MURDOCH
Rupert

• 1. Early life

Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American billionaire businessman, media tycoon, and investor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation). He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of $22.4 billion as of 28 July 2021, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world.

After his father's death in 1952, Murdoch took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by his father. In the 1950s and 1960s, Murdoch acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World, followed closely by The Sun. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain. In 1981, 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, Murdoch consolidated his UK printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes. His holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989), and The Wall Street Journal (2007). Murdoch formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of over $5 billion.

In July 2011, 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. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US. On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.

Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have credited his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia.

Early life

Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch (née Greene; 1909–2012). He is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Murdoch's parents were also born in Melbourne. Keith Murdoch was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town, and chairman of the powerful Herald and Weekly Times publishing company. Later in life, Keith Rupert chose to go by his second name, the first name of his maternal grandfather. Rupert Murdoch had three sisters: Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929–2004). He attended Geelong Grammar School, where he was co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived. He took his school's cricket team to the National Junior Finals.[clarification needed] He worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father to take over the family business. Murdoch studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford in England, where he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms and came to be known as "Red Rupert". He 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. After his father's death from cancer in 1952, his mother Elisabeth did charity work as life governor of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and established the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. At the age of 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants. Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.