Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch
A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss
Please also see:
https://www.inltv.co.uk/index.php/rupert-murdoch-s-untold-story-part2
https://www.inltv.co.uk/index.php/thesunking-rupertmurdoch-sendlessreignp2
media-freedom-is-a-downward-spiral
Rupert Murdoch
Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire - EconoTimes
Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds
The Quest to End Rupert Murdoch's Australian Media Empire — IR Insider
The Murdochs Are Not The Mafia - But The Murdoch Family Firm Is In Meltdown
Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd: Murdoch media “political equivalent of a mafia operation”, Hugh Grant accuses of Boris Johnson of lacking “the stomach” to stand up to Murdoch - Hacked Off
Rupert Murdoch's Media Mafia Organisation
Tom Watson- UK Labour MP makes Mafia Comparison with News International and its owner New Corporation LLC at the Phone Hacking Parliamentary Enquiry
Tom Watson called Rupert Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise"
A young Keith Rupert Murdoch backed by his silent partners, Lord Jacob Rothschild and the Rothschild Family who agreed to provide unlimited capital, to help Rupert Murdoch take control of the Australian Newspapers and then the world newspapers.
Rupert Murdoch 1978
Rupert Murdoch 1978
"The News Corp Board Did Nothing Despite The Harm To News Corp Resulting From NAM and NDS Misconduct ..."
Rupert Murdoch Has Trouble Answering Questions At UK Parliamentary Hacking Inquiry
Rupert Murdoch Quits As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp and Hands Reins To Son Lachlan Part Three
Rupert Murdoch Quits As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp and Hands Reins To Son Lachlan Part Four
An investigative report states that The Rothschild Family, their partners and associates effectively finance, run and control the major security agencies and networks around the world, such as Israel's Mossad, Five Eyes consisting of the British (GCHQ/MI5/MI60, Canadian (CSE), New Zealand (NZSIS), Australian (ASIO) and USA (CIA)Security Agencies and Networks, and the Russian Security agencies and networks... being silent partners with Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia etc., and many other mainstream media outlets around the worlds they make sure there are a lot of MI6, CIA etc. staff working as double agents for the media outlets, as well as being paid by these security agencies and networks to do their bidding within these mainstream media groups...
CMS Committee inquired about whether anyone who had testified in the prior committee proceeding had lied ... Both Murdochs (Rupert and James) claimed that they had no knowledge on that issue. James Murdoch also testified that he had he had no knowledge of the recent evidence (primarily the "Fox Neville" e-mail) that expanded the hacking scandal beyond one rogue reporter until the end of December 2010....
Shortly after James Murdoch testified, two former News International senior executives, Crone and Myer, challenged James Murdoch's testimony, claiming that they had told him years ago about an email that showed that the wrongdoing at News of the World was much more widespread than News Corp and their subsidiary News International acknowledged.
Over half a million Australians demand probe into Rupert Murdoch's media empire- EconoTimes
Fri, Nov 6, 2020
Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch's media empire has been likened to the mafia.
Over 500,000 Australians petitioned the parliament to conduct an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which threatens media diversity and encourages deliberate polarizing and politically manipulating news.
The petition, which was launched by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over three weeks ago, singled out Murdoch's News Corp as a potential threat to free speech and public debate, although it also raised other concerns, including Google and Facebook's relationship with the news media.
The petition expressed concern that News Corporation, which overwhelmingly controls Australia's print media, routinely attacks opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting.
News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, controls around two-thirds of daily newspaper readership.
It owns major national newspaper The Australian and tabloids The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun.
Rudd considers the influence of Murdoch's media properties as "toxic" has dubbed the billionaire's news empire a "cancer on democracy" in the US, UK, and Australia.
In an interview with CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, Rudd likened Murdoch's organization to the mafia.
Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch 2018
sham complaints-handler controlled by press executives, with close links to the Government… Its closeness to Government is more befitting of a dictatorship than a liberal democracy.
The interview can be watched in full here:
For press enquiries contact: sara@hackinginquiry.
Rupert Murdoch: The evil empire, British politics, phone hacking and a murdered teenager
http://breakingdownthnews.
On Sunday 10 July 2011 News of The World went on sale for the last time, bringing it’s 168 year history to an end. It was 42 years since Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper at a shareholder’s meeting in January 1969 beating Robert Maxwell in a bitter year long battle over the acquisition.
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Tom Watson- UK Labour MP makes Mafia Comparison with News International and its owner New Corporation LLC at the Phone Hacking Parliamentary Enquiry
Tom Watson called Rupert Murdoch "the first Mafia boss in history not to know he is running a criminal enterprise"
e-mail transcript that implicated another journalist. Parliament has recalled James Murdoch to give further testimony.
quicklist: category: title: Murdochs saw a family therapist. text: Ellison wrote that around the time James Murdoch became chief operating officer in March, siblings Lachlan, Prudence and Elisabeth Murdoch had "discussed the move extensively" with him.
"The siblings had been in family counseling with a psychologist over the issue of succession," Ellison wrote. "They told James that if they worked together as siblings they could help him and their father have a better relationship, and that together the kids could hold Rupert to account to be a mentor to James and not undermine him, as he had done with Lachlan so many years before."
quicklist: category: title: Elisabeth Murdoch wanted James to step back.text:
The relationship between Elisabeth and James Murdoch became especially tense as the scandal exploded to the point that the relationship now "appears broken, at least for now," Ellison writes.
"Elisabeth blamed her brother for allowing the phone-hacking crisis to spiral out of control," and urged her father to take control of the situation, Ellison wrote, saying James Murdoch should take a leave.
"The suggestion infuriated James -- he had been shouldering the responsibility for something that happened before he was even in charge, he said," according to Ellison.
quicklist: category:title: Rupert Murdoch wanted to let James Murdoch go, then changed his mindtext:
Rupert Murdoch had seen loyal lieutenants like Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor and chief executive of News Corp.'s European company News International, resign. Les Hinton, the former Wall Street Journal publisher, also resigned. But Murdoch struggled over his son, James Murdoch.
"Rupert then spoke to James and suggested that he take a leave -- 'Maybe you should go, too,' he said. But after a sleepless night he changed his mind," Ellison wrote.
quicklist: category:title: Rupert Murdoch checked background of daughter's high school boyfriend.text:
Murdoch "struggled most" with Elisabeth, the oldest child from his second marriage. Elisabeth rebelled against Murdoch, but "it seemed difficult to escape her father," according to Ellison.
"An old high-school boyfriend of Elisabeth's told me that she once let slip that she knew some personal details about his family that he had yet to tell her," Ellison wrote. "When asked how she could possibly have known that information, she confessed with embarrassment, 'My father checked you out.'"
quicklist: category:title: Elisabeth Murdoch declined News Corp. board seat to stay away from scandal.text:
After News Corp. agreed to acquire Elisabeth's production company, Shine, in February, Elisabeth agreed to take a seat on the company's board. But as the phone-hacking scandal escalated, she declined the seat.
"She felt it would be better for the company to have fewer Murdochs," Ellison wrote. "There was another reason: Her lawyers and her husband advised her that it was best to not take the seat, in order to stay as far away from the scandal as possible."
quicklist: category: title: Oldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, was quiet supporter through paparazzi attacktext:
Though Lachlan Murdoch has tried to live his own life in Australia after leaving News Corp. in 2005, as events escalated this year, "He stuck by his father and was a calm presence compared with Elisabeth and James," Ellison wrote.
"I think Lachlan wants to be above it all. He's looking at this as purely a family issue," a News Corp. executive told Ellison.
"This has nothing to do with him professionally," she wrote.
quicklist: category: title: "Wendi Deng is an undeniable X factor in any discussion about the future."text:
As it seems neither Lachlan or Elisabeth Murdoch are likely to take the reigns from Rupert Murdoch, and James Murdoch's future may be tenuous, the question of succession is still an issue. Ellison wrote that Wendi Deng, Murdoch's third wife, may even be a consideration.
At the parliamentary committee hearing in July, Deng famously thwarted a shaving cream pie attack on her husband.
"Even now Wendi is a formidable presence. She holds no official role in the company and wields no votes in the family trust," Ellison wrote. "But she is smart and ambitious, and has Rupert's ear -- and his back."
Rupert Murdoch 'Not Fit' to Run News Corp., U.K. Parliamentary Committee Finds
Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard
Bib ID:2217273Format:BookAuthor:
Donald Trump Calls Rupert Murdoch As A Globalist and Lambasts Fox News September 2023
Rupert Murdoch Quits As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp And Hands Reins To Eldest Son Lachlan Part 3
Rupert Murdoch Quits As Chairman Of Fox And News Corp And Hands Reins To Eldest Son Lachlan Part 4
A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss
A British MP called Murdoch a mob boss
the country.
In essence, Turnbull will inherit Rudd’s role: chair of the Murdoch Royal Commission lobby group to urge advertisers to boycott the mogul's media outlets. This is consequential given the fear politicians have over the wrath of media organizations. If Fox News can be deemed to have an extraordinary political impact in the United States, Murdoch owns a much larger proportionality of the media in Australia. The stakes are simply that much higher.
Former US President Barack Obama tells Sydney audience that Murdoch’s media empire has fuelled polarization of society Source: The Guardian
At a sold-out address in Sydney last Tuesday, Barack Obama seemed to have a lot of agreements with Turnbull with regards to the media’s role of undermining democracy. He said the media empire has led to greater polarization in Western societies with news coverage designed to “make people angry and resentful,” with the Murdoch’s News Corp part of the “dissolution of the monopoly of a few arbiters of the news and journalistic standards that came out of the post-world war two era.”
Obama claims that we are in the realm of identity politics, and it would be very difficult to compromise around such issues. There needs to be an ability to really examine how News Corp is operating as a propaganda vehicle, with the United States capitol attack being an example of the severe consequences from this type of media operation. There is an undermining of democracy here, and in Obama’s exact words – “there’s a guy you may be familiar with, first name Rupert, who was responsible for a lot of this …”
Turnbull, who has just launched a podcast examining whether Western democracies are in decline, recently conducted an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review. In it, he states the profound impact of Murdoch’s media monopoly on the future Australian elections which are a "two-horse race" between his center-right Liberals and the center-left Labour Party.
After all, Australia's electoral system is designed to bring politics to the center. This sort of consensus building and compromises between coalitions are the lifeblood of parliamentary democracies. To have a news organization that is more propaganda than news and is pushing an extreme line brings about real danger. Turnbull’s attempt to challenge Murdoch's vast influence over the Australian media and political landscape can only be seen as favorable.
Murdoch's mob-friendly environment; thugs stick together - Antony Loewenstein
Michael Woolf on The Family with a whole lotta scruples:
conspiracy was to keep Rupert from knowing.”
Freud’s convoluted formulation answered a question I hadn’t asked and suggests that 10 months before the Milly Dowler revelations and the bottom falling out of the scandal, Murdoch intimates were sensing how close this could come to the center and essence of their lives. Indeed, it’s not clear why you would have to conspire to keep someone from knowing what he did not know, nor why you would, unprompted, make admitting to a cover-up a main thesis of your defense.
You wouldn’t—except if you understood (and Freud is one of the people within the company to have a gimlet-eyed understanding of it) that everything that happens at News Corp. is systemic, that this is an organization predicated on a certain view of the world that fosters a certain behavior (that might turn weaker stomachs), that its nature runs from the top to bottom and bottom to top. And that the necessary and desperate and ultimate strategy has to be an effort to protect the man at the center of it all. Because there is nothing without him.
Rupert Murdoch made his own rules - what is the media mogul's real legacy?
Six experts on how the Australian-born entrepreneur’s newspaper titles and TV channels transformed the media landscape
Fox networks brought US primetime up to date … but upended TV news
The imperial doings of Rupert Murdoch over the past 70 years make for a story often told. Orthodoxy tells us that to grow and protect his empire he needed the support of political leaders, and to build their power some of those leaders needed the pulpits provided by the outlets that he controlled.
Under Murdoch, the Fox organisation upended the business and practices of journalism, irrevocably altered the rules of engagement for civic conversation, and played a role in the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
Murdoch presided over the creation of two networks in the US, one broadcast and one cable. The latter gets the most attention.
The Fox News Channel was born of a brilliant business model. CNN, launched in 1980, had the 24-hour TV news market pretty much to itself for more than 15 years. Operating mostly on traditional standards of broadcast journalism, it was the place to go for “breaking news”. Once that was over, though, most viewers returned to their regular entertainment.
In 1996, Fox News had another idea: to provide a channel that people wanted to watch all the time; to tune in not to see what was happening but to watch hosts like Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity.
unpredictably. Murdoch will be ringing, eager to hear the latest news from whichever particular time zone he chooses, keeping his executives across the planet on their toes. Except those nervous execs will now be unsure whether it’s Rupert – or Lachlan– calling.
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Dominic Mohan is a former Sun editor and founder of Dominic Mohan Media. He asked for his fee for this article to go to the Teenage Cancer Trust charity
Retirement won’t be the end for ruthless entrepreneur who broke the unions and made billions
Murdoch dramatically transformed the UK media landscape in the half century since he bought the News of the World and the Sun in 1969 – reinventing the tone and increasing the impact of the tabloids – then buying the Times and Sunday Times in 1981. His reputation as an innovative – and ruthless – newspaper proprietor in the UK only grew when he broke the power of the unions in the shift of his printing operation to Wapping. Newspapers – the whole industry – were never the same again.
Posters protest against Murdoch’s move to shift his UK newspaper print sites from Fleet Street to Wapping, in east London. Photograph: Rick Colls/Alamy
world by so called “respectable” industry figures and celebrities.
Now, none of my story seemed to be a problem for Jack Malvern when he interviewed me, he was happy to publish what I said. After the interview I even checked to see if he was happy with what I said. The only issue was that later in the day he wanted to interview my mother about an incident when I was called into a casting for a major drinks company. I gave him my mother’s telephone number, he left two messages which she ignored as she didn’t want to talk to him. My mother never agreed to talk to Jack Malvern which is what I told him when I later informed him that she didn’t want to be interviewed as she’s a very private person and it was her choice. Jack Malvern didn’t seem to think it was an issue and left me with the impression that the article would run as planned on Saturday 20th October 2012.
Of course printed here are just a few stories of the many that I told him. He’d asked for names and I’d given them to him with details only one who was there would know. He even empathised at one point and told me that my story rang true for him as he’d experienced similar problems with predatory gay men when he was a young journalist or so he told me.
Little did I know that the next BBC person I named was the one that would stop the article from coming out. The person who I am referring to shall remain nameless in this article, however they are a new star of SKY Television. It seems that Sky have a lot invested in this person and like the BBC stopping the Jimmy Savile Newsnight programme Murdoch et al. have withdrawn an explosive article in The Times that threatened to reveal a far seedier side of their new star than they would like. Drug taking, inappropriate sexual behaviour and child abuse isn’t something the Murdoch empire want revealed.
Now, Jack Malvern of The Times may say that I’m an unreliable person or that they couldn’t corroborate the accusations I was making. But isn’t that what child abuse is all about? There are laws preventing people from making false allegations so why would I lie. In any case they said they’d run the article either with or without the names. So, why didn’t it run? My theory is that they didn’t want to give me the platform of appearing in The Times, just in case I mentioned names at a later date.
The Murdoch empire and BBC are clearly safe havens for child abusers to operate.
A society that takes the position of not believing victims, hiding the truth and protecting abusers for their own personal gain is a sad state of affairs. It is typical of a society gone mad, set up to procure children and to protect paedophiles. In other words children’s well-being comes down to simply politics. If you accuse someone of abuse and they happen to be famous or powerful then tough luck you lose. You won’t be believed, regardless of the validity of your claims by either the state or mainstream corporate media seems to be the message.
The irony is that the Murdoch empire, who has always been quick to name and shame is curiously reluctant when it comes to naming one of its own stars. It appears that the empire is only prepared to expose child abusers and paedophiles as long as it doesn’t affect its own reputation.
We’ve moved on from just phone hacking.
his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.
The propaganda is, also by definition, part of the public record. Although that record speaks for itself, Murdoch has not been shy about adding his commentary. The week before the world’s largest anti-war protests ever and the United Nation’s rejection of the Iraq War in mid-February 2003, Murdoch told a reporter that in launching a war Bush was acting “morally” and “correctly” while Blair was “full of guts” and “extraordinarily courageous.” Murdoch promoted the looming war as a path to cheap oil and a healthy economy. He said he had no doubt that Bush would be “reelected” if he “won” the war and the U.S. economy stayed healthy. That’s not an idle statement from the owner of the television network responsible for baselessly prompting all of the other networks to call the 2000 election in Bush’s favor during a tight race in Florida that Bush actually lost.
newspapers in Adelaide, South Australia, and a radio station in a faraway mining town. For some reason, Murdoch has always tried to hide the fact that his pious mother brought him up as a Jew…
And that, as I am sure you know, makes him a Jew according to the law of the Talmud, and indeed according to the present laws of Israel.
Spotlight [a rightwing Washington weekly published by Willis Carto] in fact examined Murdoch in considerable depth in no fewer than three issues, 30th January and 6th and 13th February [1984]. My friend Ivor Benson whom I regarded as a very judicious observer and commentator, reckoned, along with Spotlight, that his meteoric ascent was completely artificial, and that he was a front for far more powerful super-rich subversives, Michel Fribourg, Armand Hammer and Edgar Bronfman, “all of them part of a super-rich ‘Zionist Mafia’”, to quote Benson, who added: “By comparison with these three, Murdoch is just an ambitious midget who has been given the job of drawing all the public attention away from those who make the real decisions.” (Benson’sBehind the News, March 1984)
Could well be. Certainly I can confirm that at least part of his meteoric ascent was artificial. I remember my brother-in-law [a former editor of The Times] telling me, at the time of Murdoch’s acquisition of The Times, that it was a strange business. Murdoch was by no means the highest bidder.
For my part, I myself have always had good personal motives to take a favourable view of Murdoch, because my brother-in-law was easily his favourite editor of The Times, and, when my brother-in-law died (in office), Murdoch treated my sister completely fairly, from a financial point of view, without making the slightest difficulty. But, despite that reason for some prejudice in his favour, I have always been forced to the judgement that he has been a force for unspeakable evil.<
News of William’s hacking payout reminds us what kind of operation Rupert Murdoch runs
By Brian Cathcart
WHAT A WEEK for Rupert Murdoch. Seven days ago his US Fox News organisation paid $787.5 million to settle a libel claim, and now we learn that his UK company paid ‘a very large sum’ to the heir to the British throne to settle a phone hacking claim.
That Prince William’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World was well known, but while many suspected there might have been a financial settlement, that was never announced or confirmed – and the Murdoch organisation clearly preferred it that way.
Now the cover is blown and once again we have headline evidence of the kind of journalistic operation that is run by the 92-year-old billionaire: it does dreadful things, it covers them up and when cornered it buys its way out.
In the US, Murdoch journalists told lies that assisted an attempted coup d’état. In the UK, Murdoch journalists, illegally and for well over a decade, tapped into the mobile voicemails of everyone who was in the news – up to and including very senior members of the royal family.
It’s an ugly picture, lending weight to the view that Murdoch is more like a Mafia boss than a person who is, in the legal phrase, ‘fit and proper’ to oversee a news media organisation.
And if Prince William’s financial settlement has finally become public now, three years on, Murdoch has only his own subordinates to blame. For it was lawyers acting for his UK daily the Sun who put Prince Harry in a position where, the Prince’s lawyers say, he had no choice but to reveal it.
Fighting off claims by Prince Harry and the actor Hugh Grant that the Sun hacked their phones just as the News of the World had done, the paper went to court in London today to argue, among other things, that the two men’s claims have been made too late and are legally ‘out of time’.
As a result, his lawyers say, Prince Harry had no choice but to open a can of worms relating to the royal family and the Murdoch corporation – of which his brother William’s 2020 settlement represents just one worm, albeit a fat one.
Prince Harry’s lawyers had previously referred in court documents to a ‘secret arrangement’ between the Palace and the Murdoch management, but today’s revelations went further, describing a deal under which the royals agreed to delay making claims in exchange for being spared embarrassment. The documents also cited years of meetings and correspondence between very senior figures on both sides.
Robert Thomson, CEO of Murdoch global operation, NewsCorp, met Sir Christopher Geidt, private secretary to Queen Elizabeth, to discuss the deal. Rebekah Brooks, CEO of Murdoch’s News UK, was also involved in exchanges, while according to Prince Harry’s case documents the whole arrangement was ‘authorised’ by the late Queen herself.
This relationship between the Palace and a news organisation that had admitted large-scale phone hacking appears to have been one that both sides preferred to keep confidential.
In its defence, lawyers for the Sun don’t acknowledge any special arrangement and will argue in court that Prince Harry could have made a claim much earlier under a confidential settlement scheme set up by the Murdoch company that was open to anyone with a case.
The debate in court over the next three days before Mr Justice Fancourt is more general and requires the Sun’s lawyers to engage in an exercise many would consider perverse. They have begun arguing that it should have been obvious years ago to both claimants – the prince and Grant – that they might have had a hackikng case against the Sun, and to make that point they are trying to pile up evidence against their own client going back to 2006.
Since the Sun denies all phone hacking – despite having paid settlements to a number of people who have sued – if the present blocking bid fails and the case goes to trial (pencilled in for January 2024), counsel for the Sun will then presumably find themselves arguing something close to the opposite.
Declaration of interest: Brian Cathcart was previously director of Hacked Off, of which Hugh Grant is a board member.
Declaration of interest: Brian Cathcart was previously director of Hacked Off, of which Hugh Grant is a board member.
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Murdoch Compared to ‘Mafia Boss’ Ordering Hit in Smartmatic Case
- Fox Corp. is seeking dismissal from the $2.7 billion lawsuit
- Company says Smartmatic case is ‘disconnected from reality’
Rupert Murdoch
Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan were compared to mafia bosses trying to dodge punishment for the actions of their henchmen during a court hearing in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit over the 2020 election.
