|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Keith Rupert Murdoch AC, KCSG, (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian global media executive and is the controlling shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation, based in New York City in the United States. 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. He is one of the few chief executives of any multinational media corporation who has a controlling ownership share in the corporation. In Murdoch's case, it is via a family corporation.
Early life and familyImage:Murdochfamily.jpg Rupert Murdoch in 1937 with his parents, Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch, and his sister, departing Melbourne for Britain, by sea.
These early Australian Murdochs arrived in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia, in October, 1884, on board the German-built, iron-hulled clipper ship Potosi, one of the last and finest of the sailing vessels engaged in transporting the great migrations from Europe to the new lands of the British Empire. It consisted of Reverend James Murdoch, a retired minister, sixty-seven years old, his wife Helen (formerly Garden) and four of their fourteen children. The eldest was a son, the Reverend Patrick, aged thirty-five, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, plus James and Helen's two unmarried daughters, Helen Nora Murdoch, aged twenty-six, and Grace Young Murdoch, seventeen. Then came James and Helen's youngest son, nine-year-old Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch, later to become a famous Australian academic and writer. Finally, there were Patrick's wife Annie, daughter of a wealthy Scots farmer named George Brown of the parish of Cruden, and their two-year-old toddler son, George, and one-year-old baby daughter, Helen.3 A month after the family's arrival in Melbourne, James died and Reverend Patrick became pastor of the new Camberwell Presbyterian Church in the burgeoning eastern suburbs of the city of Melbourne and the family moved into the adjoining manse where a second son was born in 1885 and given the name Keith Arthur Murdoch after an earlier brother of Patrick who had died in childbirth.4 Keith Arthur Murdoch was Rupert Murdoch's father. At the age of sixteen Keith Murdoch was graduated as dux of Camberwell Grammar School and left to pursue a career in journalism at the The Age newspaper, first as a contributing correspondent and then as a political reporter. In 1913 he was sent to London as manager of the United Cable Service, supplying Australian newspapers with news from Europe. In London, Keith Murdoch formed a friendship with the British newspaper magnate, Dublin-born Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, founder of the London Daily Mirror and owner of The Times. It was Northcliffe who was to greatly influence both Keith Murdoch and his son Rupert in the skills of popular journalism.1
When Keith Murdoch died suddenly in 1952 his eldest son Keith Rupert Murdoch, born March 11, 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was reading politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University.1 Before he died Keith Murdoch had accumulated in some mysterious way6 a great number of shares in newspaper companies, including some representing a controlling interest in News Limited, an Adelaide company publishing an afternoon newspaper called The News. He had appointed an experienced journalist named Rohan Rivett, a childhood friend and mentor of Rupert Murdoch, as editor of The News with the hope that Rupert would enter a career in journalism and that Rivett would assist Rupert in learning the required skills. In his will, Keith Murdoch instructed his trustees that Rupert should begin his career at The News "if they consider him worthy of support." At that time Rupert had shown little interest in journalism but a certain flair for gambling and making money.1 At the time of his death Keith Murdoch was heavily in debt but possessed within a private family trust considerable number of newspaper shares, some of which may have actually belonged to the Herald and Weekly Times.6 The trustees, in consultation with Keith's widow and Rupert's mother, Elisabeth Murdoch, were forced to sell many of the shares and other property in order to repay debt and death duties (government taxes).1 Elisabeth was able to retain only the family home, Cruden Farm, and the shares in News Limited and its subsidiaries, a Melbourne magazine publishing company named Southdown Press and The Barrier Miner, a newspaper at Broken Hill, New South Wales. 1Younger,R.M, "Keith Murdoch: Founder of a Media Empire," (HarperCollins 2003) 2Historical Roots of the Murdoch surname [1] 3National Library of Australia archives, ship arrivals and passenger lists, 1884 4Rev James Murdoch family geneaology records 5Garden, Don, "Theodor Fink: A Talent for Ubiquity" (Melbourne University Press 1998) 6Chenoweth, Neil, "Rupert Murdoch, the untold story of the world's greatest media wizard" (Random House NY, 2001, p 45Reveldor 00:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC) Start of business careerRupert Murdoch returned from Oxford to take up his duties as managing director of News Limited in 1953 and immediately developed an enthusiasm for the newspaper business that was not there before.[citation needed] His drive and energy infected the staff and the paper's circulation and advertising revenue began to grow. He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion. He bought a rundown Sunday Newspaper in Perth, Western Australia, and, using the tabloid techniques that Northcliffe had taught his son, made it a roaring success. In 1956 he began publishing Australia's first and most successful weekly television magazine, TV Week, at Southdown Press in Melbourne, which also published Australia's oldest women's magazine New Idea. With the Perth paper, the TV magazine and a re-energised New Idea all providing a steady and improving cash flow he was able to obtain finance for more expansion from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a government-owned bank dedicated to supporting Australian business development. A defining moment in Murdoch's life was the Stuart case in Adelaide when The News began a campaign to free a young aboriginal carnival worker named Rupert Max Stuart who had been convicted on flimsy police evidence of the murder of a small girl on a beach near Ceduna in the far west of South Australia during Christmas of 1958. Stuart was sentenced to hang. The News was critical of the case and an investigation produced clear evidence that supported Stuart's innocence. The paper's campaign inflamed Australia's most formidable politicians of the time, Tom Playford, who ruled South Australia continuously for nearly twenty-seven years. His father, “Honest Tom" Playford, had been the state's premier before him. Premier Playford took the attack by The News as a