom he had his first child, a daughter, Prudence, born in 1958. Rupert and Patricia Murdoch divorced in 1967.

In 1967 Murdoch married Anna Torv, a Scottish-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph (not to be mistaken for the actress Anna Torv of Fringe who is the elder Torv's niece). During his marriage to Torv, a Roman Catholic, Murdoch was awarded the KSG, a papal honour. Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia on 22 August 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK on 8 September 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK on 13 December 1972). Murdoch's companies published two novels by his then wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991), both widely regarded as vanity publications. Anna and Rupert divorced in June 1999. Anna Murdoch received a settlement of US$ 1.2 billion in assets.

On 25 June 1999, 17 days after the divorce from Anna, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Deng Wendi (Wendi Deng in Western style). She was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV. Rupert Murdoch has two children with her: Grace Helen (born in New York 19 November 2001) and Chloe (born in New York 17 July 2003).

Children

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 before resigning from his executive posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's departure left James Murdoch chief executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.

After graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations in California, KSBW and KSBY, with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit in 1995, Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after divorcing her first husband in 1998 and quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She has since enjoyed independent success, in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud (the founder of psychoanalysis) whom she married in 2001.

Portrayal on television, in film, books and music

Rupert Murdoch and rival newspaper and publishing magnate Robert Maxwell are thinly fictionalised as "Keith Townsend" and "Richard Armstrong" in The Fourth Estate by British novelist and former MP Jeffrey Archer.

Rupert Murdoch has been portrayed by Barry Humphries in the 1991 mini-series Selling Hitler, Hugh Laurie in a parody of It's a Wonderful Life in the television show A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Ben Mendelsohn in the film Black and White, Paul Elder in The Late Shift and by himself on The Simpsons first in "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" and most recently in "Judge Me Tender".

It has been speculated that the character of Elliot Carver, the global media magnate and main villain in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, is based on Rupert Murdoch. The writer of the film, Bruce Feirstein, has stated that Carver was actually inspired by British press magnate Robert Maxwell, who was one of Murdoch's rivals.

In 1999, the Ted Turner owned TBS aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as "a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone's favorite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel." Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner's.

Remuneration and wealth

According to the 2010 list of Forbes richest Americans, Murdoch is the 38th richest person in the US and the 117th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $6.2 billion.

Building News Corporation

In 1968 Murdoch entered the UK newspaper market with his acquistion of the News of the World, soon followed in 1969 of the then broadsheet daily newspaper The Sun from IPC. Murdoch turned it into a tabloid format, and reduced costs by using the same printing press for both newspapers; by 2006 it was selling three million copies per day.

In 1981, Murdoch acquired The Times and The Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet. Ownership of The Times came to him through his careful cultivation of Lord Thomson, who had grown tired of losing money on it as a result of much industrial action which stopped publication.

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. Though this later started to change, with The Sun publicly renouncing the ruling Labour government and lending its support to David Cameron's Conservative Party, which soon after came to form a coalition government. 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 publishing facility in an old warehouse. The bitter dispute at Fortress Wapping started with the dismissal of 6,000 employees who had gone on strike and resulted in street battles, demonstrations and a great deal of bad publicity for Murdoch. Many on the political left in Britain suspected Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government of collusion with Murdoch in the Wapping affair, as a way of damaging the British trade union movement, by providing large numbers of police to attack and arrest pickets using violence and provocation.

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. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favor, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corp. launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra.

In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news television station. Ratings studies released in the fourth quarter of 2004 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category at that time. Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (founder and former owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals.

In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).

In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies. Some analysts believed that News Corp.'s Australian domicile was leading to the company being undervalued compared with its peers.

Australia

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.

Expansion in Asia

In 1993, Murdoch acquired Star TV, a Hong Kong company founded by Richard Li for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. It is one of the biggest satellite TV networks in Asia. However, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned, because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China. It was around this time that Murdoch met his third wife Wendi Deng.

Recent activities

C7 lawsuit

In September 2005 Australian media proprietor Kerry Stokes, owner of the Seven Network, instituted legal action against News Corporation and the PBL organisation, headed by Kerry Packer alleging anti-competitive business practices. The suit stemmed from the 2002 collapse of Stokes' planned cable television channel C7 Sport, which would have been a direct competitor to the other major Australian cable provider, Foxtel, in which News and PBL have major stakes.