The analogy was made by a lawyer for Smartmatic Corp., a voting machine company that claims its reputation was damaged when Fox News amplified a conspiracy theory that it rigged the 2020 election against Donald Trump. Fox Corp. agreed to pay $787.5 million in April to another voting-machine firm, Dominion Voting Systems Inc., to resolve similar claims minutes before the start of a trial.
The Cover-Up, Not the Crime, Brings Down James Murdoch | Media | FRONTLINE | PBS
The Cover-Up, Not the Crime, Brings Down James Murdoch
RONTLINE’s Lowell Bergman appeared on The Takeaway this morning to reflect on the news that James Murdoch, son of media titan Rupert, stepped down from his role as CEO of News International, the British press arm of News Corporation. The younger Murdoch has slowly been transitioning to the company’s New York offices.
“I don’t think it’s really that significant a move, he’s been back in the United States for quite a while,” says Bergman. “He’s never really expressed, apparently, that much interest in the newspaper business. His real interest is in BSkyB TV and other broadcasting … aspects of News Corporation.”
This move doesn’t mean James is going to disappear into the Manhattan streets. Investigations into his role covering up crimes at News International are ongoing. “Revelations that keep coming out of this Leveson Inquiry … continue to show that the cover-up, as usual, is worse than the crime,” notes Bergman.
For years, in public and in testimony to British Parliament, James and other executives claimed that phone hacking and other illegal behavior was limited within the company. Revelations in the last year have undercut those claims.
The question remains: who knew what, and when? While neither James nor Rupert Murdoch have given in-depth interviews to the press (“I’m holding my breath,” jokes Bergman, after an extended radio silence), questions swirl: Did James tell the truth to parliament in July about his lack of knowledge about the widespread phone hacking? What about the 2008 “for Neville” email, in which a News of the World editor told James that one particular case looked bad?
“Unfortunately, it’s as bad as we feared,” Myler wrote. “No worries,” James replied.
In that case, James reportedly approved a settlement of over $1 million not long after reading the e-mail. Business continued as usual at News International until last July, when it was revealed that News of the World hacked into the voicemails of Milly Dowler, a missing schoolgirl who was later found murdered.
It goes way beyond, James, Bergman notes — and it’s shaking up Britain’s core. “We’re talking about the involvement of every prime minister in Britain for the last quarter century,” says Bergman. “Equivalent of the White House, the FBI and the largest press organization or media organization in the country, all colluding, money changing hands, cover-up and all kinds of black arts in between.”
These arts are the subject of Lowell Bergman’s upcoming FRONTLINE film Murdoch’s Scandal, slated to air March 27.
The Murdochs Are Not The Mafia - But The Murdoch Family Firm Is In Meltdown
Murdochs are not a mafia – but the family firm is in meltdown
There are times to push fine detail and finely timed memory losses aside and ask: what makes sense? And thus the fall and fall of the House of Murdoch continues. Young James is so smart, so smooth, such a master of dead bats and – yes! – detail. He's a clever lad. Why, then, did he act so stupidly? And why did those who were supposed to protect him, in loco parentis, do such a lousy job?
We're not talking corporate governance here: we're talking family. Tom Watson may have pushed his mafia metaphor a tad too far at the committee grilling last week, but the family and its faithful, well-remunerated retainers are what matter most. See everything that Rupert has done over the last 20 years as family first and it all begins to fall into place.
Take Les Hinton, the head butler at Wapping Abbey at the time. Did he brief Rupert Murdoch as Clive Goodman went to prison? How could he not have? Murdoch senior is always on the phone. He'd be chatting to editor Andy Coulson just as he'd chatted to News of the World editors down the years. Would Rupert have left his de facto heir to sink or swim in this rancid pool without full briefings and full protection? Of course not.
Take Rebekah Brooks, the tabloid queen waiting to climb the management ladder when young James arrived. She'd been editor of the News of the World; she was editor of the Sun, just a few corridor yards away; Andy Coulson was her former deputy, her pick for the top, her boy. Didn't she see the perils post-hacking? Surely she wouldn't let James fall into the mire.
Or take Colin Myler, the last editor of the News of the World, the Mr Clean chosen to clear up the whole damned mess. Hugely experienced, a previous editor of the Sunday and daily Mirror; an honourable guy who took the fall when a high-profile trial was stopped because people on his staff made mistakes. How did Myler come to Wapping, then? Because, after almost seven years' exile on Murdoch's New York Post, he was the safe pair of hands Rupert chose personally to put things back on track.
And today? Les Hinton is history, dumped from Dow Jones as the family scrabbles after a safe haven. Rebekah is history, too, left with an office, a chauffeur and £1.7m to keep her warm. While Myler is suddenly the enemy, the loyalist inexplicably contradicting James about what James was told and siding with Tom Crone, the paper's equally suddenly reviled lawyer.
Does any of this make the remotest human sense? If some revered TV scriptwriter (say Peter Morgan) wrote a series about newspaper life in which nobody gossiped, nobody got drunk, nobody told anyone anything, he'd be laughed out of the studio. The entire farrago doesn't hold for a second. With Scotland Yard knee-deep in unread emails, there's nil chance of that unsteady state ending any decade soon. Proof – in any bewigged form – will probably only emerge much later: but proof, in a thumbs-up or -down way, is commodiously available already. An over-protected fool or a desperate man cornered? It's a sad, sad choice, but amounts to much the same thing either way. Protectors didn't protect. Instead, they were jettisoned one by one.
And perhaps the saddest – nay, tragic – explanation of what went on is also the most benign. James wasn't interested in tabloid blunders, or even playing executive chairman to them. He loved digital, TV, the future. He was bored, bored, bored by lawyers and their letters. His father, the dad who must be obeyed, had made him serve his time; but his mind kept wandering away to the fields he loved.
There's the tragedy for the son and the family, but worst of all for Rupert. Those who didn't quite believe it in the summer must surely acknowledge it now: James Murdoch can never sit at his father's desk. The whole succession scenario is bust. The Murdoch hegemony stops here. No sentient shareholder is going to let the family run things hands-on any longer. Just sit back and cash the dividends.
There may be more rumours about a Sun on Sunday come the dawn of 2012, but forget them. We can't even be sure there'll be a Sun if James's readiness to shut it (should more hacking be discovered) is tested. There won't be any clear, calm, imminent moment when, all passion spent, the Bun seems wholesome again. Trinity Mirror, its profits bulwarked by the greatest ever stroke of luck, can carry on smiling. The murk of 2011 will just linger on (oozing into view every time Tom Watson mentions a new private eye)
Those who like strong medicine a
There are times to push fine detail and finely timed memory losses aside and ask: what makes sense? And thus the fall and fall of the House of Murdoch continues. Young James is so smart, so smooth, such a master of dead bats and – yes! – detail. He's a clever lad. Why, then, did he act so stupidly? And why did those who were supposed to protect him, in loco parentis, do such a lousy job?
We're not talking corporate governance here: we're talking family. Tom Watson may have pushed his mafia metaphor a tad too far at the committee grilling last week, but the family and its faithful, well-remunerated retainers are what matter most. See everything that Rupert has done over the last 20 years as family first and it all begins to fall into place.
Take Les Hinton, the head butler at Wapping Abbey at the time. Did he brief Rupert Murdoch as Clive Goodman went to prison? How could he not have? Murdoch senior is always on the phone. He'd be chatting to editor Andy Coulson just as he'd chatted to News of the World editors down the years. Would Rupert have left his de facto heir to sink or swim in this rancid pool without full briefings and full protection? Of course not.
Take Rebekah Brooks, the tabloid queen waiting to climb the management ladder when young James arrived. She'd been editor of the News of the World; she was editor of the Sun, just a few corridor yards away; Andy Coulson was her former deputy, her pick for the top, her boy. Didn't she see the perils post-hacking? Surely she wouldn't let James fall into the mire.
Or take Colin Myler, the last editor of the News of the World, the Mr Clean chosen to clear up the whole damned mess. Hugely experienced, a previous editor of the Sunday and daily Mirror; an honourable guy who took the fall when a high-profile trial was stopped because people on his staff made mistakes. How did Myler come to Wapping, then? Because, after almost seven years' exile on Murdoch's New York Post, he was the safe pair of hands Rupert chose personally to put things back on track.
And today? Les Hinton is history, dumped from Dow Jones as the family scrabbles after a safe haven. Rebekah is history, too, left with an office, a chauffeur and £1.7m to keep her warm. While Myler is suddenly the enemy, the loyalist inexplicably contradicting James about what James was told and siding with Tom Crone, the paper's equally suddenly reviled lawyer.
Does any of this make the remotest human sense? If some revered TV scriptwriter (say Peter Morgan) wrote a series about newspaper life in which nobody gossiped, nobody got drunk, nobody told anyone anything, he'd be laughed out of the studio. The entire farrago doesn't hold for a second. With Scotland Yard knee-deep in unread emails, there's nil chance of that unsteady state ending any decade soon. Proof – in any bewigged form – will probably only emerge much later: but proof, in a thumbs-up or -down way, is commodiously available already. An over-protected fool or a desperate man cornered? It's a sad, sad choice, but amounts to much the same thing either way. Protectors didn't protect. Instead, they were jettisoned one by one.
And perhaps the saddest – nay, tragic – explanation of what went on is also the most benign. James wasn't interested in tabloid blunders, or even playing executive chairman to them. He loved digital, TV, the future. He was bored, bored, bored by lawyers and their letters. His father, the dad who must be obeyed, had made him serve his time; but his mind kept wandering away to the fields he loved.
There's the tragedy for the son and the family, but worst of all for Rupert. Those who didn't quite believe it in the summer must surely acknowledge it now: James Murdoch can never sit at his father's desk. The whole succession scenario is bust. The Murdoch hegemony stops here. No sentient shareholder is going to let the family run things hands-on any longer. Just sit back and cash the dividends.
There may be more rumours about a Sun on Sunday come the dawn of 2012, but forget them. We can't even be sure there'll be a Sun if James's readiness to shut it (should more hacking be discovered) is tested. There won't be any clear, calm, imminent moment when, all passion spent, the Bun seems wholesome again. Trinity Mirror, its profits bulwarked by the greatest ever stroke of luck, can carry on smiling. The murk of 2011 will just linger on (oozing into view every time Tom Watson mentions a new private eye).
Those who like strong medicine and stronger penalties against malfeasance may care to count the payback thus far. For Murdoch: no heir, no News of the World, some $90m (£56m) gone, a reputation and an influence lost, a family at war. For James: no glowing future. For many of the rest of the gang: no jobs and possibly no freedom either. Retribution doesn't come crueller than this. Hacking can damage your health, wealth, your nearest and dearest. Hacking has sundered the biggest media empire in the globe: and many things, including Wapping and, less joyously, the papers that remain, can never be quite the same again.
The News of the World may be dead and buried, but a dogged Max Mosley is still trying to drive a stake through its heart. About 3,000 copies of the Nazi orgy story that incensed him circulated in France so, three years after the event, he went to Paris, launched another privacy case and (last week) won. Triumph? Only up to a point. The court awarded €32,000 in all (€10,000 as a state fine, €7,000 (£27,000) as Max's damages and the rest as costs). That doesn't sound much, sniffed Britain's finest media eagles, barely worth putting on a wig and gown for in the Strand. His French lawyer thought Max had done pretty well – but the tariff, by Strand standards, is low, low, low. Whether it's under French law or the European Convention on Human Rights, you can make a point over the Channel, if you must: but you won't make a mint
nd stronger penalties against malfeasance may care to count the payback thus far. For Murdoch: no heir, no News of the World, some $90m (£56m) gone, a reputation and an influence lost, a family at war. For James: no glowing future. For many of the rest of the gang: no jobs and possibly no freedom either. Retribution doesn't come crueller than this. Hacking can damage your health, wealth, your nearest and dearest. Hacking has sundered the biggest media empire in the globe: and many things, including Wapping and, less joyously, the papers that remain, can never be quite the same again.
The News of the World may be dead and buried, but a dogged Max Mosley is still trying to drive a stake through its heart. About 3,000 copies of the Nazi orgy story that incensed him circulated in France so, three years after the event, he went to Paris, launched another privacy case and (last week) won. Triumph? Only up to a point. The court awarded €32,000 in all (€10,000 as a state fine, €7,000 (£27,000) as Max's damages and the rest as costs). That doesn't sound much, sniffed Britain's finest media eagles, barely worth putting on a wig and gown for in the Strand. His French lawyer thought Max had done pretty well – but the tariff, by Strand standards, is low, low, low. Whether it's under French law or the European Convention on Human Rights, you can make a point over the Channel, if you must: but you won't make a mint.
1971: The Times Features Vivien Neves, The First Nude To Appear In A British Newspaper
“A whole page? Wheeee! Imagine all those men in bowler hats grumbling ‘What’s this country coming to?’"
In 1971, The Times featured the first nude to ever appear in a British newspaper. She was Vivien Neves (20 November 1947 – 29 December 2002).
Modern readers might suppose the honour of being first newspaper to host an image of a naked women to be the Daily Star’s or The Sun’s.
In 1971, the Daily Star was not yet in existence. The Sun had become a tabloid on 17 November 1969, with a front page headlined “HORSE DOPE SENSATION” – an ‘exclusive’ in which a racing trainer admitted he was doping his horses.
e picture, dated 17/11/1969, Rupert Murdoch looks at one of the first copies of The Sun newspaper, at the News of the World building , in London.
The Sun had featured the first topless Page 3 girl on 17 November 1970 – German-born Stephanie Rahn was the “Birthday Suit Girl”. She was there to mark the first anniversary of the relaunched Sun.
Rupert Murdoch owned The Sun, but he never gained control of The Times until 12 February 1981. In 1971, the venerable Thunderer was owned by Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson.
Diane Coulter, 18 year old Miss Canada, with newspaper proprietor Lord Thomson. Diane, and other competitors in the Miss World final were guests of honour at the lunch.
Ref #: PA.10011230 Date: 14/11/1966
The Sun was well impressed with the Times‘ foray into soft porn:
“There had never, they said, been a picture quite like it in the entire 186-year history of The Times. They finally came abreast of the times, so to speak, with a whacking great portrait of model Vivien Neves . . . starkers.”
As The Times notes:
Although its tone was undoubtedly mocking, The Sun’s interest in the story was legitimate. At that time, Neves was one of the red-top tabloid’s most popular Page 3 Girls; that one of its biggest assets was flaunting her wares in the paper of record must have been a shock.
At age 18, Neves had worked as a “bunny” at the Raymond Revue bar strip club in Soho.
Ginni, the 23 month old Cheetah who, in a new act at the West End’s Raymond Revue Bar, gradually disrobes Australian dancer Rita Allen, a former beauty queen from Sydney.
Ref #: PA.4342079
Date: 02/01/1966
The bar was owned by Paul Raymond.
Paul Raymond seen with Fiona Richmond in London after an edition of his ‘Men Only’ magazine was read by a High Court jury to decide whether or not it was indecent or obscene.
Ref #: PA.1560861 . Date: 05/02/1974
The bar job set her up for a career in top-shelf magazines.
Here she is on the cover of Span, the magazine for central heating enthusiasts:
She said:
“Working at the club had made me immune to nudity, and the thought of showing my nipples to magazine readers didn’t bother me a bit.”
Library filer dated 10/12/70 of model Vivien Neves, one of the first women to model nude in a British newspaper who died in hospital, Sunday December 29, 2002. * Vivien Neves became famous as the first woman to appear naked in a newspaper – in an advertisement in The Times in 1971 – and was also among the first Page Three girls. She died at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, yesterday after a 27-year battle with multiple sclerosis. She was 54. Miss Neves was nicknamed The Body, decades before the name was applied to supermodel Elle Macpherson, after she modelled naked in a full-page advertisement in The Times for Fisons chemicals when she was 23.
In May 1970 Neves made her debut on The Sun’s newly launched topless Page 3 (36-23-36).
She also became a calendar model.
But it was the advert that made her name. Did the Times readers like the advert?
Readers responded:
“The Times should not use such matter which degrades womanhood and uses the female body as an eye-catcher”
Are you trying to drive away your readers by subscribing to the present advertising belief that it is only sex and nakedness that sells?”
“I hope this delightful picture has the same effect on The Times’ circulation as it does on mine.”
“It’s disgusting! It isn’t even in colour. Tut tut.”
Why Fisons? The words beneath the picture explained the company’s thinking:
Money lay at the heart of it:
On March 17 that year, the chemical company Fisons had bought out all the display advertising space in the newspaper to promote its various products, which included slimming biscuits and shampoo. Neves’s slender, curvaceous — and unclothed — figure appeared above the caption: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a firm like this?” The full-page advertisement was in black-and-white because the Editor, William (now Lord) Rees-Mogg, feared that a full-page advert of a young, female nude in glorious colour might prove too much for some readers.
William Rees Mogg, who has been appointed the new editor of The Times, in his office at Printing House Square
Ref #: PA.4557075. Date: 13/01/1967
Neves’ own mother, Iris, was surprised by her daughter’s showing in the Times:
“We’ve got used to her modelling now, but it is still a bit of a shock, especially to see it in that paper.”
Vivien was delighted:
“A whole page? Wheeee! Imagine all those men in bowler hats grumbling ‘What’s this country coming to?’”
Neves was famous.
In October 1971 she appeared briefly in small role in an episode of the Tony Curtis/Roger Moore series The Persuaders in an episode written by Daleks creator Terry Nation. Subsequently, she appeared with Curtis on the prestigious Parkinson chat show on 1st July 1972.
1973 Neves announced her retirement. Fans were bereft, one writing:
“Could you please inform the delectable Viv Neves that even if she walked down the middle of Oxford Street, wearing a pair of wellingtons, a boiler suit and a balaclava, every hot-blooded male in the vicinity would still think she is the sexiest bird in the business. Please don’t go, Viv.”
Vivien Neves, model: born Brighton, Sussex 20 November 1947; died Guildford, Surrey 29 December 2002.
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Nudes With Views – Photographs of Swinging London c. 1968
German-born photographer Frank Habicht was in London when the old and new clashed
Frank Habicht takes us back to London in the 1960s. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1938, in the 1950s Habicht was sent to study in London. Further studies at the Hamburg School of Photography in 1962 put him on the path to a career as a photographer.
He contributed to magazines such as Camera Magazine, Spigelreflex Praxis, Twen, Jasmin, Esquire, Hoer Zu, Die Welt and the Sunday Times; took pictures on the set of films by Bryan Forbes, Roman Polanski and Jules Dassin; was the house photographer for London’s Playboy Club in London; and a freelance photographer for
the BBC music hits show Top of the Pops.
He shows us that ‘swinging’ London of youth, Derek Marlowe’s A Dandy in Aspic, The Pleasure Girls, lunchtime dancing, brilliant colour and sexual revolution.
All image are from the book As it Was, which is available here.
Bare Essentials – near Knightsbridge, 1969 by Frank Habicht
Rolling Stones Concert, 1969
Gone by times, Renee at Westminster Bridge
Marriage a la Mode
Live it to the hilt – Renee, Westminster Bridge, 1968
Lost in a Dream – Serge & Jane
Fine arts student, St. Martin’s College, Holborn
My heart leaps up when I behold – King’s Road
Frank Habicht
Rupert Murdoch quits as chairman of Fox and News Corp as he hands the reins to son Lachlan
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of Fox Corporation and News Corp.
His son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become the chair of News Corp and continue as executive chair and chief executive officer of Fox Corporation.
The 92-year-old informed staff this afternoon that he would remain engaged in the company as chair emeritus.
“Our companies are in robust health, as am I. Our opportunities far exceed our commercial challenges,” he said in an internal memo.
He continued by attacking “elites” and the media: “Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth. In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas.”
Lachlan Murdoch said: "On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career.
"We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted. "We are grateful that he will serve as chairman emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel to both companies."
Ex-editor of The Sun newspaper Kelvin MacKenzie has called his former boss the "greatest media entrepreneur of this, or any other age". Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr MacKenzie also said: "It will lead to change."
Piers Morgan has hailed Mr Murdoch as a "bold, brilliant, visionary leader whose audacity & tenacity built a magnificently successful global media empire". The journalist and broadcaster was editor of Mr Murdoch's now defunct newspaper News Of The World and currently has his own programme on TalkTV, which is owned the media mogul's company News UK. Writing on X Morgan said: "Rupert Murdoch has been a bold, brilliant, visionary leader whose audacity & tenacity built a magnificently successful global media empire. "It's been a privilege to work for him on and off for the past 30 years, and an ongoing masterclass in journalism & business. Thanks Boss!"
Donald Trump Interview With Tucker Carlson Highlights
Donald Trump Tucker Carlson Interview September 2023 Part One
Donald Trump Tucker Carlson Interview September 2023 Part Two
Trump: Rupert Murdoch a ‘globalist’ trying to tear me down | The Hill
BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 08/30/23
https://thehill.com/homenews/
Former President Trump accused Rupert Murdoch, the owner and chief executive at Fox Corp., of sabotaging his campaign with negative coverage in the various media properties he owns.
“Fox News and the Wall Street Journal fight me because Murdoch is a globalist,” Trump said in a short video posted to his Truth Social website Wednesday afternoon. “And I am America First. It’s very simple, and it will always be that way, so get used to it.”
Trump has repeatedly accused Fox, specifically, and Murdoch, more generally, of trying to boost the candidacy of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the former president’s top GOP rival in the party’s 2024 primary.
In the video, Trump, who holds a double-digit lead over DeSantis and the rest of the GOP primary field, celebrated that the Florida governor was “a Murdoch pick” who has “fallen like a very badly injured bird out of the sky.”
Trump also took issue with the Wall Street Journal, another Murdoch-owned publication that has been increasingly critical of him, saying the bastion of financial news and conservative opinion commentary had “totally lost its way.”
Trump did not attend last week’s first GOP primary debate, a decision he says he made in part due to the “hostile” relationship he has with Fox and Murdoch.
Several of Fox’s top opinion hosts remain loudly supportive of Trump, including top pundits Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo and Jesse Watters.
