An Adelaide paper became a global News Corp empire
Keith Rupert Murdoch, born 1931 in Melbourne, inherited his father's small Adelaide paper The News in 1952 and scaled it into News Corp—hundreds of local, national, and international outlets across news, publishing, and television. At Oxford, where he kept a bust of Lenin, classmates called him Red Rupert.
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne on 11 March 1931, the second of four children of Sir Keith Murdoch, a war correspondent turned newspaper executive, and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, who lived to 103 and had 74 descendants by 2011. At Geelong Grammar he co-edited the school journal, and at Worcester College, Oxford, he read philosophy, politics, and economics. Before his father's death he worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald.
His father died of cancer in 1952, when Rupert was 21, and after the Herald stake was sold to pay taxes what remained was News Limited, founded in 1923, whose Adelaide paper he turned into a success. His first move abroad came in January 1964, while touring New Zealand in a rented Morris Minor, when he read of Lord Thomson's bid for Wellington's The Dominion and secured control himself. Later that year he launched The Australian, the country's first national daily, and in 1972 bought Sydney's Daily Telegraph from Sir Frank Packer, who came to regret the sale. In 1986 he won a three-way battle for The Herald and Weekly Times, Australia's largest newspaper publisher.
In Britain he bought the News of the World in 1968 and the struggling Sun from IPC in 1969, turning it into a tabloid printed on the same presses and installing Larry Lamb as editor. In Australian politics he backed Country Party leader John McEwen, then threw his weight behind Gough Whitlam's Labor victory in 1972, and he campaigned for a republic in the 1999 referendum.
In July 2011 his companies, including the News of the World, faced allegations of routinely hacking the phones of celebrities, royals, and ordinary people, prompting British police and government inquiries and FBI investigations in the United States. His outlets are often accused of right-wing bias. Three of his children, Elisabeth, Prudence, and James, later fought in a U.S. court his bid to change the family trust so that his eldest son, Lachlan, keeps control of News Corp and Fox Corp.
Source: Rupert Murdoch