Seven complained that News Corporation had abused its market power which derived from its half-ownership of the National Rugby League, half-ownership of C7's direct competitor, Fox Sports, and 25 per cent ownership of the Foxtel pay TV service. Seven wanted Justice Ronald Sackville to order News and Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd to divest their combined 50% stake in Foxtel or to sell their wholly owned Fox Sports. They argued that this would be justified because of the way in which Foxtel gave preferential treatment to Fox Sports and declined to take any rival sports channel provider on "reasonable commercial terms".

Other legal challenges

On July 25, 2006, Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel, TGRT, which had been previously confiscated by the Turkish Board of Banking Regulations, TMSF. News Corporation and Ahmet Ertegün sign agreement to acquire television station TGRTMediaOnline on July 24, 2006, reported that Murdoch purchased TGRT in a partnership with the Turkish recording mogul Ahmet Ertegün.

Murdoch has recently won a media dispute with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the Italian Prime Minister's media arm Mediaset had prevented News Corp.'s Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying advertisements on its television networks.

Political activities

Australia

Murdoch found a political ally in 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 Liberal Party. From the very 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.

United States

In 1985 Murdoch became a United States citizen to satisfy legislation that only United States citizens could own American television stations. This also resulted in Murdoch losing his Australian citizenship.

McNight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to a perceived liberal bias in other public media.

On 8 May 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.

In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries." Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida... but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.

In 2010 News Corporation gave $1M to the Republican Governors Association and $1M to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute.

United Kingdom

In Britain in the 1980s Murdoch formed a close alliance with Margaret Thatcher, and The Sun credited itself with helping John Major to 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. The Labour Party under Blair had moved from the Left to a more central position on many economic issues prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a libertarian, this use of the term, however, being one many would not recognize.

He is accused by former Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan of having a personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a video of him confessing to having affairs – allegations over which Sheridan had previously sued News International and won. On being arrested for perjury following the case, Sheridan claimed that the charges were "orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch empire".

Private meetings with politicians

Murdoch has a history of hosting private meetings with influential politicians. Both parties describe such meetings as politically insignificant; social events, informal dinners or friendly drinks. It has however been argued that such meetings are significant because of Murdoch's exceptional influence as an international media magnate, as well as his consistent interest in and involvement with political issues.

David Cameron

In July 2011 it emerged that Murdoch had given Cameron a personal guarantee that there would be no risk attached to hiring the ex-editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson as the Conservative Party's communication director in 2007. 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 Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian. Coulson resigned his post in 2011 and was later arrested and questioned on allegations of further criminal activity at The News of the World.

Kevin Rudd

On 21 April 2007, future Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd dined with Rupert Murdoch in New York, following a one-hour private meeting at Murdoch's News Corporation Building.

News Limited's resources involvement and coverage, in Australia, on the 2009 OzCar affair controversy caused antagonism by Rudd. Rudd responded to a press conference question from The Australian journalist Matthew Franklin, questioning "what sort of journalistic checks were put in place" for publishing a story claiming he was corrupt without "having cited any original document in terms of this email." Although such newspapers Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser are owned by News Limited, it has been viewed[who?] that Murdoch's personal involvement is unlikely and "the anti-Rudd push, if it is coordinated at all, is almost certainly locally driven.

Stephen Harper

Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had lunch with Murdoch and Fox News president Roger Ailes in March 2009, but the New York City meeting was not public knowledge until the summer of 2010 when a Canadian Press reporter learned of it from filings with the U.S. Justice Department. News of the meeting sparked speculation of a politically motivated drive to bring "Fox News North" to Canada.

Barack Obama

In October 2008 Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff wrote a Vanity Fair story recounting a meeting between Barack Obama, Murdoch, and Ailes at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York early that summer. Obama had initially resisted Murdoch's proposals for a meeting, despite senior News Corp. executives having recruited the Kennedys to act as go-betweens. According to Wolff, at the meeting Obama raised the issue of Fox News's portrayal of him "as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist", while Ailes said it might not have been this way if Obama had "more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand." A "tentative truce" was nonetheless agreed upon. Wolff also noted that Murdoch has met every US President since, and including, Harry Truman.

Tony Blair

Tony Blair had three telephone conversations with Rupert Murdoch in the nine days before the start of the Iraq war.