TAGS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DONALD TRUMP FOX CORP RON DESANTIS
RUPERT MURDOCH: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Media Wizard
Neil Chenoweth, . . Crown Business, $27.50 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-609-61038-1
Veteran Aussie journalist Chenoweth impressively surveys Murdoch's decades-long business career, rendering in great detail the many bidding wars for acquisitions that have resulted in the behemoth News Corp and other Murdoch holdings. Yet this is hardly an "untold story," judging by the lengthy citations in the book's end notes, not to mention the author's previous investigative reporting on the Murdoch empire. However, Chenoweth's business-writing experience (he is a senior writer for the Australian Financial Review) makes him an ideal candidate to explain the tricky deals and slick legal maneuvers that are commonplace for Murdoch's global business. Murdoch has tremendous access to and influence on a variety of people and topics, and many readers are already familiar with Murdoch's deep pockets and insatiable interest in growth that have made him one of the world's great business legends. They will learn more about his business doings, among them the 1996 launch of Fox News and his interest in purchasing the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, despite having "hated sports as a boy" (alas, he "realized that sports stories sold newspapers"). But sadly, the subject does not come alive here, and the reader begs for details that might have illuminated him and his decisions. Chenoweth purports that an "anti-Murdoch factor" exists, but any animosity seems very distant in this account. And the tycoon's personal life, including his late-life divorce and second marriage, is glossed over, only getting some attention in the second-to-last chapter. The decision to limit discussion of his private life is a weakness, since Murdoch the man might have shed light on Murdoch the businessman. Agent, John F. Thornton. (On sale Nov. 12)
Forecast:This is not the first Murdoch biography, but many are now out of print. Crown is playing up the unauthorized angle of Chenoweth's book, and media mavens may go for it. But once word gets out that the author doesn't offer any insight or gossip, sales could fall flat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Rupert Murdoch The Untold Story of the world's greatest media wizard Rupert Murdoch
Audio of Fox News Dominion Defamation Case Article
The Australian Media Conspiracy is an extremely controversial book being published by the INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group based on a 30 plus year in depth INL News and Australian Weekend News Publishing Group Investigation Report into how immoral, unjust, devious, clandestine, wrongful, and in many instances unlawful and illegal tactics and actions have been carried out by and/or for and on behalf of News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited ... which owns and controls the premium Australian Real Estate Advertising website
to make sure all of their print and web based media competitors are wiped out and destroyed ....
to protect their multi-billion dollar assets and income in their print and web based media and advertising businesses in Australia, which includes the multi-Australian multi-billion general classified and real estate advertising market, commonly known in Australian Media Circles as
'The Rivers of Gold'
The book The Australian Media Conspiracy and a film that is being made based on the book, shows how News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Laughlan Murdoch and James Murdoch, their very silent behind the scenes Rothschild Partners, and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited have carried out and/or ordered to be carried out, immoral. clandestine, unjust, devious, wrongful and in many instances illegal and unlawful activities to destroy their print and web based media competitors
to protect their milti-billion dollar assets and income in their print and web based media and advertising businesses in Australia, which includes the multi-Australian multi-billion general classified and real estate advertising market, commonly known in Australian Media Circles as
'The Rivers of Gold'
The book The Australian Media Conspiracy and a film that is being made based on the book, shows how News Corp LLC, Keith Rupert Murdoch and his sons, Laughlan Murdoch and James Murdoch, their very silent behind the scenes Rothschild Partners, and the various directors and senior managers of News Corp LLC and its Australian controlled subsidiary publicly listed REA Group Limited have used their absolutely powerful influence and unlimited deep financial pockets to obtain help from corrupt police, corrupt political and government staff magistrates, judges, court clerks, lawyers and barristers in the legal fraternity, corrupt financiers and bankers, corrupt people in the media, corrupted private investigators, criminals, corrupted politicians, corrupted people in government departments and large business organisations, corrupted real estate agents, corrupted real estate valuers, including the head of Queensland Valuation Control Board and others to help them carry out immoral. clandestine, unjust, devious, wrongful and in many instances illegal and unlawful activities to destroy their print and web based media competitors
Historical INLNews.com Article
MurdochPapersOpenFireBBC (inlnews.com)
Murdoch Papers Open Fire BBC
Murdoch papers open fire on BBC
Why the Murdochs are wrong to blame BBC for media's woes
Mattoug" I'm sure this guy (Rupert Murdoch) has enough money, now go rest "
Mr Wijat and ERF The Worm. "James, how about true social justice, genuine love and caring for your the people that share this earth with you, independent investigative journalism and the British culture, arts and life the BBC protects and maintains for the British people...how many more billions do you and your dad Rupert need to make...in your case the normal and acceptable profit motives to make a decent living to feed your family and have a decent life style have gone to the extreme and are turning into greed and extreme abuse of your power as the most powerful people the world with the most powerful media group iu the world that has the effectual power to appoint and dismiss governments and chance the way a whole nation thinks through what they read in your newspapers, and see on your TV channels and Internet websites.. me and EFR The Worm live in an organic farm, grow and own vegetables, have our own water from the rain and underground have our own electricity from the sun and wind power and still run an international media group, International News Limited, we have not need for money other than what it costs to run the websites and other bills we have to pay as all businesses have...maybe you should take the friendly advice of Mattoug stated in the Telegraph on the 29th August, 2009, when he says,
" I'm sure this guy (Rupert Murdoch) has enough money, now go rest "
"Why doesn't he just be straight with us and say he wants to charge for online content, after all this is what he's lining us up for. If the licence fee goes, so does free online BBC content, which is one of the main threats to News Corp. I'm sure this guy already has enough money, now go rest"...Telegraph... Mattoug 29th August, 2008
Rupert and James please read this little poem by Bert E, Pratt of Perth Western Australia from the 2001 Australian Weekend News
http://www.inlnews.com/AustWeekendNews2001.html
Australian Weekend News Poem of the Month (2001)
God and Money:
God put us on this earth to make it a better place, All we have done is turn it into a rat race. We get up in the morning and drive our cars like mad, We pollute the air and kill the trees, which makes me very sad, No matter how much God gives us, We still want more and more, There does not seem to be a number that we will settle for, You ask people to help you, They look at you aghast, And walk quickly past, But when you go through the pearly gates, With your money in hand, God will gently take it off you, And whisper "everybody's equal in this land".
Bert E. Pratt
Rupert Murdoch has had to dig deep to avoid an embarrassing trial about Fox News lies
| US News | Sky News
The humiliation of a five to six-week trial would never had been remotely in his or his company's interest, commentators argued.
The truth is though that the lid had already been lifted on the inner workings of the Fox newsroom.
The true views of the anchors (they didn't believe that Dominion was part of a fraud conspiracy) had been revealed.
We saw correspondence that suggested some in the newsroom thought fact-checking was bad for business.
All this - in the form of emails and messages - was released as part of the pre-trial hearings.
In settling, Fox had prevented weeks of very embarrassing coverage. Will it prompt some introspection within the network?
Will Rupert Murdoch, for whom Fox News was always the most lucrative off-shoot from his newspapers, reflect on the company's practices?
The on-air reporting on Fox immediately after the settlement announcement tells its own story.
Anchor Howard Kurtz read Fox's statement, then added: "Much of the media was looking forward to six weeks of - frankly a lot of people in the mainstream media, anti-Fox, are now going to be deprived of that opportunity."
On the steps of court after the settlement, Dominion's CEO John Poulos said: "Truthful reporting in the media is essential to our democracy."
Cable news in America is entertainment and it's a business which relies on eyeballs. There are no laws on impartiality.
And in America's polarised and siloed society, so often, they dole out what their audiences want to hear because that's what's good for business.
Read more:
Murdoch admits some Fox News hosts 'endorsed' false claims made by Trump
Trump tried 'to defraud US', Capitol riot investigators say
Scandal and reorganization of Rupert Murdoch'
https://www.britannica.com/
By the early 21st century, Murdoch wielded considerable influence in both media and politics. However, in July 2011 he and the News Corporation came under intense scrutiny for wrongdoing at News of the World. Mounting evidence indicated that newspaper staffers had engaged in illegal and unethical behaviour, notably the hacking of mobile phone mailboxes belonging to celebrities, murder victims, and British soldiers killed in the Afghanistan War. Murdoch shuttered the newspaper later in July, but the scandal continued to grow. He subsequently testified on several occasions before British MPs, claiming that he had been unaware of the hacking. Murdoch’s son James Murdoch, considered his heir apparent, was also embroiled in the controversy and later left several key posts. In May 2012 a parliamentary panel tasked with investigating the scandal released a highly critical report, which stated that Rupert “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company” and that he showed “willful blindness” concerning misconduct within his corporation. In addition to the British inquiry, Murdoch and the News Corporation were also being investigated by FBI officials in the United States.
In June 2013 News Corporation split its print and television and media holdings. Its print division was reconstituted as News Corporation (usually referred to as News Corp). Its television and media holdings became the much-larger and more-profitable conglomerate 21st Century Fox. In 2015 Murdoch was succeeded as CEO at 21st Century Fox by James Murdoch, but he continued to chair both corporations. In 2017 he agreed to sell most of the holdings of 21st Century Fox to the Disney Company. Two years later the deal closed and was valued at about $71 billion. The hugely profitable Fox News and various other TV channels were excluded from the sale, and they became part of the newly formed Fox Corporation. During this time Murdoch also led a bid to acquire full control of Sky but was outbid by Comcast in 2018; later that year Fox sold its shares in Sky.
During this time Murdoch’s eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, assumed increasingly prominent posts within News Corp, eventually becoming cochair with his father. In September 2023 Rupert Murdoch announced that he would be retiring in November, and Lachlan Murdoch was slated to become sole chair of News Corp.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
Murdoch deal will struggle to be fair and balanced | Reuters
NEW YORK, Nov 17 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Rupert Murdoch knows how to spin a story. To sell the idea of reuniting his Fox (FOXA.O) television and News Corp (NWSA.O) tabloid businesses, the 91-year-old media mogul will have to marshal his strongest and most creative pitch yet.
A decade ago, Murdoch split his movies-to-books empire because it had become too broad and complex. In 2019, his eldest son Lachlan insisted that the slimmed-down Fox, which had just completed the sale of its studios and entertainment networks to Walt Disney (DIS.N), could “see no logic in reversing the benefits” of the earlier breakup decision and vowed that “we will not reunite with News Corporation.” It’s hard to see what has changed.
As it stands, both $16 billion Fox and $10 billion News Corp suffer from significant valuation discounts, partly due to their common owner’s grip. Rupert Murdoch and his family trust control roughly 40% of the vote at each company, and although his wheeling and dealing over the decades has generated value for shareholders, his mercurial approach warrants a large dollop of skepticism.
To see how big, look at today’s News Corp, which is more an online real estate company than a newspaper publisher. It owns roughly 62% of Australian housing portal REA, a stake worth $6.7 billion based on its Wednesday closing price in Sydney. News Corp also owns 80% of U.S.-based Move, home to Realtor.com and other similar sites. Valued on a conservative 2 times expected revenue – about half the multiple rival Zillow (ZG.O) commands for its core technology sales – the stake would be worth some $900 million, according to Breakingviews calculations.
The implication is that the rest of the News Corp enterprise, including about $1.5 billion in net debt, is worth just $4.2 billion. Yet analysts expect Dow Jones, with its Wall Street Journal and other professional subscription services, to generate some $500 million of EBITDA in the year to June 2023, per Refinitiv data. On the same 16 times multiple as New York Times (NYT.N), it would be worth about $8 billion.
The HarperCollins publisher of bestsellers by Don Winslow, Ann Patchett and others is worth at least another $2 billion if valued at 7 times forecast EBITDA. Meanwhile, Australian, British and American newspapers such as The Times and New York Post, on the same valuation multiple as peer Gannett (GCI.N), tally nearly $900 million. News Corp’s 65% stake in Australian video-streaming business Foxtel could be pegged at some $2.7 billion if Dish Network (DISH.O) is any guide. After subtracting some $2 billion of capitalized corporate costs, it all adds up to $18 billion, suggesting that News Corp’s market value is about 40% less than the sum of its parts.
It's a similar story at Fox. The TV portfolio also contains a Hollywood studio lot, stakes in sports betting sites FanDuel and Flutter Entertainment, and deferred tax losses that can offset future profit. These ancillary assets are worth some $6 billion, MoffettNathanson analysts reckon, after netting out a negative value for its holding in a U.S. college sports network.
Subtract these assets and factor in $2.3 billion of net debt, and the implication is that the main Fox broadcasting enterprise is worth around $12.4 billion, or less than 4 times expected EBITDA. Rival Paramount Global (PARA.O) trades on more than 9 times.
THUMB ON THE SCALE
If Murdoch’s two dissimilar media outlets are struggling to achieve full recognition from investors in their current form, it’s unclear why they would come into better focus under one corporate roof. Fox boss Lachlan Murdoch declined to comment earlier this month on merger prospects, but suggested in response to a question that size was one reason that special board committees of both companies are studying a potential deal.
“Scale is important,” he said. “And what we've seen amongst our media peers over the last few years, our peers getting bigger through mergers and acquisitions.”
It’s true that a union might yield some small cost savings, greater negotiating power with advertisers and a stronger balance sheet, but such merits will be hard to impress upon News Corp shareholders. They back a company increasingly reliant on more durable subscription revenue, while Fox depends on volatile marketing budgets that happen to be shrinking as corporate bosses brace for a potential recession.
What’s more, having weathered a phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch’s UK newspapers, News Corp owners will be understandably hesitant about absorbing the U.S. legal and reputational risks facing Fox News. They include a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems accusing the network of falsely claiming the voting machine company rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election against former President Donald Trump. The ageing Fox News audience is another justifiable concern.
At least one investor wants News Corp to get smaller, not bigger. Irenic Capital, which owns about a $150 million stake, is urging the company led by Robert Thomson to separate the online real estate businesses. Even if News Corp rejects the idea, there are better ways for it to get bigger than as the junior partner in an all-share merger with Fox.
Rupert Murdoch may have ulterior motives that include possibly succession planning. Still, he will need to make a strong case for the financial logic of any transaction, as both companies would have to secure support from a majority of the non-Murdoch votes.
The mogul has overcome resistance before. As Morningstar’s Australia-based Brian Han recently noted, “Over the 25-year span of covering News Corp in its various forms, this analyst has never encountered a corporate transaction where the wishes of the Murdoch family were not met.” This time, though, those wishes will have to bend to those of a more diverse group.
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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CONTEXT NEWS
The boards of directors at Fox and News Corp said on Oct. 14 they are forming special committees to explore a merger. Rupert Murdoch and his family trust control about 42% of Fox voting shares and 39% of News Corp voting shares.
The companies split in 2013.
Editing by Peter Thal Larsen and Amanda Gomez
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
The Dirty Truth About All the Murdochs’ Scandals | Vanity Fair
To understand the ethical and moral morass facing the Murdoch empire, skip Fox News Channel and take a walk to your local supermarket or pharmacy.
Be it the produce or dental hygiene aisles, you’ll find why the mess is not just a one-off at a 21st Century Fox subsidiary with a wayward culture and apparently long-dormant human resources department. Look closely at ads all around those places, be it frozen foods, jams or cottons balls and shaving cream.
When it came to the New Jersey upstart, Murdoch’s minions went out to crush them. There was evidence of hacking into the small rival’s computer system to learn what it was charging clients like Smucker’s
Hacking? It’s synonymous with the Murdoch scandal that prompted the demise of his giant News of the World newspaper.
The settlement with that small rival now pales by comparison to others, including $500 million to a big rival and the $280 million last year to Murdoch clients such as H.J. Heinz and Dial.
So what’s a connection among the advertising nastiness, the News of the World demise and the Bill O’Reilly-Roger Ailes saga at Fox News?
They all underscore a thesis propounded in a 2003 Atlantic piece by James Fallows. It argued that politics were rather less important to Murdoch than business. “He is principally a businessman, of conventional business-conservative views, who vents those views when possible but not when they interfere with any important corporate goal.”
Fallows was gracious when I recalled the piece, though I do wonder why I recall that and not scores of my kids’ soccer and baseball games over the weekend. And I agree with his nostalgic recollection to me of a time “when we thought that Dick Cheney was about as bad as American politics could produce.”
Murdoch has a regulatory challenge in Britain with a proposed $14.6 billion deal to take a majority interest in European broadcasting giant Sky. He wants to clear the decks of some Fox-related questions, which in part may explain the belated farewell to O’Reilly.
“Why didn’t the Murdochs deal with Ailes before the scandal came to light?” Folkenflik wrote me. “Or O’Reilly? One answer is that each man made them a lot of money.”
It’s why the NPR media reporter and former Baltimore Sun stalwart believes Roger Ailes and O’Reilly aren’t any “one-off.” Ditto the British hacking scandal.
Rupert Murdoch let Ailes create a culture that was only reined in when its outrages could no longer be publicly avoided. And, when things get too close for comfort, he takes out his checkbook.
“He’s got strong ideological beliefs, but Murdoch has no values above profit, loyalty and pragmatism,” said Folkenflik. “And that means, of course, he most values whoever is able and willing to advance his journalistic outfits so they can advance the political figures he happens to support so they can make decisions to benefit his business holdings.”
Remember that next time you’re in the dairy or frozen food sections of your nearby grocery.
The price of corporate failure
“Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Marissa Mayer is set to make some $186 million as a result of the internet company’s sale of its core business to Verizon Communications Inc., according to securities filings.”
Again, the outrages in our midst are often what are perfectly legal.
So much for adverse media attention
“Preorders for Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 smartphone set a new record for the company previously held by its predecessor, the S7, as customers seem to have moved past the battery issues that caused the Note 7 to overheat and sometimes explode.” (The Street)
Headline of the day
“In midst of custody battle, Alex Jones reveals that at 16, ‘I’d already had over 150 women.’” (Austin American-Statesman)
Thanks to Jonathan Tilove, the paper’s chief political writer, for deciphering and essentially decoding a bizarre video issued by Jones.
“Jones’ assertion that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was, or may have been, a hoax, is probably the most off-putting conspiracy theory he has put forward in a career of conspiracy theorizing – the one that more than any other a lot of people can’t forgive him for,” he writes.
But that’s just the start. If you are totally forlorn, and have several hours to waste today, check out some of the video.
The Venture Reality Fund
“HP is putting on its headsets. One of the world’s oldest technology companies is investing in the fledgling virtual reality market by becoming an investor in The Venture Reality Fund.” (Upload)
The Venture Reality Fund? Here it is. “The exact amount wasn’t disclosed. But HP Tech Ventures, the new corporate venture arm of HP, has joined as an investor in The VR Fund, which has become one of the most active investors in VR, augmented reality, and mixed reality startups. It is HP’s first move into VR investments.”
Last night
“Tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air,” David Muir intoned last evening. Earthquake? Rumors of Rex Tillerson returning to Exxon Mobil? Another North Korean missile test? No. “Donald Trump, the first 100 days.”
Well, it’s presumably developing since, uh, there are four days left before the 100-day milestone. There was also the alleged specter of a possible government shutdown, as well as “what voters told me” during a trek to assess popular sentiment. There was melodramatic heralding of “flood emergencies,” or what seems ABC’s nightly saga of meteorological disarray, and an utterly banal plug for the new book by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who sits on the board of ABC’s parent, Disney.
NBC’s Lester Holt turned faux ESPN anchor by likening the White House to “a team trying to put more points on the board before the quarter ends” (as opposed to a team not trying to do same?). And informing that none of its plans “are easy lay-ups.” A rhetorical strikeout.
It did good pieces on the French elections (in partly relying on Laurence Haim, frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s spokesman and, until recently if unmentioned, a longtime Washington journalist) and black market drugs. And then was its global exclusive interview with Faye Dunaway about the Oscars mix-up. There’d be more, he promised, on Today Tuesday.
CBS News and Scott Pelley were more systematic on Trump promises vs. reality and the funding for a border wall. It also reminded that there’s a bigger world out there, looking at a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and allegations of Russian aid to them. Like everybody else, it found reason to regurgitate video of the American Airlines flight attendant going bonkers.
Vice News Tonight on HBO dispensed with that video and opted for a deadly anti-government uprising in Venezuela, the French election (without glorifying Macron), the interesting history of a drug improbably used in executions (Midazolam) and an organization training scientists to run for political office.
But it won’t avoid the media’s “100 days” convention, promoting a Friday night special edition on just that topic.
If you do want to watch the White House dinner...
Per usual, C-SPAN will air the entire Trump-less White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday as Trump himself holds a competing event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Samantha Bee holds her own in Washington (to be aired on TBS).
Millennial ethics
I remember a Northwestern professor telling me about showing The Social Network and being taken aback that students didn’t care about the sloppy ethics of Mark Zuckerberg. I’ll send him this:
“New Survey: most millennials both pay for streaming services and use pirate streams when content isn’t legally available.” (TechDirt)
Watching Death Row
Two were executed by the state of Arkansas last night. Who’s next? It’s Arkansas again in two days. Check The Marshall Project’s The Next to Die.
A Comey-Clinton postscript
The New York Times offered a well-considered postscript to its cataclysmic campaign story that inspectors general had requested the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation “into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information via her private email server while secretary of state.”
The pushback was vigorous and prompted an initially defensive Times to issue two corrections and an editor’s note. Now its own weekend disclosure, in a piece about FBI Director James Comey and the campaign, underscores that things could have been far, far worse for the Clinton campaign, as The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple details fairly and well. In sum:
“Now we know that the New York Times was understating matters. A look-back investigation published over the weekend...brings forth a stunning fact that frames the cataclysm over The New York Times’s exclusive: About two weeks before the paper’s scoop triggered such a backlash, the FBI had opened a criminal investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, under the code name Midyear.”
Wemple asks Dean Baquet, The Times’ editor, if there might now be another clarification some sort and he responds, “good question. It was, in fact, a criminal investigation. From the very beginning.”
Better news at The Times
The New York Times’ new The Daily podcast, “which serves up a daily blend of reporting and headlines with a narrative twist, has been a hit. On April 14, less than three months after its February debut, The Daily had been downloaded and streamed a combined 20 million times. It’s rocketed into the iTunes stratosphere alongside competitors including Up and Vanished, Stuff You Should Know and The Bernie Sanders Show.” (Poynter)
A BuzzFeed modus operandi
Recode details how a 12-person BuzzFeed squad cranks out pieces like 26 Useful Gifts College Grads Will Actually Want that “are crafted exclusively to drive sales to partners like Amazon and other retailers, from which BuzzFeed earns a cut of the sale through so-called affiliate links.”