personal affront to his administration and set out to destroy the paper. To neutralize public emotion on the issue of hanging he commuted Stuart's sentence to life imprisonment and then established a royal commission, conducted by the state's chief judge and the judge who had passed sentence on Stuart. The outcome was a confirmation of Stuart's guilt and a recommendation that The News, its editor and its managing director be charged with sedition, a form of treason based on mediaeval English law. The paper, the editor and Murdoch were each charged on three counts, making nine counts in all. To fight the nine cases would have bankrupted News Limited. Rupert Murdoch's only chance of saving the family inheritance was an intercession arranged by Ken May, a political reporter on The News. Playford agreed to meet Murdoch in private. Murdoch pleaded his case on the basis of his youth and inexperience and a claim that Rohan Rivett had exerted influence over him. Playford agreed to have the charges dropped on two conditions: (1) That Rivett be fired from the paper and (2) that The News pay the costs of the royal commission. Unable to face Rivett, Murdoch went to Sydney and wrote a terse one-paragraph letter dismissing his long-time friend. This humiliating experience gave Rupert Murdoch a taste of the overwhelming power of popularly elected politicians and would shape the future policies of all his newspapers. In 2002 Murdoch financed a motion picture “Black and White” which told entirely different version of the Stuart story. 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. His acquisition of the Daily Mirror allowed him to challenge two powerful rivals in Australia's biggest city and to outwit his afternoon rival in a long circulation war. In 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, based first in Canberra and later in Sydney. The Australian, a broadsheet, was intended to give Murdoch a new respectability as a 'quality' newspaper publisher and greater political influence. The paper had a rocky start, marked by publishing difficulties and a constantly changing succession of editors who found it impossible to deal with Murdoch's persistent interference. Promised as a serious journal of the affairs of the nation, the paper actually veered between tabloid sensationalism and intellectual tedium until Murdoch was able to find a compliant editor who could abide with his often unpredictable predilections. The departure in 1966 of the Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies saw a chaotic six years of politics after Menzies' chosen successor Harold Holt drowned, to be replaced by the erratic John Gorton and them the artful William McMahon. In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph. In that year's election, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it win power. Murdoch later turned against Whitlam and supported the Govenor-General's dismissal of the Prime Minister. In the meantime, Murdoch turned his attention overseas. His business success in Australia and his fastidious policy of prompt periodic repayments of his borrowings had placed him in good financial standing with the Commonwealth Bank and he obtained its support for his biggest venture yet, the takeover of a family company which owned The News of the World, the Sunday newspaper with the biggest circulation in Britain. Acquisitions in BritainMurdoch entered Britain in 1968 with a splash that demonstrated not only the unlimited nature of his ambitions but his extraordinary business acumen and gained him a notoriety that soon produced an exclusively British nickname, “The Dirty Digger.”7 He succeeded in beating a rival publisher, Robert Maxwell, in securing The News of the World. In 1950 this had been the most popular English language newspaper in the world, claiming a peak circulation of 8,441,966. By 1968, the circulation had dropped to around six million and a substantial number of its shares were offered for sale by a member of the Carr family, with had part-owned and managed the company for nearly seventy years. 7 It was also the first time Murdoch risked the whole business he had already created on the outcome of a new venture, for he mortgaged the most valuable of his existing Australian properties to buy the paper with a promise that he would share control with the existing Carr management. Within a matter of weeks the Carrs were gone and Murdoch not only controlled News of the World but had regained full ownership of all his Australian assets.8 When the daily newspaper The Sun came on the market in 1969, Murdoch went to his bankers again and snapped up what had been a money-losing upmarket broadsheet with a declining circulation and relaunched it as a cheap racy tabloid which by 2006 was selling three million copies a day.9 Murdoch's biggest thrill came the day he was able to take over The Times, the paper his father's mentor Viscount Northcliffe, had once owned. The distinction of owning The Times came to him through his careful cultivation of Britain's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, at a time when she was under attack from every British newspaper. Only one paper stood up for her: Rupert Murdoch's The Sun. The Times was his reward, with the BskyB satellite television network as a lucrative bonus.10 At the end of the Thatcher era, Murdoch switched his support to Labour and the party's leader Tony Blair. The closeness of his relationship with Blair and their secret meetings to discuss national policies was to become a serious political issue in Britain particularly with regard to Murdoch's enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq, which may or may not have influenced Blair.11 From 1986, Murdoch moved to introduce electronic production processes to his newspapers in Australia, Britain and United States. placing a greater workload on journalists and reducing staff overall. In England, the move aroused the anger of the print unions resulting in a long and often violent dispute fought in London's docklands area of Wapping, where Murdoch had secretly installed the very latest electronic newspaper publishing factory in an old warehouse.12 Union opposition in Australia caved in after the Wapping battle and now most newspapers around the world are produced by this method. It greatly increased the profitability of papers at a time when revenues were slipping. The actual financial results from the breaking of union power over newspapers are difficult to show. News Corporation's real financial results are buried within the annual accounts of News Corporation. The company operates a highly sophisticated international tax avoidance system using holding companies in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. Money is transferred from high profit and high taxation areas like the US, Britain and Australia. From 1986 his annual tax bill averaged less than seven percent of earnings. Other media companies pay an average of of thirty percent or more on earnings.13 7Shawcross, William, "Murdoch, the making of a media empire," (Simon and Schuster, revised edition, 1997) pp 69-78 8Page, Bruce, "The Murdoch Archipelago," (Simon and Schuster UK, 2003) pp 120-123 9Page, pp 131-135 et seq.) 10Page, p 3, pp 253-419 11Page, pp 424-484 12Page, pp 368-393 13Chenoweth, pp 300-303, pp 87-90, 177 Reveldor 00:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Moving into the United StatesMurdoch 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 favor, 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, Murdoch chose to enter the world of cable news with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Following its launch, the heavily-funded Fox News consistently eroded CNN's market share, and eventually proclaimed 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. However, in recent years, ratings of Fox News have begun a declining trend.