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Rupert Murdoch

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Rupert Murdoch
File:Rmurdoch.jpg
Rupert Murdoch at the Fox News Channel 10th Anniversary party, circa 2006, source: Jossip
Born11 March 1931
Australia Melbourne, VIC, Australia
OccupationGlobal media businessman
Spouse(s)Patricia Booker (1956 - 1967)
Anna Tõrv (1967 - 1999)
Wendi Deng (1999 - present)
ChildrenPrudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace and Chloe

Keith Rupert Murdoch AC, KCSG, (commonly known as Rupert Murdoch) (born 11 March 1931) is a businessman and media magnate, most known for being the owner of News Corporation. He was born in Australia and is of Scottish ancestry.

He is a naturalized American citizen, based in New York City, who is a global media executive and is a top 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, the internet, and other forms of media.

Early life

File:Murdochfamily.jpg
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, Victoria, 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, daughter of Rupert Greene and Marie Grace de Lancey Forth. At the age of 97 Dame Elisabeth remains a strong influence on Rupert. 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 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 Labor, 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 ([2] 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-60s, and rapidly became a major force there after his acquisitions of the News of the World, The Sun, and later The 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 Britain, 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.

In 1998, Murdoch attempted to buy out Britain's "superclub", Manchester United, however this was stopped by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It was this that brought about the forming of the Manchester United Supporters' Trust.

Moving into the United States

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.

Los Angeles Dodgers

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.

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 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 (born in Sydney, Australia August 22, 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK Sept 8, 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK Dec 13, 1972). Anna and Rupert divorced acrimoniously in June, 1999.

Anna Murdoch received a settlement of some reported US$1.7 billion in assets. Seventeen days after the divorce, on June 25, 1999, Murdoch, then 70, married Wendi Deng, then 30, a recent college graduate and newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV. She had previously married, in 1990, Jake Cherry (born 1937), from whom she was divorced in 1992. Anna Murdoch was also remarried, in October 1999, to William Mann.

Murdoch has since had two children with Wendi: Grace (born in New York November 19, 2001) and Chloe (born in New York July 17, 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 scion still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.

After graduating Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993, Elisabeth, with her husband, purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations KSBW and KSBY in California on a $35 million loan from her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit, Elisabeth emerged in 1995 as an unexpected rival to her brothers for eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after quarreling publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she veered out on her own as a television and film producer in London, where she has enjoyed independent success in conjunction with her second husband, the public relations Wunderkind Matthew Freud. Still, she cannot be eliminated as a possible successor to choice portions of her father's enterprises.

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 [3]).

Recent activities

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. [4] [5]

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 $580 million USD. On September 11, 2005, News Corp announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD). [6]

Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner have been competitors for quite some time. Murdoch launched the Fox News Channel to compete against Turner's CNN, dethroning CNN as the most popular news network on US cable television with CNN still having a larger unique viewer audience.

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.

Most recently, Murdoch has bought out the Turkish TV channel, TGRT, which was previously confiscated by the Turkish Board of Banking Regulations, TMSF. Newspapers report that Murdoch has bought TGRT in a partnership with Turkish recording mogul, Ahmet Ertegün and there are alleged reports that Murdoch has acquired Turkish citizenship to overcome the current obligations against capital sales to foreigners.

Murdoch and politics

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." However, Robertson's social conservatism seems very different from Murdoch's social liberalism; many Christian conservatives were dismayed when Robertson sold his television network to Murdoch. 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.[7]

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's 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. [8] 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 [9].

In 2006, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch is to offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corp. when the U.K. prime minister stands down from office [10].

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".

Murdoch quotes

  • "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" [1]
  • "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." [1]
  • "News — communicating news and ideas, I guess — is my passion. And giving people alternatives so that they have two papers to read (and) alternative television channels." [2]
  • "Can we change the world? No, but hell, we can all try."[3]
  • On Chancellor Gordon Brown, expected to succeed Tony Blair, "I like Gordon very much and I share a lot of his values. The Calvinist background I guess... Scottish blood, you know he does seem to believe in the work ethic."
  • "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 — they've become more centrist in their choice of stories. They're trying to become, using our phrase, more fair and balanced." [2]

Trivia

  • 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 was around. He introduces himself to Homer as "Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant."
  • Singer/songwriter Don Henley dedicated his song "Dirty Laundry" to Murdoch.
  • Queen drummer Roger Taylor included an unflattering song about Murdoch entitled "Dear Mr. Murdoch" on his 1994 solo album Happiness.
  • Writer Dennis Potter said, during his terminal decline due to cancer, that he had named his tumour 'Rupert' after Murdoch, whom he blamed for a broad decline in the general quality of television.

Further Reading

  • George Munster (1985) A Paper Prince (Melbourne: Viking 1985)
  • Neil Chenoweth (2001) Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Highway (London: Secker & Warburg)
  • Bruce Page (2003) The Murdoch Archipelago (New York: Simon & Schuster)

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Greenslade, Roy (2003-02-17). "Their master's voice". Guardian Unlimited.
  2. ^ a b J. Dowling, Robert (2005-11-17). "Dialogue: Rupert Murdoch". Hollywood Reporter. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ [1]
Business positions
Preceded by President of the Los Angeles Dodgers
1998-2004 		Succeeded by
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