The morning babble
Fox & Friends praised Trump for being “flexible” in not insisting money be found by Friday for a border wall (and reveled in a mediocre Washington Post review of Elizabeth Warren’s new book), while CNN’s New Day asserted he’d blinked in the face of a possible government shutdown and MSNBC’s Morning Joe offered polling to suggest he’s “swimming upstream,” as Joe Scarborough put it, on free trade, immigration and health care.
Will the wall ever happen? Veteran D.C. reporter A.B. Stoddard, now of RealClearPolitics, suggested on CNN that it probably won’t. Will Fox’s “flexibility” morph into surrender?
Trump priorities
“Trump promises government will continue to fund all essential Mar-a-lago staff during shutdown.”
David Muir, Lester Holt, Scott Pelley and Vice all missed this. Knock on wood that The Onion did not, even if real news this morning includes the State Department yanking a Mar-a-lago promotion from its website.
The Dirty Truth About All the Murdochs’ Scandals
CASE STUDY: NEWS CORP
News Corp is looking to its Australian markets and digital real estate to help drive growth. While the digital real estate division accounts for about 45% of News Corp’s total value, according to Forbes’ estimates, it only accounts for about 14% of total revenue. In early 2018, News Corp saw the writing on the wall. In its second-quarter earnings report, there were signs of optimism. Revenue and earnings per share beat Wall Street expectations. Digital revenues at The Wall Street Journal continued to rise. But News Corp’s financial statements also showed big changes were ahead. Print ad revenue fell 6% year-over-year. While digital resources continued to grow, the company’s news and information brands faced claims from some, including U.S. President Donald Trump, of spreading fake news. “The potential returns for our journalism would be far higher in a less chaotic, less debased digital environment,” said CEO Robert Thomson on the February 2018 earnings call. What do these trends reveal about News Corp’s future?
Read more about News Corp’s history below.
Timeline
1952
In October, Australian newspaperman Sir Keith Murdoch dies. His son, Keith Rupert Murdoch inherits the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd.
1960
After acquiring a series of local newspapers across the country, Murdoch makes a big move in May by buying the Sydney Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror.
1964
The Australian launches. It’s the first newspaper created by Murdoch and the country’s first national daily.
1969
Murdoch wins a bidding war against Robert Maxwell for the News of the World in the U.K. He buys the Sun and relaunches it as a tabloid.
1973
Murdoch makes his first U.S. foray in Texas, buying the San Antonio Express and the San Antonio News.
1976
Murdoch enters an even bigger U.S. market, buying the New York Post for $30 million.
1979
News Corp reorganizes itself as a holding company with Australian, U.K. and U.S. assets.
1981
News Corp buys the UK Times and Sunday Times.
1983
News Corp acquires the Chicago Sun-Times and enters the satellite TV business. Murdoch buys the UK’s Satellite Television and renames it Sky. He also acquires a 6.7% stake in Warner Communications.
1985
News Corp buys half of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. Murdoch is sworn in as a U.S. citizen, paving the way for him to purchase U.S. TV assets.
1986
NewsCorp sells the Chicago Sun-Times and buys Metromedia for $1.9 billion. The entity’s six television stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Washington become the backbone of the Fox Television network.
1988
The New York Post is sold.
1989
Sky Television launches in the UK, and HarperCollins is formed by a merger of book publishers.
1990
News Corp debts reach $7 billion, prompting bankruptcy worries and putting Murdoch’s control of the company in jeopardy.
1993
News Corp buys back the New York Post and expands into Asia with a stake in Star TV.
1994
Fox Television expands after Murdoch buys a 20% stake in New World’s 12 major market stations. These networks switch their affiliations to Fox. The initial public offering of Sky in the UK nets News Corp $1.3 billion.
1996
Fox News launches.
1997
News Corp and Fox acquire the remaining 80% of New World.
1998
Fox Entertainment Group’s IPO raises $2.8 billion.
2000
Sky Global Networks emerges to create a global network, with a reach from the UK to Latin America. Fox Television Stations acquires 10 more networks for $5.35 billion, giving the group the largest footprint in the U.S. market.
2003
NewsCorp enters the satellite TV market, acquiring one-third of DirecTV owner Hughes Electronics for $6.6 billion in cash and stock.
2005
Murdoch shocks many in the industry when he purchases MySpace, the largest social media site in the world, surpassing even Google in terms of visitors.
2007
(Retrieved from Fox Business)
Murdoch buys the Wall Street Journal’s parent, Dow Jones, for $5 billion. The Fox Business news channel launches.
2010
Wall Street analysts and investors begin to voice concern that the newspaper industry woes were dragging down News Corp’s stock price.
2013
In June, News Corp formally splits into two entities, with 21st Century Fox housing the television, film, and supporting digital enterprises. This separation, Murdoch predicts, will “unlock the true value” of both companies and allow investors “to benefit from the strategic opportunities” of each company. The stock of the “new” News Corp debuts at around $15 a share, rose as high as $18 before settling in around the $12 to $14 range.
2015
The two-year-old “publishing company” is composed of five divisions:
1) News and Information Services: newspapers in the U.S., Europe and Asia—including such prestigious brands as the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London, popular tabloids such as the New York Post and the Sun, and 120 newspapers in Australia—as well as a North American direct-mail and coupon-marketing service
2) Book Publishing: HarperCollins — the venerable New York Harper & Row, purchased by News Corp in 1987 and merged with British publisher William Collins & Son in 1990
3) Digital Real Estate Services: A partial interest in REA—which operates websites in Australia, China and Europe, advertising commercial and residential listings—and Move, which operates similar websites in the United States
4) Cable Network Programming: FOX SPORTS, the leading sports programming producer in Australia
5) Digital Education: Amplify, a tablet-based instructional program for K-12 that incorporated the Common Core Standards into a multi-media presentation.
In October, News Corp takes an impairment charge of $370 million against its digital education division and the company sells Amplify, which it purchased for $390 million in 2011, for an undisclosed sum. By year’s end, the company reports revenues of $8.63 billion, a 1% increase compared to the prior year. Growth comes from the Book Publishing and Digital Real Estate Services segments, as a result of acquiring of Harlequin Enterprises Limited (“Harlequin”) and Move, Inc. (“Move”).
2016
NewsCorp reports fiscal 2016 4Q total revenues of $2.2 billion, a 5% climb from the previous year. Growth in the Digital Real Estate Services and Book Publishing segments continue to be partially offset by lower advertising revenues in the News and Information Services segment. While digital ad revenue is sluggish, audiences across several news properties rise. The WSJ reached 948,000 digital-only subscribers. News UK, The Times and The Sunday Times hit 182,500 digital-only subscribers. Digital subscriptions account for nearly half of the subscriber base, while print sales rise tangibly. The Sun’s website relaunches, with over 42 million global unique users and a lifted paywall.
2017
Digital Real Estate Services continue to power News Corp’s fiscal-year growth. It accounts for nearly 40% of the company’s profits. HarperCollins posts higher EBITDA and margins through books with broad appeal including The Magnolia Story and Hillbilly Elegy. Digital audio is cited as a source of long-term growth. In November, Murdoch reportedly offers to buy CNN but was turned down.
2018
News Corp reports 3% growth in revenue for Q4 in 2017. While its digital real-estate unit continues to prosper, the news and information services division remains plagued by dwindling ad revenues.
In May, NewsCorp reports a 6% gain in revenue, driven by digital real estate and book publishing. Key titles include The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn and The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi Kathie Lee Gifford. News & information services revenue jumps 2% compared to the previous year.
In August, News Corp closes out FY18 with a $1.4 billion net loss but sees a 12% rise among its Australian digital subscriptions. News Corp also launches Kayo Sports, dubbed the “Netflix of Sports,” which offers a massive lineup of sports streaming service to Australian consumers, ranging from rugby to college basketball to European soccer.
2019
In January. News Corp announces Sean Giancola will
In February, News Corp releases Q2 results, which show promising growth for various divisions in the media enterprise. News Corp continues to experience growth from its digital real estate division, which contributes to 44% of total company EBITDA. Revenues in this division increase 8% and EBITDA increases by 11%. The HarperCollins division achieves record revenue and segment EBITDA in Q2.
As of late, digital real estate is driving News Corp’s bottom line.
Interested in learning more about how a single division can affect the future of a large media company? Read more about News Corp’s book publishing division in The Strategic Digital Media Entrepreneur, pgs. 43-45.
News Corp Timeline Sources:
Australian Press timeline:
https://www.nla.gov.au/anplan/
Financial Times timeline:
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/
Annual/Quarterly Reports:
2017 — https://newscorp.com/2017/
CMO Today: Murdoch’s CNN Calls
News Corp Revenue Boosted by Digital Real Estate Unit
https://www.wsj.com/articles/
News Corp earnings boosted by real estate, books
https://www.marketwatch.com/
News Corp finishes fiscal year with a net loss but paid subscriptions rise
News Corp continues to benefit from digital real estate growth
News Corp launches Kayo Sports in Australia
2017
Digital Real Estate Services continue to power News Corp’s fiscal-year growth. It accounts for nearly 40% of the company’s profits. HarperCollins posts higher EBITDA and margins through books with broad appeal including The Magnolia Story and Hillbilly Elegy. Digital audio is cited as a source of long-term growth. In November, Murdoch reportedly offers to buy CNN but was turned down.
2018
News Corp reports 3% growth in revenue for Q4 in 2017. While its digital real-estate unit continues to prosper, the news and information services division remains plagued by dwindling ad revenues.
In May, NewsCorp reports a 6% gain in revenue, driven by digital real estate and book publishing. Key titles include The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn and The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi Kathie Lee Gifford. News & information services revenue jumps 2% compared to the previous year.
Rupert Murdoch was ever a master strategist, but he’s beginning to lose his grip | Rupert Murdoch | The Guardian
"Trump may have been an idiot, but suddenly he had become a useful one, as Lenin might have put it.."
There are, as F Scott Fitzgerald famously observed – and as Rupert Murdoch is now belatedly discovering, “no second acts in American lives”. Last week, just as the trial of the $1.6bn defamation action brought by Dominion against Fox News was about to start, a “settlement” was reached between the two parties. Fox, of which Murdoch is CEO, paid nearly $800m to stop the proceedings.
Given how highly Murdoch values his image as a swaggering media giant, it was probably money well spent. Otherwise he would have had to testify under oath and the world would see not the robust titan of popular legend but an elderly mogul who is physically frail and, more importantly, who could not stop his TV station pandering to Donald Trump for fear of alienating the audience that had turned Fox News into such a profitable cash cow.
It’s beginning to look as though the titan’s career may be ending with a whimper rather than a bangAll of a sudden, it’s beginning to look as though the titan’s career may be ending with a whimper rather than a bang. Indeed, there have been times recently when one wonders whether Murdoch is losing the plot. Last June, for example, he suddenly dumped his fourth wife, the supermodel Jerry Hall – who, as far as outsiders can tell, had been an exemplary spouse and cared for him during several bouts of serious illness. Then, a few weeks ago, he announced his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a former model and conservative radio host. Two weeks later, the engagement was off.
Whatever else it is, this doesn’t look like the behaviour of a strategic genius. And yet Murdoch’s success in building a global media empire indicates great strategic acumen, with the odd dash of military-style bravado.
His invasion of Britain began with the acquisition of the News of the World and then the Sun, followed eventually by Times Newspapers. This last acquisition first revealed his basic modus operandi: identify key politicians and get them on side.
When he set out to acquire Times Newspapers in 1981, for example, his objective was to prevent the takeover being referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which might well have blocked it on competition grounds. So a secret lunch in Chequers was arranged with the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, after which she returned to No 10 and did a minor reshuffle of two ministers to ensure that John Nott, the trade minister who would be overseeing the acquisition, was moved to defence and replaced by John Biffen, a gentle and innocent soul who knew little about media. The deal went through without ever being referred to the commission. QED.
This set the pattern for Murdoch’s career. His interest in politics has always been entirely instrumental. His newspapers gave Thatcher their support at a time when she badly needed it; and she in turn provided assistance when he needed it, especially when it involved the destruction of trade union power. After Murdoch secretly moved all his printing operations overnight to Wapping in an astonishingly bold move to break the print unions, the Metropolitan police effectively became a strike-breaking army to stop pickets from barring entry to, and exit from, the new plant.
Murdoch detested the British establishment and many of the country’s institutions (like the BBC). The dislike was heartily reciprocated. When the playwright Dennis Potter was dying of cancer, he christened the tumour that was killing him “Rupert”.
Murdoch tabloids often behaved outrageously and sometimes criminally but he remained indifferent to the public obloquy they engendered because, for him, the UK was actually a sideshow. His main interest was in conquering the United States, to which he moved in the 1980s and where he became a naturalised citizen to enable him to own media properties there.
Which he proceeded to do, setting up the Fox News channel in 1996, and later buying the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. So it was more or less inevitable that he would eventually have to deal with Donald Trump.
When the tycoon started his run for president in 2016, Murdoch was appalled. He volubly expressed his view that the candidate was “an idiot”, and was incensed by Trump’s opposition to immigration, by his nativism and what Murdoch regarded as his “know-nothingism”. During the primary campaign, his WSJ even waged a media campaign against Trump.
But when Trump was elected, Murdoch’s political utilitarianism kicked in immediately. Fox News became, as Vanity Fair puts it, “de facto state TV”. Trump may have been an idiot, but suddenly he had become a useful one, as Lenin might have put it. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump invited Murdoch to the White House. There’s an interesting photograph of the two of them, with a delighted Michael Gove looking even more of a gargoyle than usual.
It’s not clear how useful Murdoch’s new access to the president was, but it seems likely that his complaints about Google and Facebook undermining newspapers’ business models played a role in persuading the justice department to open an antitrust inquiry into Google. There are also stories that Murdoch suggested that Trump should open up more land for fracking (he obliged), and appoint supreme court justices who opposed abortion (ditto).
Biden’s victory in the 2020 election upended this applecart. But it was Trump’s refusal to accept the result that really put the squeeze on Murdoch. Fox News was pushing the “stolen election” propaganda, laced with conspiracy theories and the preposterous claim that algorithms in Dominion voting machines secretly switched votes to Biden somehow at the behest of the Venezuelan government (I am not making this up). All of this Murdoch in his prime would have stopped. But he didn’t. He may yet live to regret it.
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Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama
BY GABRIEL SHERMAN APRIL 12, 2023
ALTHOUGH HE IS A NONAGENARIAN INTENT ON LIVING FOREVER, MURDOCH HAS BEEN CONSUMED WITH THE QUESTION OF HIS SUCCESSION. HE LONG WANTED ONE OF HIS THREE CHILDREN FROM HIS SECOND WIFE, ANNA—ELISABETH, 54, LACHLAN, 51, AND JAMES, 50—TO TAKE OVER THE COMPANY ONE DAY. MURDOCH BELIEVED A DARWINIAN STRUGGLE WOULD PRODUCE THE MOST CAPABLE HEIR. “HE PITTED HIS KIDS AGAINST EACH OTHER THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. IT’S SAD,” A PERSON CLOSE TO THE FAMILY SAID. ELISABETH WAS BY MANY ACCOUNTS THE SHARPEST, BUT SHE IS A WOMAN, AND MURDOCH SUBSCRIBED TO OLD-FASHIONED PRIMOGENITURE. SHE QUIT THE FAMILY BUSINESS IN 2000 AND LAUNCHED HER OWN PHENOMENALLY SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION PRODUCTION COMPANY. LACHLAN SHARED MURDOCH’S RIGHT-WING POLITICS AND ATAVISTIC LOVE FOR NEWSPRINT AND THEIR HOMELAND, AUSTRALIA. “LACHLAN WAS THE GOLDEN CHILD,” THE PERSON CLOSE TO THE FAMILY SAID. BUT MURDOCH WORRIED THAT HIS EASYGOING SON, WHO SEEMED HAPPIEST ROCK CLIMBING, DID NOT WANT THE TOP JOB BADLY ENOUGH. IN 2005, LACHLAN, THEN NEWS CORP’S DEPUTY CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, QUIT AND MOVED BACK TO SYDNEY AFTER CLASHING WITH FOX NEWS CHIEF ROGER AILES AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER PETER CHERNIN. THAT LEFT JAMES AS THE HEIR APPARENT. FOR THE NEXT DECADE, JAMES CLIMBED THE RANKS, VOWING TO MAKE THE MURDOCH EMPIRE CARBON-NEUTRAL AND INVESTING IN PRESTIGE MEDIA BRANDS LIKE HULU AND THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL. BUT JAMES’S LIBERAL POLITICS AND DESIRE TO MAKE NEWS CORP RESPECTED IN ELITE CIRCLES RANKLED MURDOCH, WHO CONTINUED TO WOO LACHLAN WITH AHAB-LIKE DETERMINATION. IN 2015, THE OLDER SON AGREED TO RETURN FROM AUSTRALIA AS HIS FATHER’S HEIR. “IT WAS A BIG SLAP IN THE FACE,” A PERSON CLOSE TO JAMES SAID.
ASCENDING TO THE THRONE AND HOLDING ON TO IT ARE DIFFERENT PROPOSITIONS. LACHLAN’S FUTURE WILL BE DECIDED BY HIS SIBLINGS, ALL OF WHOM SIT ON THE BOARD OF THE TRUST THAT CONTROLS THE COMPANY THROUGH A SPECIAL CLASS OF STOCK. ACCORDING TO SOURCES BRIEFED ON THE TRUST’S GOVERNANCE, MURDOCH HAS FOUR VOTES WHILE ELISABETH, LACHLAN, JAMES, AND PRUDENCE, MURDOCH’S DAUGHTER FROM HIS FIRST MARRIAGE, EACH HAVE ONE. MURDOCH’S DAUGHTERS CHLOE AND GRACE FROM HIS THIRD MARRIAGE, TO WENDI DENG, HAVE A FINANCIAL STAKE BUT NO VOTING RIGHTS. AFTER MURDOCH’S DEATH, HIS VOTES WILL BE DISTRIBUTED EQUALLY AMONG THE FOUR ELDEST CHILDREN, THE SOURCE SAID. “THE QUESTION IS, WHEN RUPERT DIES, HOW ARE THE KIDS ALIGNED?” SAID A FORMER NEWS CORP EXECUTIVE.
“IF WE LOSE THIS SUIT, IT’S FUCKING BAD,” A SENIOR FOX STAFFER TOLD ME.
THE CENTRAL FAULT LINE REMAINS THE RIFT BETWEEN JAMES AND LACHLAN. ACCORDING TO SOURCES, THE BROTHERS NO LONGER SPEAK. JAMES IS HORRIFIED BY FOX NEWS AND TELLS PEOPLE THE NETWORK’S EMBRACE OF CLIMATE DENIALISM, WHITE NATIONALISM, AND STOLEN ELECTION CONSPIRACIES IS A MENACE TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. BUT TO OVERTHROW LACHLAN AND GET CONTROL OF FOX, JAMES NEEDS ELISABETH AND PRUDENCE TO BACK HIM—AND THAT IS HARDLY ASSURED. “JAMES IS A LONE WOLF,” THE FORMER NEWS CORP EXECUTIVE SAID. POLITICALLY, ELISABETH IS LIBERAL, BUT SHE HAS REMAINED CLOSE WITH RUPERT AND LACHLAN; SHE SAT IN A BOX WITH THE PAIR AT THE SUPER BOWL. A PERSON CLOSE TO ELISABETH SAYS SHE WANTS TO ENJOY THE TIME SHE HAS LEFT WITH HER FATHER. “SHE’S TERRIFIED OF RUPERT DYING MAD AT HER,” THE SOURCE SAID. PRUDENCE, WHO HAS STAYED OUT OF THE FAMILY BUSINESS, “IS A WILD CARD,” THE FORMER NEWS CORP EXECUTIVE SAID.
WHILE THE FINALE UNFOLDS, MURDOCH IS TRYING TO PROVE HE HAS ONE LAST ACT IN HIM. BUT HIS ERRATIC PERFORMANCE, WHICH HAS THROWN HIS PERSONAL LIFE AND MEDIA EMPIRE INTO DISARRAY, HAS LEFT EVEN THOSE IN HIS ORBIT WONDERING IF HE’S LOST THE PLOT. LAST JUNE, MURDOCH ABRUPTLY LEFT HIS FOURTH WIFE, MODEL-ACTOR JERRY HALL. FOR TWO BRIEF WEEKS THIS SPRING, HE WAS ENGAGED TO ANN LESLEY SMITH, A 66-YEAR-OLD FORMER DENTAL HYGIENIST TURNED CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST WITH QANON-STYLE POLITICS. (SMITH TOLD AN INTERVIEWER IN 2022 THAT COVID WAS A “PLANDEMIC” HATCHED BY BILL GATES AT DAVOS.) “RUPERT HAS BEEN RADICALIZED BY HIS OWN ECHO CHAMBER,” SAID A PERSON CLOSE TO HIM, EXPLAINING HIS INITIAL ATTRACTION TO SMITH. IN JANUARY, MURDOCH SCUTTLED A PLAN TO MERGE FOX AND NEWS CORP—WHICH WOULD HAVE CENTRALIZED LACHLAN’S CONTROL OVER THE TELEVISION AND PUBLISHING DIVISIONS—AFTER MAJOR SHAREHOLDERS BALKED. “IT WAS A HAREBRAINED SCHEME. THEY GOT THEIR ASS HANDED TO THEM BY INVESTORS,” SAID A PERSON CLOSE TO THE MURDOCHS.
