85 Facts About Rupert Murdoch

Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American business magnate, media proprietor, and investor.

Rupert Murdoch was the owner of Sky, 21st Century Fox, and the now-defunct News of the World.

In 1974, Rupert Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the UK.

In 1981, Rupert Murdoch bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and, in 1985, became a naturalized US citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for US television network ownership.

In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, Rupert Murdoch consolidated his UK printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes.

Rupert Murdoch's holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox, HarperCollins, and The Wall Street Journal.

Rupert Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television.

In July 2011, Rupert 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.

Rupert Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US.

On 21 July 2012, Rupert Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.

Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, the second of four children of Sir Keith Murdoch and Dame Elisabeth.

Rupert Murdoch's father was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide and a radio station in a faraway mining town, and chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company.

Rupert Murdoch's Scottish-born paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Presbyterian minister.

Later in life, Rupert Murdoch chose to go by his second name, the first name of his maternal grandfather.

Rupert Murdoch took his school's cricket team to the National Junior Finals.

Rupert Murdoch worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father to take over the family business.

Rupert Murdoch 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.

Rupert Murdoch then began working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.

Rupert Murdoch turned its Adelaide newspaper, The News, its main asset, into a major success.

Rupert Murdoch 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 Rupert Murdoch as "inventing the modern tabloid", as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.

In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Rupert Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Thomson of Fleet.

Later in 1964, Rupert Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney.

In 1972, Rupert 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, Rupert Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia for services to publishing.

In 1999, Rupert 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.

Rupert 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.

Rupert Murdoch's backing of Whitlam turned out to be brief.

Rupert Murdoch had already started his short-lived National Star newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.

Rupert Murdoch is a supporter of an Australian republic, having campaigned for such a change during the 1999 referendum.

In 1968, Rupert Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in 1969 with the purchase of the struggling daily The Sun from IPC.

Rupert Murdoch turned The Sun into a tabloid format and reduced costs by using the same printing press for both newspapers.

In 1981, Rupert Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet.

In 1986, Rupert Murdoch introduced electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and the United States.

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 Rupert Murdoch had installed the very latest electronic newspaper purpose-built publishing facility in an old warehouse.

Rupert Murdoch's British-based satellite network, Sky Television, incurred massive losses in its early years of operation.

In Britain, in the 1980s, Rupert Murdoch formed a close alliance with Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Rupert Murdoch denied saying this later in a letter to the Guardian.

However, newspaper circulation in general including among subsidiaries of News International fell sharply in the United Kingdom during the early 21st century, leading some commentators to suggest that Rupert Murdoch was not as influential in British political debate by the early 2020s as he had once been.

Rupert Murdoch described the day of the committee "the most humble day of my life".

Rupert Murdoch added that he had not considered resigning, and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking.

Rupert Murdoch said that evidence suggested a "culture of illegal payments" at The Sun and that these payments allegedly made by The Sun were authorised at a senior level.

Rupert Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News.

In 1974, Rupert Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain.

On 4 September 1985, Rupert Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.

Rupert Murdoch bought the stations by himself, without Marvin Davis, and later bought out Davis's remaining stake in Fox for $325 million.

In 1986 Rupert Murdoch bought Misty Mountain, a Wallace Neff designed house on Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills.

In 1987, Rupert Murdoch created his global television special, the World Music Video Awards, a special music ceremony award where winners were chosen by viewers in eight countries.

The high levels of debt caused Rupert Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.

However, the FCC ruled in Rupert Murdoch's favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public.

That same year, Rupert Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard.

In 1996, Rupert Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station.

Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner are long-standing rivals.

In 2004, Rupert Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corporation headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States.

Besides Rupert Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the other interested parties.

Rupert Murdoch left his post as CEO of 21st Century Fox in 2015 but continued to own the company until it was purchased by Disney in 2019.

Reagan later "waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market," allowing Rupert Murdoch to continue to control The New York Post and The Boston Herald while expanding into television.

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

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

Rupert Murdoch is a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Rupert Murdoch was reported in 2011 as advocating more open immigration policies in western nations generally.

On 5 September 2010, Rupert Murdoch testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership on the "Role of Immigration in Strengthening America's Economy".

Rupert Murdoch is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies.

In 2023, during a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators were endorsing election fraud claims they knew were false.

Rupert Murdoch owns a controlling interest in Sky Italia, a satellite television provider in Italy.

In 2010 Rupert Murdoch won a media dispute with then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The deal enabled News International to broadcast from Hong Kong to India, China, Japan, and over thirty other countries in Asia, becoming one of the biggest satellite television networks in the east; however, the deal did not work out as Rupert Murdoch had planned because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China.

In 2003, Rupert Murdoch bought "Rosehearty", an 11 bedroom home on a 5-acre waterfront estate in Centre Island, New York.

In 1956, Rupert Murdoch married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne; the couple had their only child, Prudence, in 1958.

In 1967, Rupert Murdoch married Anna Torv, a Scottish-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Mirror.

In January 1998, three months before the announcement of his separation from Anna, a Roman Catholic, Rupert Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great, a papal honour awarded by Pope John Paul II.

Rupert Murdoch's companies published two novels by his wife: Family Business and Coming to Terms.

On 25 June 1999,17 days after divorcing his second wife, Rupert Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Wendi Deng.

Rupert Murdoch was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV.

Rupert Murdoch has six children in all, and is grandfather to thirteen grandchildren.

On 13 June 2013, a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed that Rupert Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City, US.

Rupert Murdoch ended his long-standing friendship with Tony Blair after suspecting him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married.

On 11 January 2016, Rupert Murdoch announced his engagement to former model Jerry Hall in a notice in The Times newspaper.

Two weeks after the couple were engaged, Rupert Murdoch has now reportedly called off the engagement.

Rupert Murdoch has since enjoyed independent success, in conjunction with her second husband, Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, whom she met in 1997 and married in 2001.

In 2012, the satirical show Hacks, broadcast on the UK's Channel 4, made obvious comparisons with Rupert Murdoch using the fictional character "Stanhope Feast", portrayed by Michael Kitchen, as well as other central figures in the phone hacking scandal.

The 2013 film Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues features an Australian character inspired by Rupert Murdoch who owns a cable news television channel.

Rupert Murdoch was part of the inspiration for Logan Roy, the protagonist of TV show Succession, who is portrayed by Brian Cox.

In November 2015, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said that Rupert Murdoch "arguably has had more impact on the wider world than any other living Australian".

In November 2021, Rupert Murdoch accused Google and Facebook of stifling conservative viewpoints on its platforms, and called for "substantial reform" and openness in the digital ad supply chain.