[1] 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. Personal lifeMurdoch has been married three times. In 1956 he married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and air hostess from Melbourne, with whom he had his first child, a daughter Prudence, born in 1958. Pat did not like Adelaide with its extremes of weather and where she had few friends and Rupert was frequently away building the foundations of his future empire (cit. Rod Lever, a long-serving News Limited executive and friend of Pat Booker). They divorced in 1967. In the same year, he married Anna Tõrv, an Estonian-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph (Australia). Tõrv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia August 22 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK September 8 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK December 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 68, married a Chinese woman Deng Wen Di, anglicised to Wendi Deng. She was then 30, a recent college graduate and newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV. Anna Murdoch was also remarried, in October 1999, to William Mann. Murdoch has since had two children with Deng: 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 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, Matthew Freud. Murdoch clearly intends to remain in control of News Corporation until his death. The American cable television entrepreneur John Malone has become the second largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, but Murdoch clearly hopes to keep the company under family control at least partly so that its historical corporate secrets can be retained within the family. At the time of writing, Murdoch has announced that Malone will relinquish his holding, but Malone is yet to do so formally. Murdoch in 2007 issued his older children with equal voting stock perhaps to test their individual interest and ability to run the company according to standards he has set. In the meantime, the long term future of News Corporation can only be the subject of speculation. Recent activitiesIn 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[2][3] 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. 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).[4] 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 Australian 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 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. On February 16th, 2007, Rupert Murdoch agreed to purchase Proboards, a remotely hosted forum provider from owner and founder Patrick Clinger for an undisclosed amount of money. February, 2007, negotiations with Virgin Media. The head of Virgin Media Richard Branson accused BSkyB of "bullying" and "arrogance" after talks broke down over prices set for carrying the channels.[5] BskyB raised the fees it charged the cable firm. Virgin Media has currently dropped the Sky Basics TV package, which includes Sky One and other channels on cable TV, Sky Travel and Sky Sports News. Murdoch and politicsAustraliaMurdoch's shattering experience with Tom Playford in South Australia (see above: "Start of Business Career") and his early political activities in Australia were to set the pattern he would use around the world for the rest of his life. When he took control of The News at tender age of 23, the aging Prime Minister Menzies and his loyal deputy Harold Holt treated him with the barely concealed contempt due to a brash schoolboy and largely avoided him. They were well aware that Rupert's father had long despaired of his only son's character defects.[6] Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party and 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, July 15, 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 forever. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[7] McEwen repaid Murdoch's support later by aiding him to buy his valuable rural property Cavan and then arranged a clever subterfuge by which Murdoch was able to transfer a large sum of money from Australia to England to complete the purchase of The News of the World without obtaining the required authority from the Australian Treasury.[8][9] After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his support to the newly elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, who was elected in 1972 on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.[6] Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief. He had already started his short lived National Star[7]newspaper in America and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[10] In Whitlam's second term, Murdoch returned from England to personally orchestrate a campaign to unseat the Australian government based only on rumor, innuendo and character assassinations against some of its members. United StatesIn 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." 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.[citation needed] Murdoch's publications worldwide tend to adopt conservative views. During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all 175 Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide editorialized in favor of the war.[11] Murdoch also served on the board of directors of the libertarian 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. United KingdomIn 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.[12] 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. 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.[13] However in a recent interview, when asked what he thought of the new Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much". In 2006, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch is to offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corp. when the UK prime minister stands down from office.[14] Murdoch quotes
Trivia
See also
References
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Rupert Murdoch" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