MURDOCH’S MOST DAMAGING ERROR, THOUGH, HAS BEEN FOX NEWS’S COVERAGE OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S 2020 DEFEAT AND ITS AFTERMATH. THE CRISIS HAS LED TO AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT: THE $1.6 BILLION DEFAMATION LAWSUIT DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS BROUGHT AGAINST FOX NEWS. THE BLOCKBUSTER TRIAL IS SET TO BEGIN IN APRIL, BUT EVEN IF THE PARTIES SETTLE BEFORE THEN, DOMINION’S LEGAL FILINGS HAVE ALREADY PUBLICIZED INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS THAT REVEALED THOSE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF FOX NEWS DIDN’T BELIEVE TRUMP’S STOLEN ELECTION CONSPIRACIES EVEN AS THE NETWORK WAS CRAVENLY PROMOTING THE LIES FOR RATINGS. (IN ONE EMAIL, MURDOCH CALLED TRUMP’S FRAUD CLAIMS “REALLY CRAZY STUFF.”) I’VE COVERED FOX NEWS FOR MORE THAN A DECADE AND WROTE A 2014 BIOGRAPHY OF AILES, ITS LONGTIME CHAIRMAN AND CEO. THE DOMINION LAWSUIT IS THE WORST CRISIS AT THE NETWORK I’VE SEEN. IN THEIR OWN WORDS, FOX HOSTS HAVE BEEN EXPOSED AS PROPAGANDISTS. “IF WE LOSE THIS SUIT, IT’S FUCKING BAD,” A SENIOR FOX STAFFER TOLD ME.
THERE IS AN IRONY TO MURDOCH’S CURRENT WOES. HE MONETIZED OUTRAGE AND GRIEVANCE TO BUILD A CONSERVATIVE MEDIA EMPIRE THAT INFLUENCED POLITICS ON THREE CONTINENTS FOR THE LAST HALF CENTURY. NOW THESE SAME FORCES ARE THREATENING TO DESTROY HIS LEGACY, HIS STILL-VAST MEDIA EMPIRE, AND THE FAMILY THAT STANDS TO INHERIT IT.
TO UNDERSTAND HOW MURDOCH GOT TO THIS EMBATTLED CHAPTER OF HIS REIGN, IT’S HELPFUL TO GO BACK TO 2015 AND A BRIEF MOMENT WHEN HE HAD EVERYTHING HE WANTED. HE HAD RECRUITED HIS FAVORITE SON, LACHLAN, BACK TO NEWS CORP AFTER A 10-YEAR ABSENCE TO BE HIS HEIR APPARENT. HE HAD REHIRED REBEKAH BROOKS, THE FORMER CEO OF HIS BRITISH TABLOIDS, WHOM MURDOCH TREATED LIKE A SURROGATE DAUGHTER, AFTER A LONDON JURY ACQUITTED HER OF FOUR CRIMINAL CHARGES RELATED TO THE PHONE-HACKING SCANDAL THAT ROILED HIS UK BUSINESS A FEW YEARS EARLIER. AN AMERICAN ELECTION WAS ON THE HORIZON, AND FOX NEWS WAS PRIMED TO PUT A REPUBLICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF BARACK OBAMA. AT THE AGE OF 84, NEWLY DIVORCED FROM DENG, MURDOCH FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SUPERMODEL JERRY HALL.
At the age of 84, newly divorced from Deng, Murdoch fell in love with the supermodel Jerry Hall.
Murdoch seemed like the last man Hall would go out with. The 1970s fashion icon was a BBC-watching liberal 25 years Murdoch’s junior. She previously dated rock stars Bryan Ferry and Mick Jagger, her longtime partner with whom she has four children. In 2013, Hall was in Melbourne playing Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate when her friend Penny Fowler, Murdoch’s niece, suggested they meet. Murdoch and Hall spent months emailing and talking on the phone before she agreed to a lunch date in New York. When Hall arrived, her hotel room was filled with flowers and chocolates. “He was an old-fashioned gentleman. We laughed together nonstop,” she told friends. A couple of nights later, Murdoch took her to see Hamilton.
Soon they were a couple. “They seemed to our surprise very happy and a wonderful fit,” recalled Hall’s close friend Tom Cashin, who socialized with the pair. After a few weeks of dating, Murdoch and Hall flew on his private G650 jet to Texas to meet Hall’s Fox News–loving family. Hall left Texas at 16 to model in Europe, but as she watched her relatives line up to receive Murdoch like he was the king of red America, she realized that her family’s approval meant a lot. Six months into the relationship, Murdoch proposed. “Mick was so unfaithful to you, I’d never be unfaithful,” Murdoch told Hall, according to a person briefed on the conversation. They wed at an 18th-century mansion in London in March 2016, seven days before Murdoch’s 85th birthday. “No more tweets for ten days or ever! Feel like the luckiest AND happiest man in world,” he posted after the ceremony.
“There’s been a joke in the family for a long time that 40 may be the new 30, but 80 is 80.”
Murdoch’s luck quickly ran out. He came down with a bad flu on their honeymoon in the South of France, according to a source. Then, in July, former Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes for sexual harassment. Murdoch desperately wanted to protect a longtime lieutenant and the $1 billion in annual profits he delivered. But after Carlson’s suit spurred dozens of women to come forward with horrific accounts of sexual abuse at Fox News, James and Lachlan, longtime Ailes antagonists, forced Murdoch to push Ailes out. James seized an opportunity to steer Fox to the center and recruited then CBS News president David Rhodes as Ailes’s replacement. Rupert and Lachlan blocked the plan, with Rupert taking the Fox News CEO title instead. The message was clear: Ailes was gone, but Fox News wouldn’t change.
With a background in newspapers, not TV, Murdoch delegated decisions to lower-ranking Fox News executives. But the network was in chaos. For the first time since it launched in 1996, producers had to make programming calls without Ailes’s daily directives. As they grasped for a strategy, they saw one topic boosted ratings more than anything else: Trump.
It’s ironic that Murdoch’s fortunes would become entwined with Trump’s, because Murdoch found Trump appalling. “Rupert knew he was an idiot,” a person close to Murdoch said. Murdoch was a longtime champion of immigration reform and free trade and loathed Trump’s nativism and know-nothingism. During the Republican primary, Murdoch waged a media campaign in the pages of The Wall Street Journal and on Fox News to deny Trump the nomination. Once Trump was in the White House, however, Murdoch went all in. Fox News became de facto state TV. It was a continuation of Murdoch’s time-tested strategy of forging alliances with politicians across the ideological spectrum as long as they advanced his interests. (His UK papers had backed both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.)
Trump more than delivered. One source with direct knowledge of their conversations told me Murdoch lobbied Trump to punish Facebook and Google for siphoning his newspapers’ advertising revenue. In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation of Google. In 2021, Google settled and struck a lucrative content-sharing deal with Murdoch. The source also said Murdoch pushed Trump to open up land for fracking to boost the value of Murdoch’s fossil fuel investments. The Trump administration released nearly 13 million acres of federally controlled land to fracking companies. Murdoch, who sources say has become more pro-life in recent years, encouraged Trump to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. “Rupert wanted Trump’s Supreme Court justices in so they could make abortion illegal,” a source who spoke to Murdoch said. Murdoch’s alliance with Trump made Murdoch more powerful than ever but carried a personal cost.
For many American families during the Trump years, politics became a third rail. And so it was for the Murdochs. Among Murdoch’s adult children, Elisabeth and James tilted #resistance, whereas Lachlan was hard-core MAGA. (The eldest Murdoch son was particularly close with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, sources said.) Meanwhile, Murdoch’s new wife despised Trump—and let Murdoch know it. “During dinners we had with Jerry and Rupert, Jerry wouldn’t hold back,” Cashin, Hall’s friend, said. According to a source, Murdoch wanted to buy a house in Florida to be closer to Mar-a-Lago, but Hall refused. Hall told friends she was alarmed by Trump’s lack of qualifications or respect for the office. At a lunch shortly after the 2016 election, Hall asked Trump to reroute the Dakota Access Pipeline away from Native American reservations that were protesting the project. Trump responded by asking if she wanted to serve in his administration as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “It was horrible. I couldn’t wait to get away,” she later told friends.
Discontent among the Murdochs simmered for the first months of Trump’s term. But after the August 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, tensions boiled over. James and his wife, Kathryn, a former marketing communications professional turned philanthropist, were aghast that Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comment drew a moral equivalency between tiki-torch-wielding neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and the counterprotesters standing up to them. James confronted Rupert and Lachlan about Fox News’s full-throated defense of Trump’s remarks. They rebuffed him. “They were both in denial. They didn’t want to see it for what it was,” a source briefed on the conversations said. Stymied, James took his criticism public. Days after the march, he donated $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League and sent an email to friends, which promptly leaked to the press, that denounced Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy. “I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists,” James wrote. It was an inflection point for James. He wanted out. At that very moment, Murdoch set in motion a media deal that would give the younger son a graceful and lucrative exit strategy.
Two days before the Charlottesville rally, Murdoch hosted Disney CEO Bob Iger for a glass of wine at his $28.8 million Bel Air vineyard Moraga, one of the only vineyards in Los Angeles. As the two moguls discussed the rapidly shifting media landscape, Iger floated that Disney would be interested in buying 21st Century Fox, Murdoch’s movie studio and entertainment assets. Murdoch would have flatly dismissed the overture in the past. He was, after all, a pirate who conquered media companies, not dispensed with them. But in the streaming age, legacy Hollywood players like Murdoch and Iger lacked the scale to compete with tech giants like Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. The logic of selling 21st Century Fox to Disney made a lot of sense. Plus, Murdoch would get to keep Fox News and his beloved newspapers, the source of his political influence. Disney certainly wanted no part of those.
James and Lachlan went to war with each other over the deal. James championed it for business reasons, but also because he and Iger discussed the possibility of James taking a high-level job at Disney after the acquisition. “James thought about what it might be like to have a boss who appreciates you for what you can do instead of a father that just sees you as the child where, no matter what you do, the other son is always better,” a person close to James said. Lachlan, meanwhile, felt Rupert and James were rushing into a deal that undervalued Fox’s assets. On top of that, the deal seemed like a massive bait and switch. A year earlier, Lachlan had moved his family from Australia to Los Angeles to be Rupert’s successor. Now his father and younger brother wanted to sell off a huge swath of his future kingdom. It would leave Lachlan to run a rump state comprising Fox News, a dying broadcast network, Fox Sports, book publisher HarperCollins, and some newspapers. “Lachlan’s whole self-image was that he was going to be the next Rupert,” a person close to him said.
As James and Rupert pushed the deal forward in the fall of 2017, Lachlan seemed intent on derailing it. At a dinner with Iger, Lachlan unspooled a rant about illegal immigration that made Iger, an outspoken Democrat who flirted with his own presidential run, very uncomfortable, according to two sources briefed on the dinner. At another dinner in New York, Lachlan exploded at Rupert and James. “He said, ‘If you do this deal, I’m never speaking to either of you again!’ ” recalled a person briefed on the conversation. (Another person close to Lachlan denies this.) Unable to quash it, Lachlan reached a breaking point. According to three sources, he suffered a panic attack about the merger and was briefly treated at an LA-area hospital. (The person close to Lachlan denied this.)
Eleven days before Christmas 2017, Disney and Murdoch announced they had reached a $52.4 billion deal. Lachlan would stay on to run Fox News and the family’s remaining assets. In 2019, Lachlan paid a reported $150 million—the highest price in California history—for the 25,000-square-foot Bel Air estate featured in The Beverly Hillbillies. James took his walk-away money and launched a media fund called Lupa Systems, investing in liberal-leaning companies like Vice and Tribeca Enterprises. (Lupa is Italian for “she-wolf”—as in the one that raised brothers Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, before Romulus murdered Remus.)
For Murdoch, the Disney deal was a career triumph. It solved his succession problems. James was out. Lachlan was in. And the price that Disney ultimately paid climbed to $71.3 billion, now seen as a high-water mark of the streaming content boom. The thrill didn’t last. In early January 2018, Murdoch and Hall were sailing the Caribbean aboard Lachlan’s 140-foot carbon-fiber yacht when disaster struck.
Hall was asleep in the stateroom aboard Sarissa when she bolted awake at the sound of Murdoch moaning in agony. She later told friends she found her 86-year-old husband in excruciating pain on the cabin floor. He said he fell down a step trying to get to the bathroom and couldn’t get up. Hall alerted the captain. He quickly gave Murdoch a shot of a painkiller that allowed Murdoch to sleep fitfully while they sailed through the night to the nearest port, Pointe-à-Pitre, on the French island of Grande-Terre, in Guadeloupe. But the crisis kept getting worse. Lachlan’s massive boat towered over the pier, and it was perilous to lower Murdoch in a stretcher. Once they managed to get Murdoch off the boat, they discovered the island’s hospital was closed after a recent fire. Murdoch had to spend the night on a gurney under a tent in the parking lot until James’s private jet landed with a medevac team. By the time Murdoch flew to a UCLA hospital, he was in critical condition. “He kept almost dying,” a person close to the family said. Doctors diagnosed Murdoch with arrhythmia and a broken back. While examining the X-ray, they saw Murdoch had fractured vertebrae before, the person said. Murdoch explained it must have been from the time his ex-wife Deng pushed him into a piano during a fight, after which he spent weeks on the couch. (Deng did not respond to requests for comment.)
Murdoch’s PR team scrambled to spin the sailing accident when reporters started calling. They leaked an email to show he was in command. “I have to work from home for some weeks. In the meantime, you’ll be hearing from me by email, phone and text!” it said. But in reality, Murdoch was in terrible shape and required Hall to spoon-feed him for months. “Jerry was as sensitive with him as a full-time nurse would have been,” her friend Cashin said. Then, in March 2019, Murdoch had another fall in his Bel Air home. This time, he tore his Achilles tendon tripping over the box of a chessboard Lachlan had given him for his 87th birthday. The injury confined Murdoch to a wheelchair for months, a source familiar with the incident said. Murdoch was in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and seizures. When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, Murdoch’s doctors told him he needed to take extreme precautions to protect himself.
While Fox News hosts railed against lockdowns and pushed dubious treatments like hydroxychloroquine, Murdoch followed the science. “He was scared for himself and was very careful,” a person who spoke to Murdoch at the time recalled. According to sources, Murdoch and Hall quarantined in Bel Air without any staff for months. Hall bought robot vacuums to clean the floors, baked sourdough bread, and cooked simple meals of roast chicken, leg of lamb, and vegetarian pasta. During the day, Murdoch watched the stock market and took Zoom calls while Hall took online courses in UC Davis’s winemaking program. (Hall told friends Murdoch wanted her to do it so he could write off $3 million of vineyard expenses as long as she worked 500 hours a year on winemaking.) At night, she and Murdoch played chess, backgammon, and gin rummy. She usually won, she told friends, except when they played Liar’s Dice. “He’s a good liar!” she told them.
Murdoch was one of the first people in the world to be vaccinated in December 2020. As the months dragged on, Murdoch grew increasingly irate with Trump’s erratic pandemic policies, like the time Trump suggested Americans inject themselves with bleach to kill the virus. “Rupert had a strong view about how things were being mishandled,” a former Trump administration official said. Through Fox News, Murdoch had more power than anyone in America to pressure Trump to take the pandemic seriously. He did nothing. In fact, he took no responsibility for the COVID misinformation Fox News pumped out day after day. When a friend told Murdoch that the channel was literally killing its elderly audience, Murdoch replied, “They’re dying from old age and other illnesses, but COVID was being blamed,” said a source briefed on the conversation. Having milked Trump for ratings and profit, Murdoch was looking toward a post-Trump future. Shortly before the 2020 election, according to the source, Murdoch invited Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, for lunch at Murdoch’s vineyard. As they dined outside on steak, Murdoch told DeSantis that Fox News would support him for president in 2024.
Murdoch was over Trump, but the Fox News audience most certainly wasn’t. The disconnect would soon ignite the biggest journalistic scandal in Fox’s history. On election night, according to a source, Murdoch was home in Bel Air following the results on television and fielding calls. At 11:20 p.m. Eastern, Fox News was the first major network to declare Arizona, a crucial battleground state, for Joe Biden, which would all but ensure his election. The Trump voters’ official safe space was the first to break the bad news.
The call exploded like a bomb inside the Trump campaign and sent shock waves ripping through Fox News. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner called Murdoch and implored him to retract the Arizona call. Murdoch later testified he told Kushner, “Well, the numbers are the numbers.” The call became a target of Trump’s rage. “This is an embarrassment to this country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump declared at an angry early morning press conference in the East Room of the White House as Biden led Arizona by 10,000 votes. As Trump cried fraud, Murdoch told Fox executives that it was “bullshit and damaging” that Trump refused to concede. Murdoch told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that Fox shouldn’t promote Trump’s stolen election claims, according to court documents. “If Trump becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean [Hannity] especially and others don’t sound the same. Not there yet but a danger,” Murdoch emailed Scott.
But in the post-truth world Fox News viewers inhabited, numbers didn’t matter. Fox viewers believed Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen because Trump said so. What’s more, many loyal Fox News watchers and Trump diehards bristled that the network had seemingly had a hand in delivering their president’s election night defeat. The irony of a news outlet being punished by its most ardent audience members for committing an act of journalism didn’t have much time to settle, as a siege mentality quickly set in. In the days after the election, Fox News hosts and executives panicked as they watched viewers flip to rival channels Newsmax and One America News, whose programs were hyping Trump’s stolen election conspiracies. “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire…An alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us,” Tucker Carlson texted his producer the day Fox declared Biden the president-elect. In an email conversation, Scott told Murdoch that Fox News needed to appease Trump’s base immediately. “We need to make sure they know we aren’t abandoning them and still champions for them,” she wrote. Murdoch told her he agreed.
“James sees destroying Fox News as his mission in life.”
What Murdoch did next, or more accurately didn’t do, formed the core of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. According to Dominion’s court filings, Murdoch protected Fox News’s ratings by allowing the network’s hosts and guests to promote a batshit-crazy theory that algorithms inside Dominion machines secretly switched votes to Biden to steal the election, somehow at the behest of the Venezuelan government. Meanwhile, Murdoch looked for other measures to mollify Trump’s audience. On November 20, Murdoch suggested to Scott that Fox fire its Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, who was a senior executive on the Decision Desk that made the Arizona call. “Maybe best to let Bill go right away which would be a big message with Trump people,” Murdoch said, according to court filings. Sammon retired in January 2021, the same month Fox let go of Chris Stirewalt, another Decision Desk member. According to court documents, Murdoch even discussed buying the rights to The Apprentice.
By mainstreaming Trump’s stolen election conspiracy, Murdoch and Fox had unleashed dangerous authoritarian forces. Just how dangerous became apparent on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election. Murdoch was horrified as he and Hall watched the attack unfold from home. Murdoch told Hall that Trump was “trying to kill Mike Pence because he was passing the presidency to Biden,” said a source who spoke with Murdoch that day. “Rupert kept calling the White House, Trump, Jared, Sean Hannity, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, trying to get Trump to stop it,” said the source. But then, like a passing storm, Murdoch’s outrage gave way to a sunnier view of the events. He later told Hall the rioters were just good old boys who got carried away, the source said. Murdoch’s ability to blithely rationalize the violence on January 6 is a microcosm of how he evaded any responsibility for the immense damage his media empire has done to the public square over the past 50 years.
As chaos engulfs Murdoch’s empire, a shadow war over its future is playing out inside the family. Who among the Murdoch siblings will control the spoils, though, remains an open question. Two people close to James told me he is biding his time until he and his sisters can wrest control from Lachlan after Rupert is gone. “James, Liz, and Prudence will join forces and take over the company,” a former Fox executive said. Some think James would purge Fox News and transform the network into a center-right alternative to CNN. Others think James would opt to sell Fox News to a private equity firm just so he could be rid of a toxic asset. Inside the network, there’s a visceral fear of what a James-led future would mean. “James sees destroying Fox News as his mission in life,” a senior Fox staffer told me.
Then again, does Lachlan even want the throne? Several sources speculated the elder Murdoch son may be running the company out of filial duty. When his father is gone, he may prefer to live the good life in Sydney. “Lachlan goes to the rock climbing gym every day. I think he has kind of lost interest since James left, but he is still trying to impress his dad,” a person close to Lachlan told me. Other people I spoke to aren’t convinced Lachlan would cede the crown. “Lachlan tells people he’s determined to keep the company,” the Fox staffer said. The person close to Lachlan said he’s fully engaged in the job.
Of course, none of these scenarios are sure bets in a family as volatile as the Murdochs, in which allegiances can shift on a day-to-day basis and brute expedience often rules the day. Even though James and his sisters are politically aligned, it might not be enough to win their favor. James and Elisabeth have a complicated history. When James was in the crosshairs at the height of the UK phone-hacking scandal in 2011, Elisabeth told Rupert that James should be fired. When the Murdochs celebrated Lachlan’s 40th birthday on Rupert’s 184-foot yacht Rosehearty that September, Elisabeth left before James and Kathryn arrived.
After interviewing dozens of people for this story, I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem. Some Murdoch profiles liken his late career arc to Shakespeare’s King Lear. Murdoch as the aging monarch confronting his mortality. I think the tale of King Midas is more accurate. Murdoch built a $17 billion fortune out of a small newspaper company he inherited from his father. The only thing that mattered was profit. But amassing that wealth required Murdoch to destroy virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency—even his own family. One source said Rupert got word to James that it would mean a lot if James attended his 90th birthday party, but James didn’t go. According to another source, Lachlan told Rupert that James was leaking stories to the writers of Succession, HBO’s acclaimed drama about a Murdoch-like media dynasty. (The person close to Lachlan denies Lachlan told Rupert this.) A person close to James said he and Kathryn believed PR operatives aligned with Rupert and Lachlan were digging up dirt on them. Lachlan, meanwhile, had to flee Los Angeles because the Murdoch legacy was so toxic. According to two sources, Lachlan’s family was ostracized in LA because of Fox News’s climate change denialism. Lachlan moved his family back to Australia in March 2021. Elisabeth had crises of her own. In 2014, she and PR guru Matthew Freud filed for divorce after 13 years of marriage.
