Rupert Murdoch
 |
Rupert Murdoch |
Keith Rupert Murdoch II, (known as
Rupert Murdoch),
AC,
KCSG, (born
11 March 1931) is an
Australian-born
naturalized American citizen, based in
New York City, who is a major
shareholder, chairman and managing director of
News Corporation. He is one of the few chief executives of any multinational media corporation who (through a family company) have a controlling ownership share in the companies they run, but the family no longer has a majority stake. Beginning with newspapers, magazines and television stations in his native Australia, Murdoch expanded into
British and
American media, and in recent years has become a powerful force in satellite television, the film industry, and other forms of media.
 |
Rupert Murdoch in 1937 with his parents, Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch, and his sister, departing Melbourne for Britain, by sea. |
Murdoch was born in
Melbourne,
Australia. His father was
Sir Keith Murdoch, 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 who became Australia's most influential newspaper executive and media owner, directing
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., based in Melbourne. 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 Joy Greene. Dame Elisabeth, at the age of 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.
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 â€" after death duties and taxes, the main legacy was ownership of the Adelaide journal
The 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 newspaper,
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 newspaper
The 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 business
The 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 Labour, and since then, he 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 â€" 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.
Murdoch moved to Britain in the mid-60s, and rapidly became a major force there after his acquisitions of the
News of the World,
The Sun, and later
The Times and
Viz, 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. As a result,
Auberon Waugh of
Private Eye dubbed Murdoch 'The Dirty Digger', a nickname that has endured. ('Digger' was originally a colloquial term for an Australian soldier.)
From 1986-87, 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.
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the
United States in 1973, when he purchased the
San Antonio Express-News. Soon afterwards, he founded
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 US citizens could own American television stations. In 1987, in Australia, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., 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-80s. Much of this debt came from his British-based satellite network
Sky Television, 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 ever 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 conservative 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.
On
March 19,
1998 Murdoch bought 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.
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 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, then 70, married
Wendi Deng, then 30, a 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).
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 surprise departure left James, 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]).
In 1999,
The Economist reported that Murdoch had made £1.4 billion ($2.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had paid no net corporation tax. It further reported, after an examination of what was available of the accounts, that Murdoch would normally have expected to pay a corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore havens allowed News Corporation to avoid tax. [
3] [
4]
In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34 percent stake in
Hughes Electronics, operator of the largest American satellite TV system,
DirecTV, from
General Motors for $6 billion (USD). Among his properties around the world are UK's
The Times and the
New York Post, the latter of which he turned from
New York City's most liberal newspaper into one of the most neo-conservative in the USA.
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corp.'s base of operation from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. This was widely seen as a reaction to the inability of
John Howard's
Liberal Party of Australia to alter Australia's media cross-ownership rules, which Murdoch is known to have wanted changed for decades, and which have prevented him from acquiring more newspapers and TV stations in Australian cities.
On
July 20,
2005, News Corp. bought
Intermix Media Inc., which held
MySpace.com and other popular
social networking-themed websites for $590 million USD. On
September 11,
2005, News Corp announced that it would buy
IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD). [
5]
Rupert Murdoch and
Ted Turner have been competitors for quite some time. Murdoch launched the
Fox News Channel to compete against Turner's
CNN, ultimately dethroning CNN as the most popular news network on US cable television.
In September 2005 the subject of Murdoch's alleged anti-competitive business practices resurfaced when Australasian media proprietor
Kerry Stokes, owner of the
Seven Network, instituted legal action against News Corporation and the PBL organization, headed by
Kerry Packer. The suit stems from the 2002 collapse of Stokes' planned cable TV network C7, which would have been a direct competitor to the other major Australian cable provider,
Foxtel, in which News and PBL have major stakes.
Stokes claims that News Corp. and PBL (along with several other media organizations) colluded to force C7 out of business by using undue influence to prevent C7 from gaining vital broadcast rights to major sporting events. In evidence given to the court on 26 September, Stokes alleged that PBL executive
James Packer came to his home in December 2000 and warned him that PBL and News Limited were "getting together" to prevent the
AFL rights being granted to C7.
Recently Murdoch has been concerned about the role of
John Malone of
Liberty Media, who has built up a larger economic interest in News Corporation than Murdoch, but owns less voting stock.
Murdoch is seen as either a political
neo-conservative or simply an opportunist, who will regularly back an expected winner regardless of principles. In the early 1970s, Murdoch actively supported the
Australian Labor Party. Since 1975, however, he and his newspapers have 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, 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 an ongoing homosexual affair. 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.
On June 28, 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation are flirting with idea of backing
Tory leader David Cameron at the next General Election [
8].
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".
"We can't back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam...I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it"[
9] (3rd paragraph on page, as reported by UK Newspaper
The Guardian)"The greatest thing to come out of this [war in Iraq] for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."[
10] (4th paragraph on page)
"News â€" communicating news and ideas, I guess â€" is my passion. And giving people alternatives so that they have two papers to read (and) alternative television channels." (in "The Hollywood Reporter" November 14, 2005)[
11]
"In this country, Fox News has gotten a big, big audience that appreciates its independence. There's passion there, and it's pushed. ... It has taken a long time, but it has now changed CNN because it has challenged them â€" they've become more centrist in their choice of stories. They're trying to become, using our phrase, more fair and balanced." (in "The Hollywood Reporter" November 14, 2005)[
12]
"My ventures in media are not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs" (in "The Hollywood Reporter" November 23, 2005)[
13]
"My ultimate plan is to rule the world." {in "The Hollywood Reporter" November 23, 2005) [
14]
Murdoch's third marriage and the legal wranglings of his family were used as an episode idea for
Law & 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.
Rupert Murdoch played himself in an episode of "The Simpsons", where Homer and his pals burst into his sky box at the Super Bowl, when nobody is around.Rupert Murdoch is also known as
The Man.
*
Murdoch's speech to the Asia Society AustralAsia Centre, 8 November 1999*
Forbes.com â€" 2004 Forbes 400: #27, Keith Rupert Murdoch*
Ketupa.net â€" Media Profiles: Rupert Murdoch*
MediaGuardian.co.uk â€" Special Report: Rupert Murdoch ongoing coverage (registration required)
*
Woopidoo â€" Rupert Murdoch biography and quotations
*
TIME.com: Rupert Murdoch from Oct. 25, 1999 issue of
TIME magazine; by William Shawcross
*
Murdoch Family tree*
Interview with The Hollywood Reporter*
Interview with Australian radio presenter Alan Jones*
OutFoxed anti Rupert Murdoch site
*
List of Media Assets*
World's Most Powerful Men*
K. Rupert Murdoch â€" SourceWatch*
Review of Bruce Page's "The Murdoch Archipelago", by Godfrey Hodgson*
Wapping: legacy of Rupert's revolution,
January 15,
2006 -
The Observer:
**Three views of the industrial dispute twenty years on.
*
Political Campaign Contributions by Rupert Murdoch*
Murdoch Newspaper List*
News Corporation*
News Limited