At the age of 91, Murdoch blew up his fourth marriage. Hall was waiting for Murdoch to meet her at their Oxfordshire estate last June when she checked her phone. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email began, according to a screenshot I read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do…My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.” Hall told friends she was blindsided. “Rupert and I never fought,” she told people. There had been disagreements over his antiabortion views and some friction with the kids over Hall’s rules about masking and testing before they saw Murdoch, according to sources. But Hall never felt Murdoch treated these as major issues. Hall and Murdoch finalized their divorce two months later. (One of the terms of the settlement was that Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers on Succession.) Hall told friends she had to move everything out of the Bel Air estate within 30 days and show receipts to prove items belonged to her. Security guards watched as her children helped her pack. When she settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.
Four months later, Hall got a potential answer for why Murdoch broke off the marriage. Newspapers around the world printed photos of Murdoch vacationing in Barbados with a new girlfriend, Smith. Murdoch and Hall had hosted Smith for dinner at their ranch in Carmel, California, about a year earlier. Smith was dating the ranch manager. At the time, Hall didn’t think anything of it when Smith told Murdoch that he and Fox News were saving democracy. Or when she offered to give Murdoch a teeth cleaning. Or when Murdoch began making trips alone to Carmel, which he explained was because his daughter Grace wanted one-on-one time with him there. (A source close to Murdoch said such a dinner did not happen.) Looking back, Hall told friends that Murdoch had simply moved on, the way he had ended previous marriages. “She was devastated, mad, and humiliated,” Cashin told me. On the first day of Lent in February, Hall told friends she made an effigy of Murdoch, tied dental floss around its neck, and burned it on the grill.
In March, Murdoch announced he was marrying Smith, whose life has been a series of operatic ups and downs. In her 20s, Smith married John B. Huntington, a descendant of a California railroad fortune. They divorced, she has said, when he became an abusive alcoholic. She was suicidal, then found Jesus in a coffee shop and became a street preacher in Marin County. She married the country music singer and broadcast entrepreneur Chester Smith, who died in 2008. On Facebook, Smith shares a mix of inspirational self-help talk with Christian nationalism and right-wing conspiracy theories. “The voting process may be so corrupted we may live in a de facto dictatorship with oligarchal [sic] control by the party in charge now,” one post said.
Murdoch and Smith had planned to marry this summer. He proposed with an 11-carat diamond engagement ring said to be worth upwards of $2.5 million. Then, a little more than two weeks after rolling out news of their engagement, the pair abruptly called it off. One source close to Murdoch said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Smith’s outspoken evangelical views. “She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,” the source said. A spokesperson for Murdoch declined to comment. (Smith did not respond to requests for comment on social media.) Still, the future of Murdoch’s hobbled empire depends on viewers who share Smith’s very outlook. What struck me most as I read the Dominion court filings was the fear that Fox executives and hosts expressed of losing their audience if they reported the truth, that Trump lost. I was also struck by how diminished Murdoch’s own influence was. After the election, Murdoch told Lachlan and Suzanne Scott that Fox hosts should say Biden won and move on, according to a source who spoke to Murdoch. “I told Rupert privately they are all there,” Scott wrote in an ensuing email to a colleague. “We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers but they know how to navigate.”
At one point, Murdoch even lobbied Trump to concede. “Rupert called Trump before Biden’s inauguration to tell him to accept defeat graciously and that he had left a good legacy and that this stolen election stuff would drag everyone down,” the source said. Trump refused. “Trump threatened to start his own channel and put Fox out of business,” the source said. Murdoch seemed trapped by the people he radicalized, like an aging despot hiding in his palace while the streets filled with insurrectionists.
The Untold Truth Of Rupert Murdoch
https://www.nickiswift.com/
BY BRENT FURDYK/UPDATED: FEB. 21, 2023
Chairman of the conglomerates News Corp. and Fox Corp., Rupert Murdoch wields the kind of influence that's made him a right-wing kingmaker throughout the world. In the process, he's become one of the past century's wealthiest and most controversial figures since expanding his Australian newspaper holdings to Britain, then the U.S., and, ultimately, worldwide to create a globe-spanning multimedia empire.
Meanwhile, the Australian-born media mogul has become many things to many people, largely thanks to criticism of Murdoch's ultra-conservative Fox News cable network. Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, for example, lambasted Murdoch as "deviant scum," while Crosby Stills & Nash co-founder David Crosby once accused the Fox News founder of feeding "untrue s**t" to "a lot of really stupid people," as he told the Daily Beast. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull went a step further by accusing Murdoch of attacking democracy by having "divided Americans against each other and so undermined their faith in political institutions."
Murdoch, in fact, has been the unseen hand behind some of the most monumental changes in the way people view and consume media over the past half-century. Despite being a widely-known public figure — HBO's hit series "Succession," in fact, is rumored to be based on him and his family — the billionaire also remains something of an elusive, enigmatic figure. With that in mind, keep reading to discover the untold truth of Rupert Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch owned his first newspaper at age 22
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in 1931 in Melbourne, Australia, the son of newspaper mogul Sir Keith Murdoch, noted a BBC News profile. Born into wealth and privilege, the newspaper scion enjoyed a posh upbringing and an Oxford education. In 1952, at just 22 years old, his father died, with Rupert inheriting his father's chains of regional newspapers.
According to the BBC News, the brash young Murdoch quickly made his mark by taking the newspapers in a more sensational direction, resulting in financial success that allowed the company — News International — to make a series of acquisitions that, by 1967, led the firm to be valued at $50 million. In 1968, Murdoch became a major player in British media when he purchased Britain's popular News of the World tabloid. He soon scooped up more British newspapers, including the Sunday Times and The Sun. In 1985, Murdoch became an American citizen to get around U.S. laws involving foreign ownership of media holdings, resulting in the purchase of 20th Century Fox and the launching of the Fox television network and, subsequently, his Fox News cable network.
In a 1976 interview with The Village Voice, Murdoch reflected on his path to become a media mogul. "We started with a very small paper," he said, "and we've never had much money. We've always had to borrow and expand ... So we always got the sick papers and had to turn them around."
He single-handedly invented modern tabloid journalism
When Rupert Murdoch took over his father's newspapers, he also infused them with his philosophy, which seemed to have less less to do with reporting the news than with giving people what he thought they wanted to see. One of those innovations came when he acquired British tabloid The Sun, starting a tradition of featuring a different bare-breasted woman in each issue (a practice the newspaper finally abandoned in 2015). As The Economist deftly pointed out, Murdoch can lay claim to having "invented the modern tabloid newspaper — a stew of sexual titillation, moral outrage and political aggression."
And while the technology has changed since Murdoch both ruled and revolutionized British media back in the 1960s, his tactics have not. "Fox News is for Murdoch now what the tabloids were 40 years ago, a profit gusher that keeps his business prosperous," noted the Daily Beast in 2021.
That strategy has also evolved, noted journalist David Folkenflik while promoting his Murdoch documentary "Murdoch's World," to become more cost-effective, as "the success of Fox News ... is not dependent on churning out scoops about celebrities and politicians. It's actually dependent on argumentation, which is much cheaper than paying hordes of reporters to go out and ransack people's trash bins and the like," Folkenflik said in an interview with CBC News.
His son-in-law, a descendent of Sigmund Freud, has publicly slammed him
Rupert Murdoch has six children, including daughter Elisabeth. In 2001, she married Matthew Freud, the great-great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneering psychologist known as the father of psychoanalysis. Although the couple divorced in 2014, during the decade-plus marriage, Matthew repeatedly — and publicly — clashed with his father-in-law.
hat was clear in a 2010 profile in The New York Times on then-Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who died in 2017. "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to," said Matthew in the piece.
By 2013, Matthew's "rocky" relationship with his father-in-law had only deteriorated, according to The Guardian. Taking a page from Rupert's own tabloid-style approach, the newspaper quoted "a source close to Mr. Murdoch" who insisted that "Matthew and Rupert have no relationship and so none of this is a surprise." Matthew, a top London PR rep, issued a carefully-worded statement in response to say that their "views differ quite dramatically on a number of subjects professionally," which has contributed to a relationship that is "sometimes conflicted," he said.
Rupert Murdoch broke one of Britain's most powerful unions
Rupert Murdoch has proven himself to be no fan of labor unions over the years, which bubbled up to the forefront in 1986. That was when, recalled The Guardian, the media baron announced plans for his company, then known as News International, to shift its British newspaper printing operations from an existing facility in Wapping to a new one in East London.
When talks between management and the union broke down, nearly 6,000 of Murdoch's workers declared war by going on strike. Murdoch responded by firing every last one of them. His reasoning, he explained in a speech years later, was that Britain's print unions had grown so powerful they "had a noose round the neck of the industry, and they pulled it very tight."
To replace the workers, Murdoch hired members of the "rogue" Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, which essentially pitted the two unions against each other. John Grant, a director of the electricians' union, told The New York Times of the "significant friction" this caused. ”The only question now is whether it will get worse, and the outlook is not good,” as Ron Garner, one of the fired Wapping workers, said, conceding to The Guardian that Murdoch had outsmarted them. "It was a war, and we lost it. We were led into a trap, and we played into his hands."
His ill-timed purchase of MySpace was a massive financial blunder
Much has been written about Rupert Murdoch's shrewd business acumen, but he's also had his clunkers. The most notorious was his 2005 purchase of MySpace, paying $580 million to acquire the social media platform.
Initially, the deal looked like a masterstroke, with Murdoch revealing in 2007 he planned to introduce MySpace to China. In fact, just a few years later, in 2009, The New York Times described the purchase as "one of Rupert Murdoch's savviest buys." What Murdoch hadn't bargained for was that a less-established competitor called Facebook would essentially render MySpace obsolete. By 2011, MySpace had been utterly crushed by Facebook, leading Murdoch to concede he made a "huge mistake," Murdoch admitted in a speech to shareholders, as reported by Business Insider. He also confessed that his team mishandled it "in every possible way" and that they "could have sold it for $6 billion a month later."
To Murdoch's credit, he took the massive business blunder on the chin when he addressed the debacle in a 2012 tweet. "Many questions and jokes about [MySpace]. [S]imple answer – we screwed up in every way possible" and "learned lots of valuable expensive lessons," he wrote. Murdoch ultimately sold MySpace for $35 million, taking a financial hit of nearly $550 million, per Reuters.
He apologized and shuttered a newspaper when his papers' phone-hacking tactics were revealed
According to The Guardian, Murdoch told his Sun newspaper about his "totally private" meeting with the Dowler family. "As founder of the company I was appalled to find out what had happened and I apologi[z]ed," said Murdoch, while Lewis told BBC News that Murdoch appeared "humbled, shaken and sincere."
His second divorce was reported to be the most expensive in history
It was his divorce from Torv, however, that proved to be his most costly — and, proclaimed Business Insider, the most expensive divorce in history. Torv, mother to three of Murdoch's six children, received an astonishing $1.7 billion divorce settlement, of $110 million in cash and the remainder in assets. Murdoch's wedding to Deng, by the way, took place just 17 days after his divorce from Torv was finalized, noted Metro.
In a 2013 feature about the divorce settlement for The Guardian, journalist Michael Wolff questioned the accuracy of that amount, noting that the first reported settlement figure, in an Australian women's magazine, was $1 billion in Australian dollars, or approximately $660 million, with the number seemingly growing larger each time it was reported. In any case, Wolff noted that media reports of the divorce settlement skipped over what he seemed to think was a far more salient tidbit of info: that Murdoch "has not spoken to the mother of three of his children since he left their home, 15 years ago."
The media mogul played himself on The Simpsons
Despite being cogs in the News Corp. machinery, the writers of "The Simpsons" have never been shy about biting the billionaire hand that feeds them, and an animated version of Murdoch has made several appearances on the show over the years. In fact, in two of those cameos, Murdoch actually provided his own voice, including the 1998 post-Super Bowl episode. In the storyline, reported The Buffalo News, Homer Simpson brings his pals from Springfield to the Super Bowl with bogus tickets that bring them into a VIP luxury box. While the gang chows down on the free food, a helicopter lands on the glass roof, with Murdoch emerging. "What the bloody hell?" Murdoch tells the group, with Homer mouthing off, "Hit the road gramps, this is a private skybox." Murdoch responds, "I'm Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant, and this is my skybox.
According to "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, Murdoch displayed a sense of humor about himself. "He performed it with great zeal," said Groening of Murdoch's "billionaire tyrant" line when speaking to The Associated Press, as reported by HuffPost.
Rupert Murdoch is married to Mick Jagger's ex-wife
Following his divorce from third wife Wendy Deng, Murdoch married Hall in 2016. At the time, Murdoch was 84, while Hall was 59. According to USA Today, the nuptials took place in "an 18-century palace in central London" owned by the brother of the late Princess Diana, with Hall's four children with Jagger in attendance.
When it was all over and the knot was officially tied, Murdoch took to social media to share his elation. "No more tweets for [10] days or ever! Feel like the luckiest AND happiest man in [the] world," he tweeted. Meanwhile, when Hall was asked how things went post-ceremony, reported The Guardian, she responded, "Absolutely wonderful."
He was swindled in a massive Silicon Valley scam
In 2017, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that Murdoch had sold all his shares in Theranos, receiving a payout of $1.
He's one of the planet's wealthiest people
Beyond Murdoch's media holdings, he also owns some significant real estate. As Dirt reported, in 2019, he and wife Jerry Hall plunked down about $15 million for an 18th-century mansion on the outskirts of London and the following year purchased "a 200 [year-old] fixer-upper" in a small British village that required a hefty $40 million in renovations. The couple also spent about $4.3 million on a home next door to Murdoch's winery in Los Angeles and own "a mansion-sized triplex penthouse" (via Dirt) and the entire floor below it, for which Murdoch paid $58 million in 2014.
Also in 2014, Murdoch sold his 184-foot yacht, Rosehearty, for $29.7 million. Murdoch also owns a Gulfstream G650, reported Business Insider, the fastest and most luxurious private jet that $84 million can buy.
The billionaire exec was forced to take a pandemic pay cut
Murdoch isn't the only member of his family forced to do some pandemic-related belt-tightening. His son, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, had to make do with a bonus of just $27.7 million, a couple mil less than the $29.1 million he'd taken home the year before.
As The Hollywood Reporter reported, the reductions came about when the Murdochs and other key executives at Fox "agreed to cut their base salaries during the pandemic." By slightly reducing just a few of these large paydays, the company said, Fox Corp. "reduced their aggregate total target compensation by 9%."
He's famously clashed with his youngest son
In fact, James has never shared his father's conservative views and has not been shy about letting that be known publicly. This was clear when he lambasted then-President Donald Trump's "good people on both sides" response to the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and threw his support for then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg in an interview with The New Yorker.
According to NBC News' report, James and his "activist wife, Kathryn, who used to work for the Clinton Climate Initiative" had openly criticized his father's Australian media outlets for downplaying the role of climate change in reporting the wildfires that had devastated Australia. "They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary," a spokesperson told the Daily Beast. Rupert and eldest son Lachlan responded with a kiss-off statement, per NBC News, reading, "We're grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors."
He's been portrayed in numerous films and TV series
In addition, Murdoch has been played by Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage) in the 1991 miniseries "Selling Hitler," by Ben Mendelsohn in "Black and White," by Paul Elder in the HBO movie "The Late Shift," and by Patrick Brammall in the TV miniseries "Power Games."
Beyond that, there have been some fictionalized TV and film characters that were clearly based on Murdoch, including media mogul Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) in HBO's "Succession," Australian billionaire Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) in the comedy "Fierce Creatures," and Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson) in "Anchorman 2."
The Wildest Celebrity Feuds With Politicians
Public figures of all kinds earn a lot of attention, and while it's often and usually praise, sometimes it can skew negative. Politicians and celebrities alike put themselves "out there" in a big way, and passing laws, expressing opinions, and making art or entertainment can also put a proverbial target on their backs — one upon which other famous people may readily take aim. Here are some incendiary incidents from the past few decades where famous people from the show business sector butted heads with powerful Washington lawmakers — and in public, for all the world to see.
Clint Eastwood pulled up a chair for Barack Obama
It's tough to count how many times Clint Eastwood played a tough-on-crime lawman doling out violent and deadly justice. Those films express the kind of sentiments that made him very popular with older, more conservative Americans, and Eastwood leans to the right politically in real life as well. In 1985, according to Mental Floss, he grew so miffed with Carmel, California's resistance to letting him put up a bunch of office buildings that he ran for mayor of the town... and won. Eastwood went on to champion Republican causes and candidates, including endorsing John McCain for president in 2008. McCain lost to Democrat Barack Obama, and when the latter ran for re-election, Eastwood backed Republican challenger Mitt Romney and made that abundantly clear during an appearance at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Eastwood delivered a speech, styled as a conversation with Obama, represented by an empty chair, symbolizing the opinion that the president had been absent and unreliable for Americans. "This administration hasn't done enough," Eastwood said during his 12-minute speech. "I think possibly now it may be time for someone else to come along and solve the problem."
While photos of an 82-year-old Eastwood yelling at an empty chair went viral, the most retweeted tweet during the entire RNC was one posted by Obama. It consisted of a photo of Obama, sitting in a leather chair with a metal plate on it reading "THE PRESIDENT" with the caption "This seat's taken."
Michael Moriarty butted heads with Janet Reno
As the Los Angeles Times noted, Moriarty emerged from the meeting upset and offended over Reno's suggestion that TV violence led to real violence, as well as what he considered her disdain for television and constitutional protections. Then he tried to launch an anti-Reno and anti-censorship movement in Hollywood, running ads in entertainment industry trade publications criticizing Reno and censoring legislation. Failing to gain a toehold, Moriarty grew so disappointed in his fellow actors that he quit "Law and Order" and the American TV industry entirely and moved to Canada, according to CinemaRetro.
Sour over Biden's swift executive action, Republican senator Ted Cruz tweeted that in "rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he's more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh." (It should be noted that the Agreement seeks to curb pollution worldwide — it's only got Paris in its name because that's where the accord was signed.)
In response to Cruz's aggressive and incorrect tweet, movie star and screenwriter Seth Rogen replied, simply and profanely, "F*** off you fascist." Cruz doubled down, sarcastically calling out Rogen's "charming, civil, educated response" before accusing him of being a "rich, angry Hollywood celebrity." To whit: Rogen then accused Cruz of helping incite the January 6, 2020 storming of the Capitol and told him to "get f*****." The fight was seemingly over until the following day. After Cruz tweeted about how the first film he saw at a movie theater was "Fantasia," Rogen zinged back, "Everyone who made that film would hate you."
And then there were the Dixie Chicks (now known as the Chicks), one of the most popular acts in country music around the turn of the new millennium. In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, according to History, the Texas-based Chicks played a concert in London, during which singer Natalie Maines got political. "We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," she said. Her widely reported remarks led to her group's songs being removed from country radio station playlists far and wide; Keith took to performing in front of a photoshopped backdrop of Maines and Hussein looking friendly.
President Bush even responded to Maines. "The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say," he said on "Today." "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt, just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out."
Alec Baldwin wanted to challenge Joe Lieberman
Alec Baldwin has long been one of the more politically outspoken and left-leaning members of the Hollywood elite. According to the Chicago Tribune, he even threatened to leave the United States if Republican candidate George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election. However, Baldwin stayed in the U.S. when Bush did win, eking out a victory over Democrat Al Gore and running mate Joe Lieberman, a senator representing Connecticut.
Lieberman was also a Democrat, but far more conservative than most other elected members of his party, aligning with Republicans on some issues, according to Newsweek. He moved more to the right in 2006, when, after losing in a primary race, he dropped his party affiliation and won the general Senate election as an independent, enjoying substantial support from Republican voters.
In 2009, the still-progressive Baldwin floated the idea of challenging Lieberman for his Senate seat. "Maybe I'll move to Connecticut," Baldwin told Playboy (via CS Monitor). "I'd love to run against Joe Lieberman. I have no use for him." When asked about the possibility of facing off against a high-profile movie and TV star on CNN's "State of the Union" (via E! News), Lieberman was dismissive. "You know, make my day," he said. "If he wants to run, that's his right." Days later, Baldwin announced that he would not, in fact, run for the Senate. (Lieberman then retired at the conclusion of his term.)
Jimmy Kimmel called Ted Cruz a 'blobfish
'As the two men huffed and puffed their way through the game — which took so long and so gassed both players that they agreed to cut the winning points number from 15 to 11 midway through — there was no love lost (although both donated $10,000 to Generation One and the Texas Children's Hospital). "You're a good sport," Kimmel quipped after Cruz emerged victorious, 11 to 9. "I still think you're a terrible senator."
Glenn Grothman wasn't into Cardi B's Grammys performance
Cardi B responded on Twitter. After wondering why "WAP" was the issue Rothman was raising, especially during the week of the Derek Chauvin murder case verdict and an ongoing discussion about police brutality in America. "They giving seats to F***** IDIOTS!!" the rapper added before imploring people to vote for candidates better than "dum a****" like Rothman.
Chrissy Teigen and Donald Trump battled on Twitter
Ted Nugent's remarks about Barack Obama didn't go over well
Classic rocker Ted Nugent — he had hits in the '70s with "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Dog Eat Dog" — has made headlines in the decades since for his political viewers, which are decidedly anti-leftist. In 2007, according to the Journal Courier, he pinned the blame for "rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes" on "stinky hippies." That same year, during a concert in California, Nugent made some comments about three of the most prominent Democrats in the United States: presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Senator Dianne Feinstein. "I was in Chicago last week, I said, 'Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!" Nugent yelled while hoisting an automatic weapon. "He's a piece of s***." Then Nugent called Clinton a "worthless b****" and invited her to perform an impure act on herself with his gun. As for Feinstein, Nugent called her a "worthless w****."
Murphy Brown took on Dan Quayle
Delivered shortly after white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted for beating Black motorist Rodney King and citywide riots broke out, according to The Washington Post, Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California. He blamed the rioting (and society's ills) on the dissolution of "traditional" family values, but also Murphy Brown — a fictional, single mother. "It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone," he said.
English released a statement in response. "If the Vice President thinks it's disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child," she wrote (via The Washington Post), "then he'd better make sure abortion remains safe and legal." And then English incorporated the feud into "Murphy Brown," presenting Quayle's comments as ones made against Murphy Brown within the show's universe.
Dan Savage redefined Rick Santorum
Dan Savage, author of the syndicated humorous sex advice column "Savage Love" and LGBTQ+ activist, fired back. According to HuffPost, Savage held a contest, asking readers to come up with a new definition for "Santorum," the nastier, the better. The winning suggestion was not safe for work, to say the least.
News of the definition of Santorum spread so quickly that it became one of the top results when Google users type in the name of the Pennsylvania politician. Santorum (the person) even tried to get Google to snuff it out, but as the tech company said in a statement provided to CNN, "We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
The PMRC also compiled a list of the most egregious popular songs of the day, nicknamed the "Filthy 15," which included Twister Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" over its violent lyrics. When singer Dee Snider testified, he similarly called out the PMRC for having no idea over its ability to regulate music. "There is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song," he said.
LeBron James wasn't bothered by Donald Trump's remarks
"The number one job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn't understand the people," James said, then suggested that some of the president's past remarks had been "laughable and it's scary." Later that year, after another thoughtful interview, this time with CNN's Don Lemon, Trump hurled the insults. "Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon," Trump tweeted (via CNBC). "He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do."
James brushed it off. "That's like somebody saying I can't play ball," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "That doesn't bother me at all. What bothers me is that he has time to even do that. He has the most powerful job in the world. Like, you really got this much time that you can comment on me?"
Read More: https://www.nickiswift.com/405491/the-wildest-celebrity-feuds-with-politicians/
The Untold Truth Of Rupert Murdoch
stocklight/Shutterstock
BY BRENT FURDYK/UPDATED: FEB. 21, 2023 10:33 AM EST
Chairman of the conglomerates News Corp. and Fox Corp., Rupert Murdoch wields the kind of influence that's made him a right-wing kingmaker throughout the world. In the process, he's become one of the past century's wealthiest and most controversial figures since expanding his Australian newspaper holdings to Britain, then the U.S., and, ultimately, worldwide to create a globe-spanning multimedia empire.
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Meanwhile, the Australian-born media mogul has become many things to many people, largely thanks to criticism of Murdoch's ultra-conservative Fox News cable network. Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, for example, lambasted Murdoch as "deviant scum," while Crosby Stills & Nash co-founder David Crosby once accused the Fox News founder of feeding "untrue s**t" to "a lot of really stupid people," as he told the Daily Beast. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull went a step further by accusing Murdoch of attacking democracy by having "divided Americans against each other and so undermined their faith in political institutions."
Murdoch, in fact, has been the unseen hand behind some of the most monumental changes in the way people view and consume media over the past half-century. Despite being a widely-known public figure — HBO's hit series "Succession," in fact, is rumored to be based on him and his family — the billionaire also remains something of an elusive, enigmatic figure. With that in mind, keep reading to discover the untold truth of Rupert Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch owned his first newspaper at age 22
Keystone/Getty Images
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born in 1931 in Melbourne, Australia, the son of newspaper mogul Sir Keith Murdoch, noted a BBC News profile. Born into wealth and privilege, the newspaper scion enjoyed a posh upbringing and an Oxford education. In 1952, at just 22 years old, his father died, with Rupert inheriting his father's chains of regional newspapers.
According to the BBC News, the brash young Murdoch quickly made his mark by taking the newspapers in a more sensational direction, resulting in financial success that allowed the company — News International — to make a series of acquisitions that, by 1967, led the firm to be valued at $50 million. In 1968, Murdoch became a major player in British media when he purchased Britain's popular News of the World tabloid. He soon scooped up more British newspapers, including the Sunday Times and The Sun. In 1985, Murdoch became an American citizen to get around U.S. laws involving foreign ownership of media holdings, resulting in the purchase of 20th Century Fox and the launching of the Fox television network and, subsequently, his Fox News cable network.
In a 1976 interview with The Village Voice, Murdoch reflected on his path to become a media mogul. "We started with a very small paper," he said, "and we've never had much money. We've always had to borrow and expand ... So we always got the sick papers and had to turn them around."
He single-handedly invented modern tabloid journalism
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When Rupert Murdoch took over his father's newspapers, he also infused them with his philosophy, which seemed to have less less to do with reporting the news than with giving people what he thought they wanted to see. One of those innovations came when he acquired British tabloid The Sun, starting a tradition of featuring a different bare-breasted woman in each issue (a practice the newspaper finally abandoned in 2015). As The Economist deftly pointed out, Murdoch can lay claim to having "invented the modern tabloid newspaper — a stew of sexual titillation, moral outrage and political aggression."
And while the technology has changed since Murdoch both ruled and revolutionized British media back in the 1960s, his tactics have not. "Fox News is for Murdoch now what the tabloids were 40 years ago, a profit gusher that keeps his business prosperous," noted the Daily Beast in 2021.
That strategy has also evolved, noted journalist David Folkenflik while promoting his Murdoch documentary "Murdoch's World," to become more cost-effective, as "the success of Fox News ... is not dependent on churning out scoops about celebrities and politicians. It's actually dependent on argumentation, which is much cheaper than paying hordes of reporters to go out and ransack people's trash bins and the like," Folkenflik said in an interview with CBC News.
His son-in-law, a descendent of Sigmund Freud, has publicly slammed him
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Rupert Murdoch has six children, including daughter Elisabeth. In 2001, she married Matthew Freud, the great-great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, the pioneering psychologist known as the father of psychoanalysis. Although the couple divorced in 2014, during the decade-plus marriage, Matthew repeatedly — and publicly — clashed with his father-in-law.
That was clear in a 2010 profile in The New York Times on then-Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who died in 2017. "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to," said Matthew in the piece.
By 2013, Matthew's "rocky" relationship with his father-in-law had only deteriorated, according to The Guardian. Taking a page from Rupert's own tabloid-style approach, the newspaper quoted "a source close to Mr. Murdoch" who insisted that "Matthew and Rupert have no relationship and so none of this is a surprise." Matthew, a top London PR rep, issued a carefully-worded statement in response to say that their "views differ quite dramatically on a number of subjects professionally," which has contributed to a relationship that is "sometimes conflicted," he said.
Rupert Murdoch broke one of Britain's most powerful unions
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Rupert Murdoch has proven himself to be no fan of labor unions over the years, which bubbled up to the forefront in 1986. That was when, recalled The Guardian, the media baron announced plans for his company, then known as News International, to shift its British newspaper printing operations from an existing facility in Wapping to a new one in East London.
When talks between management and the union broke down, nearly 6,000 of Murdoch's workers declared war by going on strike. Murdoch responded by firing every last one of them. His reasoning, he explained in a speech years later, was that Britain's print unions had grown so powerful they "had a noose round the neck of the industry, and they pulled it very tight."
To replace the workers, Murdoch hired members of the "rogue" Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, which essentially pitted the two unions against each other. John Grant, a director of the electricians' union, told The New York Times of the "significant friction" this caused. ”The only question now is whether it will get worse, and the outlook is not good,” as Ron Garner, one of the fired Wapping workers, said, conceding to The Guardian that Murdoch had outsmarted them. "It was a war, and we lost it. We were led into a trap, and we played into his hands."
His ill-timed purchase of MySpace was a massive financial blunder
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Much has been written about Rupert Murdoch's shrewd business acumen, but he's also had his clunkers. The most notorious was his 2005 purchase of MySpace, paying $580 million to acquire the social media platform.
Initially, the deal looked like a masterstroke, with Murdoch revealing in 2007 he planned to introduce MySpace to China. In fact, just a few years later, in 2009, The New York Times described the purchase as "one of Rupert Murdoch's savviest buys." What Murdoch hadn't bargained for was that a less-established competitor called Facebook would essentially render MySpace obsolete. By 2011, MySpace had been utterly crushed by Facebook, leading Murdoch to concede he made a "huge mistake," Murdoch admitted in a speech to shareholders, as reported by Business Insider. He also confessed that his team mishandled it "in every possible way" and that they "could have sold it for $6 billion a month later."
To Murdoch's credit, he took the massive business blunder on the chin when he addressed the debacle in a 2012 tweet. "Many questions and jokes about [MySpace]. [S]imple answer – we screwed up in every way possible" and "learned lots of valuable expensive lessons," he wrote. Murdoch ultimately sold MySpace for $35 million, taking a financial hit of nearly $550 million, per Reuters.
He apologized and shuttered a newspaper when his papers' phone-hacking tactics were revealed
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Rupert Murdoch and his businesses have seen their fair share of controversy over the years, but none will ever rival the scandal that ensued when journalists working for Murdoch's British newspapers, News of the World, were accused of hacking into people's cell phones to dig up dirt. A subsequent trial, reported BBC News, found that those allegations were right on the money. The real death blow, however, came when the trial presented evidence that the phone of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler had been hacked.
The damage was deep and the damage control extreme. In addition to full-page ads reading "We are sorry," reported The Guardian, News of the World was shut down. Meanwhile, Murdoch himself denied any knowledge of the hacking. In fact, noted The Guardian, Murdoch took the drastic — and uncharacteristic — step of meeting personally with the slain teenager's parents. "He apologized many times. I don't think anybody could have held their head in their hands so many times," Mark Lewis, the Dowler family's attorney, told the newspaper.
According to The Guardian, Murdoch told his Sun newspaper about his "totally private" meeting with the Dowler family. "As founder of the company I was appalled to find out what had happened and I apologi[z]ed," said Murdoch, while Lewis told BBC News that Murdoch appeared "humbled, shaken and sincere."
His second divorce was reported to be the most expensive in history
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Marriage is something that Rupert Murdoch apparently enjoys, because he's done it four times. A Metro roundup recalled his various marital unions, including wedding flight attendant Patricia Booker in 1958 and divorcing in 1967. The same year as his divorce, he married journalist Anna Torv, with that union ending in 1999. He then married and divorced Wendy Deng before remarrying a fourth time.
It was his divorce from Torv, however, that proved to be his most costly — and, proclaimed Business Insider, the most expensive divorce in history. Torv, mother to three of Murdoch's six children, received an astonishing $1.7 billion divorce settlement, of $110 million in cash and the remainder in assets. Murdoch's wedding to Deng, by the way, took place just 17 days after his divorce from Torv was finalized, noted Metro.
In a 2013 feature about the divorce settlement for The Guardian, journalist Michael Wolff questioned the accuracy of that amount, noting that the first reported settlement figure, in an Australian women's magazine, was $1 billion in Australian dollars, or approximately $660 million, with the number seemingly growing larger each time it was reported. In any case, Wolff noted that media reports of the divorce settlement skipped over what he seemed to think was a far more salient tidbit of info: that Murdoch "has not spoken to the mother of three of his children since he left their home, 15 years ago."
The media mogul played himself on The Simpsons
YouTube
One of the biggest and most enduring cash cows in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire is "The Simpsons." In fact, as The Hollywood Reporter noted back in 2011, a new syndication deal reportedly held the potential for "about $750 million of incremental content monetization" in addition to the millions the show had already raked in.
Despite being cogs in the News Corp. machinery, the writers of "The Simpsons" have never been shy about biting the billionaire hand that feeds them, and an animated version of Murdoch has made several appearances on the show over the years. In fact, in two of those cameos, Murdoch actually provided his own voice, including the 1998 post-Super Bowl episode. In the storyline, reported The Buffalo News, Homer Simpson brings his pals from Springfield to the Super Bowl with bogus tickets that bring them into a VIP luxury box. While the gang chows down on the free food, a helicopter lands on the glass roof, with Murdoch emerging. "What the bloody hell?" Murdoch tells the group, with Homer mouthing off, "Hit the road gramps, this is a private skybox." Murdoch responds, "I'm Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant, and this is my skybox."
According to "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, Murdoch displayed a sense of humor about himself. "He performed it with great zeal," said Groening of Murdoch's "billionaire tyrant" line when speaking to The Associated Press, as reported by HuffPost.
Rupert Murdoch is married to Mick Jagger's ex-wife
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Rupert Murdoch and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger share three things in common: They're obscenely wealthy, have each fathered numerous children with multiple women, and each has been married to Texas model Jerry Hall. According to a piece Michael Wolff wrote for GQ, Murdoch marrying Hall isn't as surprising as one might imagine. "His pursuit of beautiful women has shaped him and, therefore, in some sense, our time," Wolff opined, noting that Murdoch's quest "for sex, glamour and companionship ... has always been in plain sight."
Following his divorce from third wife Wendy Deng, Murdoch married Hall in 2016. At the time, Murdoch was 84, while Hall was 59. According to USA Today, the nuptials took place in "an 18-century palace in central London" owned by the brother of the late Princess Diana, with Hall's four children with Jagger in attendance.
When it was all over and the knot was officially tied, Murdoch took to social media to share his elation. "No more tweets for [10] days or ever! Feel like the luckiest AND happiest man in [the] world," he tweeted. Meanwhile, when Hall was asked how things went post-ceremony, reported The Guardian, she responded, "Absolutely wonderful."
He was swindled in a massive Silicon Valley scam
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Rupert Murdoch's $500 million-plus MySpace blunder wasn't the only misstep he's made along the way. Another came when he made a significant investment in Silicon Valley startup Theranos, with Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes claiming the company's technology could diagnose all manner of medical maladies from a small amount of a person's blood. Of course, as numerous media reports, a book, and an HBO documentary made crystal clear, the technology Holmes touted didn't actually exist, and the whole thing was a massive scam to bilk investors (as of November 2021, Holmes was tried on charges of fraud and conspiracy, facing 20 years in the slammer).
According to CNBC, Murdoch is one of many investors to pump money into the bogus venture, sinking $125 million into the company, which, at one point, was valued at $9 billion. During the trial, CNBC reported, it was revealed that Murdoch was enticed with outright lies, including claims that "Theranos offers tests with the highest level of accuracy" and that the company's blood-testing technology "generates significantly higher integrity data than currently possible."
In 2017, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that Murdoch had sold all his shares in Theranos, receiving a payout of $1.
He's one of the planet's wealthiest people
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It's hardly news that Rupert Murdoch is in the upper echelons of the 1%, maintaining his position as one of the world's richest people. As of November 2021, reported Forbes, Murdoch was worth an estimated $22.2 billion as the head of two companies: News Corp., a conglomerate that includes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, the New York Post, and HarperCollins, and Fox Corp., which controls Fox News network. In 2019, a Disney merger involving the 20th Century Fox movie studio, the Fox and FX networks, and the National Geographic networks made Murdoch's company $71.3 billion wealthier.
Beyond Murdoch's media holdings, he also owns some significant real estate. As Dirt reported, in 2019, he and wife Jerry Hall plunked down about $15 million for an 18th-century mansion on the outskirts of London and the following year purchased "a 200 [year-old] fixer-upper" in a small British village that required a hefty $40 million in renovations. The couple also spent about $4.3 million on a home next door to Murdoch's winery in Los Angeles and own "a mansion-sized triplex penthouse" (via Dirt) and the entire floor below it, for which Murdoch paid $58 million in 2014.
Also in 2014, Murdoch sold his 184-foot yacht, Rosehearty, for $29.7 million. Murdoch also owns a Gulfstream G650, reported Business Insider, the fastest and most luxurious private jet that $84 million can buy.
The billionaire exec was forced to take a pandemic pay cut
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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in much economic hardship throughout the world, and Rupert Murdoch was not immune. In fact, the situation led to a less-profitable-than-expected year for Murdoch's businesses, forcing the billionaire to take a pay cut. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Murdoch received a 2021 bonus package "valued at $31.1 million," a reduction from the previous year's bonus of $34 million.
Murdoch isn't the only member of his family forced to do some pandemic-related belt-tightening. His son, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, had to make do with a bonus of just $27.7 million, a couple mil less than the $29.1 million he'd taken home the year before.
As The Hollywood Reporter reported, the reductions came about when the Murdochs and other key executives at Fox "agreed to cut their base salaries during the pandemic." By slightly reducing just a few of these large paydays, the company said, Fox Corp. "reduced their aggregate total target compensation by 9%."
He's famously clashed with his youngest son
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Rupert Murdoch hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with all of his six children. That was certainly the case in July 2020, when NBC News reported that his youngest son, James Murdoch, resigned from the board of News Corp. "My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," James wrote in a letter explaining his decision.
In fact, James has never shared his father's conservative views and has not been shy about letting that be known publicly. This was clear when he lambasted then-President Donald Trump's "good people on both sides" response to the 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and threw his support for then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg in an interview with The New Yorker.
According to NBC News' report, James and his "activist wife, Kathryn, who used to work for the Clinton Climate Initiative" had openly criticized his father's Australian media outlets for downplaying the role of climate change in reporting the wildfires that had devastated Australia. "They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary," a spokesperson told the Daily Beast. Rupert and eldest son Lachlan responded with a kiss-off statement, per NBC News, reading, "We're grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors."
He's been portrayed in numerous films and TV series
YouTube
While Rupert Murdoch may have voiced an animated version of himself on "The Simpsons," he's also been portrayed by a variety of actors in film and TV projects. For example, actor Simon McBurney played Murdoch in its miniseries about Fox News chief Roger Ailes, "The Loudest Voice." Murdoch was also played by Malcolm McDowell in the film "Bombshell," which recounted the various sexual harassment cases that nearly brought down the entire network.
In addition, Murdoch has been played by Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage) in the 1991 miniseries "Selling Hitler," by Ben Mendelsohn in "Black and White," by Paul Elder in the HBO movie "The Late Shift," and by Patrick Brammall in the TV miniseries "Power Games."
Beyond that, there have been some fictionalized TV and film characters that were clearly based on Murdoch, including media mogul Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) in HBO's "Succession," Australian billionaire Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) in the comedy "Fierce Creatures," and Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson) in "Anchorman 2."
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The Wildest Celebrity Feuds With Politicians
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BY BRIAN BOONE/MAY 10, 2021 2:34 PM EST
The term "public figure" can be used to describe lots of different people. It might refer to politicians or elected officials, those who are literally public figures in that they work for the government, representing Americans, and toward the greater "public" good. Public figures might also be celebrities — movie stars, TV personalities, models, social media influencers, and musicians, or anybody else who lives their lives out loud, in the performative sphere.
Public figures of all kinds earn a lot of attention, and while it's often and usually praise, sometimes it can skew negative. Politicians and celebrities alike put themselves "out there" in a big way, and passing laws, expressing opinions, and making art or entertainment can also put a proverbial target on their backs — one upon which other famous people may readily take aim. Here are some incendiary incidents from the past few decades where famous people from the show business sector butted heads with powerful Washington lawmakers — and in public, for all the world to see.
Clint Eastwood pulled up a chair for Barack Obama
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It's tough to count how many times Clint Eastwood played a tough-on-crime lawman doling out violent and deadly justice. Those films express the kind of sentiments that made him very popular with older, more conservative Americans, and Eastwood leans to the right politically in real life as well. In 1985, according to Mental Floss, he grew so miffed with Carmel, California's resistance to letting him put up a bunch of office buildings that he ran for mayor of the town... and won. Eastwood went on to champion Republican causes and candidates, including endorsing John McCain for president in 2008. McCain lost to Democrat Barack Obama, and when the latter ran for re-election, Eastwood backed Republican challenger Mitt Romney and made that abundantly clear during an appearance at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Eastwood delivered a speech, styled as a conversation with Obama, represented by an empty chair, symbolizing the opinion that the president had been absent and unreliable for Americans. "This administration hasn't done enough," Eastwood said during his 12-minute speech. "I think possibly now it may be time for someone else to come along and solve the problem."
While photos of an 82-year-old Eastwood yelling at an empty chair went viral, the most retweeted tweet during the entire RNC was one posted by Obama. It consisted of a photo of Obama, sitting in a leather chair with a metal plate on it reading "THE PRESIDENT" with the caption "This seat's taken."
Michael Moriarty butted heads with Janet Reno
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According to the Los Angeles Times, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate held hearings and considered legislation in 1993 to limit violent content on American television. Cultural watchdogs felt that TV had grown too dark and bloody, and that it was partially to blame for a perceived uptick in real-life street crime. Attorney General Janet Reno told the Senate Commerce Committee that she supported regulation, arguing that doing so is "constitutionally permissible." Then Reno reached out to the TV industry to work out mutually agreeable decisions on cutting down on fictional violence, meeting with a group from NBC that included an executive and the network's lead censor as well as "Law and Order" producer Dick Wolf, who brought along series star Michael Moriarty, who portrayed District Attorney Ben Stone.
As the Los Angeles Times noted, Moriarty emerged from the meeting upset and offended over Reno's suggestion that TV violence led to real violence, as well as what he considered her disdain for television and constitutional protections. Then he tried to launch an anti-Reno and anti-censorship movement in Hollywood, running ads in entertainment industry trade publications criticizing Reno and censoring legislation. Failing to gain a toehold, Moriarty grew so disappointed in his fellow actors that he quit "Law and Order" and the American TV industry entirely and moved to Canada, according to CinemaRetro.
Seth Rogen duked it out with Ted Cruz
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As NPR reported the day of his inauguration, President Joe Biden wasted no time in getting the U.S. back on board with the Paris Climate Agreement, an international movement backed by 200 countries that fights greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, took the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, theorizing that environmental regulations limited economic growth and killed manufacturing and industrial jobs.
Sour over Biden's swift executive action, Republican senator Ted Cruz tweeted that in "rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he's more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh." (It should be noted that the Agreement seeks to curb pollution worldwide — it's only got Paris in its name because that's where the accord was signed.)
In response to Cruz's aggressive and incorrect tweet, movie star and screenwriter Seth Rogen replied, simply and profanely, "F*** off you fascist." Cruz doubled down, sarcastically calling out Rogen's "charming, civil, educated response" before accusing him of being a "rich, angry Hollywood celebrity." To whit: Rogen then accused Cruz of helping incite the January 6, 2020 storming of the Capitol and told him to "get f*****." The fight was seemingly over until the following day. After Cruz tweeted about how the first film he saw at a movie theater was "Fantasia," Rogen zinged back, "Everyone who made that film would hate you."
The Dixie Chicks spoked out about George W. Bush
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After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush earned widespread support for a 2003 invasion of Iraq, executed on the idea that dictator Saddam Hussein was storing weapons of mass destruction. He definitely had the support of country musicians like Toby Keith, who scored a No. 1 hit on the Billboard country chart with "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," a 9/11 revenge anthem in which the singer threatened to "stick a boot" in the collective rear-end of America's enemies.
And then there were the Dixie Chicks (now known as the Chicks), one of the most popular acts in country music around the turn of the new millennium. In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, according to History, the Texas-based Chicks played a concert in London, during which singer Natalie Maines got political. "We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," she said. Her widely reported remarks led to her group's songs being removed from country radio station playlists far and wide; Keith took to performing in front of a photoshopped backdrop of Maines and Hussein looking friendly.
President Bush even responded to Maines. "The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say," he said on "Today." "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt, just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out."
Alec Baldwin wanted to challenge Joe Lieberman
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Alec Baldwin has long been one of the more politically outspoken and left-leaning members of the Hollywood elite. According to the Chicago Tribune, he even threatened to leave the United States if Republican candidate George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election. However, Baldwin stayed in the U.S. when Bush did win, eking out a victory over Democrat Al Gore and running mate Joe Lieberman, a senator representing Connecticut.
Lieberman was also a Democrat, but far more conservative than most other elected members of his party, aligning with Republicans on some issues, according to Newsweek. He moved more to the right in 2006, when, after losing in a primary race, he dropped his party affiliation and won the general Senate election as an independent, enjoying substantial support from Republican voters.
In 2009, the still-progressive Baldwin floated the idea of challenging Lieberman for his Senate seat. "Maybe I'll move to Connecticut," Baldwin told Playboy (via CS Monitor). "I'd love to run against Joe Lieberman. I have no use for him." When asked about the possibility of facing off against a high-profile movie and TV star on CNN's "State of the Union" (via E! News), Lieberman was dismissive. "You know, make my day," he said. "If he wants to run, that's his right." Days later, Baldwin announced that he would not, in fact, run for the Senate. (Lieberman then retired at the conclusion of his term.)
Jimmy Kimmel called Ted Cruz a 'blobfish'
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Texas senator Ted Cruz calls Houston his hometown, and in 2018, the city's Houston Rockets took the Golden State Warriors to a seventh and decisive game in the NBA Western Conference Finals. As NPR recounted, Cruz scored courtside seats and tweeted a picture of himself at the game, prompting "Jimmy Kimmel Live" host Jimmy Kimmel to compare Cruz's appearance to that of a "blobfish," which is a remarkably unattractive sea creature. Cruz took offense, and because basketball was the backdrop for the exchange, he challenged Kimmel, via Twitter, to a game of one-on-one. Kimmel accepted, and weeks later, the 47-year-old senator and 50-year-old comedian convened at a basketball court on the campus of Texas Southern University for the first (and only) "Blobfish Basketball Classic."
As the two men huffed and puffed their way through the game — which took so long and so gassed both players that they agreed to cut the winning points number from 15 to 11 midway through — there was no love lost (although both donated $10,000 to Generation One and the Texas Children's Hospital). "You're a good sport," Kimmel quipped after Cruz emerged victorious, 11 to 9. "I still think you're a terrible senator."
Glenn Grothman wasn't into Cardi B's Grammys performance
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It's an undeniable fact that "WAP," the 2020 No. 1 hit by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, is an explicit, provocative, and frank invitation, depiction, and celebration of sex. The success of "WAP" led to an offer to perform the song on the March 2021 Grammy Awards telecast. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion took to the stage for their first-ever live rendition of "WAP," grinding, twerking, and dancing while wearing very little clothing.
Nearly a month later, Rep. Glenn Grothman hit the floor of the House of Representatives to criticize the "WAP" Grammys moment. While he's not an official media watchdog like the FCC, and actually a Congressman from Wisconsin, he claimed that his office received numerous complaints about "WAP." "Rightfully so," he explained (via The Hill). "I assure the FCC that millions of Americans would view her performance as inconsistent with basic decency." Then Grothman urged the FCC to better regulate the airwaves, less it continue to contribute to "the moral decline of America."
Cardi B responded on Twitter. After wondering why "WAP" was the issue Rothman was raising, especially during the week of the Derek Chauvin murder case verdict and an ongoing discussion about police brutality in America. "They giving seats to F***** IDIOTS!!" the rapper added before imploring people to vote for candidates better than "dum a****" like Rothman.
Chrissy Teigen and Donald Trump battled on Twitter
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Before he was banned from the platform in the waning days of his presidency, Donald Trump was a prolific user of Twitter, often using the social media network to criticize his political opponents or people that simply didn't agree with him.
In 2018, the federal government passed criminal justice reform legislation, with support from both Democrats and Republicans, and Trump later took credit on Twitter. "I got it done with a group of Senators & others who would never have gone for it. Obama couldn't come close," he wrote (via NBC News). Then Trump wondered why — and with insulting words — some people talking about the greatness of the legislation after it passed were silent when the bills were a work in progress (per The Hill), specifically "boring" singer and pianist John Legend and who Trump called Legend's "filthy mouthed wife." That would be model, media personality, and fellow Twitter heavy user Chrissy Teigen. "Lol what a p**** a** b****," Teigen, blocked by Trump on Twitter over many previous comments both political and pointed, filthily tweeted in response. "tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president."
Ted Nugent's remarks about Barack Obama didn't go over well
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Classic rocker Ted Nugent — he had hits in the '70s with "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Dog Eat Dog" — has made headlines in the decades since for his political viewers, which are decidedly anti-leftist. In 2007, according to the Journal Courier, he pinned the blame for "rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes" on "stinky hippies." That same year, during a concert in California, Nugent made some comments about three of the most prominent Democrats in the United States: presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Senator Dianne Feinstein. "I was in Chicago last week, I said, 'Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk!" Nugent yelled while hoisting an automatic weapon. "He's a piece of s***." Then Nugent called Clinton a "worthless b****" and invited her to perform an impure act on herself with his gun. As for Feinstein, Nugent called her a "worthless w****."
At a 2012 National Rifle Association convention, Nugent said that if Obama were re-elected that year, he'd "be dead or in jail" within the year, according to the Washington Post. As Reuters reported, these comments earned Nugent a grilling from the Secret Service.
Murphy Brown took on Dan Quayle
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A huge percentage of political humor from 1988 to 1992 was levied at Vice President Dan Quayle. The young politician (41 when he took office) was portrayed by an actual child on "Saturday Night Live," while the hit CBS sitcom "Murphy Brown," set at a hard-hitting TV news show, frequently took aim. "We had done a Dan Quayle joke every episode. It was a mandate in our writers' room," creator Diane English recalled to Yahoo! Entertainment. Show writer Korby Siamis told the outlet that Quayle's "feelings got hurt, and he saw a way to get even" when he attacked "Murphy Brown" in a May 1992 speech.
Delivered shortly after white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted for beating Black motorist Rodney King and citywide riots broke out, according to The Washington Post, Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California. He blamed the rioting (and society's ills) on the dissolution of "traditional" family values, but also Murphy Brown — a fictional, single mother. "It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone," he said.
English released a statement in response. "If the Vice President thinks it's disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child," she wrote (via The Washington Post), "then he'd better make sure abortion remains safe and legal." And then English incorporated the feud into "Murphy Brown," presenting Quayle's comments as ones made against Murphy Brown within the show's universe.
Dan Savage redefined Rick Santorum
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In the early 2000s, Pennsylvania congressional representative Rick Santorum positioned himself as one of the chief ideologues of the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party. He often spoke about the perceived dangers of "liberalism" and how it leads to looser morals and a slippery slope in terms of sexual matters."If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum told the Associated Press (via USA Today). Then Santorum made some more remarks which compared homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality and blamed the Catholic Church molestation scandal on liberalism.
Dan Savage, author of the syndicated humorous sex advice column "Savage Love" and LGBTQ+ activist, fired back. According to HuffPost, Savage held a contest, asking readers to come up with a new definition for "Santorum," the nastier, the better. The winning suggestion was not safe for work, to say the least.
News of the definition of Santorum spread so quickly that it became one of the top results when Google users type in the name of the Pennsylvania politician. Santorum (the person) even tried to get Google to snuff it out, but as the tech company said in a statement provided to CNN, "We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
Tipper Gore and John Denver clashed about censorship
Mark Weiss/Getty Images
On Prince's soundtrack to his 1984 movie "Purple Rain" was the song "Darling Nikki," which recounted a wild one-night stand. According to Rolling Stone, the 11-year-old daughter of Senator Al Gore and his wife, Tipper Gore, was among the millions who bought the "Purple Rain" album, and when her mom heard "Darling Nikki," she was shocked into action. Recruiting other congressional wives, Tipper Gore formed the Parents Music Resource Center. The PMRC convinced the Senate Committee on Commerce to hold a hearing on "Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records," which prompted many musicians to testify against the group's overtures toward censorship or labeling albums deemed to contain explicit content.
Folk-country crooner John Denver delivered some of the most pointed testimony against labeling. "My song 'Rocky Mountain High' was banned from many radio stations as a drug-related song. This was obviously done by people who had never seen or been to the Rocky Mountains," Denver warned. "What assurance have I that any national panel to review my music would make any better judgment?"
The PMRC also compiled a list of the most egregious popular songs of the day, nicknamed the "Filthy 15," which included Twister Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" over its violent lyrics. When singer Dee Snider testified, he similarly called out the PMRC for having no idea over its ability to regulate music. "There is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song," he said.
LeBron James wasn't bothered by Donald Trump's remarks
Al Bello, Alex Wong/Getty Images
LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players ever, a 17-time all-star, four-time NBA champion, four-time Most Valuable Player, and the youngest player in league history to reach 30,000 points. As the NBA's most famous face, he also serves as an unofficial spokesman for the league and his fellow players, and in a 2018 interview with ESPN's Cari Champion, James discussed more than just sports — he spoke about what it meant to him to be a Black man in 21st century America as well as his thoughts on President Donald Trump.
"The number one job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn't understand the people," James said, then suggested that some of the president's past remarks had been "laughable and it's scary." Later that year, after another thoughtful interview, this time with CNN's Don Lemon, Trump hurled the insults. "Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon," Trump tweeted (via CNBC). "He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do."
James brushed it off. "That's like somebody saying I can't play ball," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "That doesn't bother me at all. What bothers me is that he has time to even do that. He has the most powerful job in the world. Like, you really got this much time that you can comment on me?"
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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 the UK. 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.[5] 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),[6] 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 more than 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion.[7]
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.[8][9] On 21 July 2012, Murdoch resigned as a director of News International.[10][11] In September 2023, Murdoch announced he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp.[12]
Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests[13][14][15] and political allies,[16][17][18] and some have credited his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia.[16][19][20]
Early life
Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, the second of four children of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Dame Elisabeth (née Greene; 1909–2012).[21][22]: 9 He is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. His father was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide and a radio station in a remote mining town, and chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company.[5][23]: 16 [24] Murdoch had three sisters: Helen (1929–2004), Anne (born 1935) and Janet (born 1939).[25]: 47 His Scottish-born paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Presbyterian minister.[26] Later in life, Murdoch chose to go by his second name, the first name of his maternal grandfather.
He attended Geelong Grammar School,[27] where he was co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived.[28][29] 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.[5][30] 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,[23]: 34 [30] stood for Secretary of the Labour Club[31] and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell.[32]
After his father's death from cancer in 1952, his mother 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.[33] Murdoch then began working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.[5]
Activities in Australia and New Zealand
Journalist Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952), Rupert Murdoch's father
Following his father's death, when he was 21, Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of what was left of the family business. After liquidation of his father's Herald stake to pay taxes, what was left was News Limited, which had been established in 1923.[23]: 16 Rupert Murdoch turned its Adelaide newspaper, The News, its main asset, into a major success.[30] He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times in Perth, Western Australia (1956) 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 (1960). The Economist describes Murdoch as "inventing the modern tabloid",[34] as he developed a pattern for his newspapers, increasing sports and scandal coverage and adopting eye-catching headlines.[5]
Murdoch's first foray outside Australia involved the purchase of a controlling interest in the New Zealand daily The Dominion. In January 1964, while touring New Zealand with friends in a rented Morris Minor after sailing across the Tasman, Murdoch read of a takeover bid for the Wellington paper by the British-based Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Thomson of Fleet. On the spur of the moment, he launched a counter-bid. A four-way battle for control ensued in which the 32-year-old Murdoch was ultimately successful.[35] Later in 1964, Murdoch launched The Australian, Australia's first national daily newspaper, which was based first in Canberra and later in Sydney.[36] In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him.[37] In 1984, Murdoch was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for services to publishing.[38]
After the Keating government relaxed media ownership laws, in 1986 Murdoch launched a takeover bid for The Herald and Weekly Times, which was the largest newspaper publisher in Australia.[39] There was a three-way takeover battle between Murdoch, Fairfax and Robert Holmes à Court, with Murdoch succeeding after agreeing to some divestments.
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.[40]
Political activities in Australia
Murdoch found a political ally in Sir John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party (now known as the National Party of Australia), who was governing in coalition with the larger Menzies-Holt-Gorton Liberal Party. From the first issue of The Australian, Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in every issue that divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, 15 July 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. It was the beginning of a long campaign that served McEwen well.[41]
After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected[42] 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. Rupert Murdoch's backing of Whitlam turned out to be brief. Murdoch had already started his short-lived National Star[41] newspaper in America, and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.[43]
Asked about the 2007 Australian federal election at News Corporation's annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its chairman Rupert Murdoch said: "I am not commenting on anything to do with Australian politics. I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that." Pressed as to whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should continue as prime minister, he said: "I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read our editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists who decide that – the editors."[44]
Murdoch described Howard's successor, Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as "more ambitious to lead the world [in tackling climate change] than to lead Australia" and criticised Rudd's expansionary fiscal policies in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 as unnecessary.[45] In 2009, in response to accusations by Rudd that News Limited was running vendettas against him and his government, Murdoch opined that Rudd was "oversensitive".[46] Although News Limited's interests are extensive, also including the Daily Telegraph, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser, it was suggested by the commentator Mungo MacCallum in The Monthly that "the anti-Rudd push, if coordinated at all, was almost certainly locally driven" as opposed to being directed by Murdoch, who also took a different position from local editors on such matters as climate change and stimulus packages to combat the financial crisis.[47]
Murdoch is a supporter of an Australian republic, having campaigned for such a change during the 1999 referendum.[48]
football club Manchester United F.C.,[60] with an offer of £625 million, but this failed. It was the largest amount ever offered for a sports club. It was blocked by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, which stated that the acquisition would have "hurt competition in the broadcast industry and the quality of British football".
Murdoch's British-based satellite network, Sky Television, incurred massive losses in its early years of operation. As with many of his other business interests, Sky was heavily subsidised by the profits generated by his other holdings, but convinced rival satellite operator British Satellite Broadcasting to accept a merger on his terms in 1990.[5] The merged company, BSkyB, has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since, pursuing direct to home (DTH) satellite broadcasting.[61] By 1996, BSkyB had more than 3.6 million subscribers, triple the number of cable customers in the UK.[5]
still up to four years away.[74] In a later interview in July 2006, when he was asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied "Not much".[75] In a 2009 blog, it was suggested that in the aftermath of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, which might yet have transatlantic implications,[76] Murdoch and News Corporation might have decided to back Cameron.[77] Despite this, there had already been a convergence of interests between the two men over the muting of Britain's communications regulator Ofcom.[78]
In August 2008, Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[79] Cameron declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch's son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron did not reveal his talks with Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud's Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30,000. Other guests attending the "social events" included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC Universal Ben Silverman. The Conservatives did not disclose what was discussed.[80]
In July 2011, it emerged that Cameron had met key executives of Murdoch's News Corporation a total of 26 times during the 14 months that Cameron had served as Prime Minister up to that point.[81] It was also reported that Murdoch had given Cameron a personal guarantee that there would be no risk attached to hiring Andy Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, as the Conservative Party's communication director in 2007.[82] This was in spite of Coulson having resigned as editor over phone hacking by a reporter. Cameron chose to take Murdoch's advice, despite warnings from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown and The Guardian.[83] Coulson resigned his post in 2011 and was later arrested and questioned on allegations of further criminal activity at the News of the World, specifically the phone hacking scandal. As a result of the subsequent trial, Coulson was sentenced to 18 months in jail.[84]
In June 2016, The Sun supported Vote Leave in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. Murdoch called the Brexit result "wonderful", comparing the decision to withdraw from the EU to "a prison break….we're out".[85] Anthony Hilton, economics editor for the Evening Standard but describing a period when he interviewed Murdoch for The Guardian, quoted Murdoch as justifying his Euroscepticism with the words "When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice".[86] Murdoch denied saying this later in a letter to the Guardian.[87][88]
With some exceptions, The Sun has generally been supportive of the government of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Murdoch and his employees were the media representatives ministers from the Cabinet and Treasury most frequently held meetings during the first two years of Johnson's Government. 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.[89][90][91]
News International phone hacking scandal
In July 2011, Murdoch, along with his youngest son James, provided testimony before a British parliamentary committee regarding phone hacking. In the UK, his media empire came under fire, as investigators probed reports of 2011 phone hacking.[92]
On 14 July 2011 the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons served a summons on Murdoch, his son James, and his former CEO Rebekah Brooks to testify before a committee five days later.[93] After an initial refusal, the Murdochs confirmed they would attend, after the committee issued them a summons to Parliament.[94] The day before the committee, the website of the News Corporation publication The Sun was hacked, and a false story was posted on the front page claiming that Murdoch had died.[95] Murdoch described the day of the committee "the most humble day of my life". He argued that since he ran a global business of 53,000 employees and that News of the World was "just 1%" of this, he was not ultimately responsible for what went on at the tabloid. He added that he had not considered resigning,[96] and that he and the other top executives had been completely unaware of the hacking.[97][98]
On 15 July, Murdoch attended a private meeting in London with the family of Milly Dowler, where he personally apologized for the hacking of their murdered daughter's voicemail by a company he owns.[99][100] On 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain's national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the "serious wrongdoing" that occurred. The second was titled "Putting right what's gone wrong", and gave more detail about the steps News International was taking to address the public's concerns.[100] In the wake of the allegations, Murdoch accepted the resignations of Brooks and Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones who was chairman of Murdoch's British newspaper division when some of the abuses happened. They both deny any knowledge of any wrongdoing under their command.[101]
On 27 February 2012, the day after the first issue of The Sun on Sunday was published, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers informed the Leveson Inquiry that police are investigating a "network of corrupt officials" as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption. She 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.[102]
In testimony on 25 April, Murdoch did not deny the quote attributed to him by his former editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans: "I give instructions to my editors all round the world, why shouldn't I in London?"[103][104] On 1 May 2012, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report stating that Murdoch was "not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".[105][106]
On 3 July 2013, the Exaro website and Channel 4 News broke the story of a secret recording. This was recorded by The Sun journalists, and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation was one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison.[107] He said: "Why are the police behaving in this way? It's the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing."[108]
Activities in the United States
Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post.[5] On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.
In March 1984, Marvin Davis sold Marc Rich's interest in 20th Century Fox to Murdoch for $250 million due to Rich's trade deals with Iran, which were sanctioned by the US at the time. Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge's Metromedia television stations.[109] Rupert Murdoch bought the stations by himself, without Marvin Davis, and later bought out Davis's remaining stake in Fox for $325 million.[109] The six television stations owned by Metromedia formed the nucleus of the Fox Broadcasting Company, founded on 9 October 1986, which later had great success with programs including The Simpsons and The X-Files.[5]
In 1986 Murdoch bought Misty Mountain, a Wallace Neff designed house on Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills. The house was the former residence of Jules C. Stein. Murdoch sold the house to his son James in 2018.[110]
In 1987, 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.[111] In Australia, during 1987, he bought The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., the company that his father had once managed. Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox bought out the remaining assets of Four Star Television from Ronald Perelman's Compact Video in 1996.[112] Most of Four Star Television's library of programs are controlled by 20th Century Fox Television today.[113][114][
In 1993, Murdoch's Fox Network took exclusive coverage of the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL) from CBS and increased programming to seven days a week.[116] In 1995, Fox 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. However, the FCC ruled in Murdoch's favour, stating that his ownership of Fox was in the best interests of the public. That same year, Murdoch announced a deal with MCI Communications to develop a major news website and magazine, The Weekly Standard. Also that year, News Corporation launched the Foxtel pay television network in Australia in partnership with Telstra. In 1996, Murdoch decided to enter the cable news market with the Fox News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station. Ratings studies released in 2009 showed that the network was responsible for nine of the top ten programs in the "Cable News" category at that time.[117] Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner (founder and former owner of CNN) are long-standing rivals.[118] In late 2003, Murdoch acquired a 34% stake in Hughes Electronics, the operator of the largest American satellite TV system, DirecTV, from General Motors for $6 billion (USD).[38] His Fox movie studio had global hits with Titanic and Avatar.[119]
In 2004, Murdoch announced that he was moving News Corporation headquarters from Adelaide, Australia to the United States. Choosing a US domicile was designed to ensure that American fund managers could purchase shares in the company, since many were deciding not to buy shares in non-US companies.[120]
News Corporation logo
On 20 July 2005, News Corporation bought Intermix Media Inc., which held Myspace, Imagine Games Network and other social networking-themed websites, for US$580 million, making Murdoch a major player in online media concerns.[121] In June 2011, it sold off Myspace for US$35 million.[122] On 11 September 2005, News Corporation announced that it would buy IGN Entertainment for $650 million (USD).[123]
In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones & Company. At the time, the Bancroft family, who had owned Dow Jones & Company for 105 years and controlled 64% of the shares at the time, declined the offer. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a willingness to consider a sale. Besides Murdoch, the Associated Press reported that supermarket magnate Ron Burkle and Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among the other interested parties.[124] In 2007, Murdoch acquired Dow Jones & Company,[125][126] which gave him such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's Magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review (based in Hong Kong) and SmartMoney.[127]
In June 2014, Murdoch's 21st Century Fox made a bid for Time Warner at $85 per share in stock and cash ($80 billion total) which Time Warner's board of directors turned down in July. Warner's CNN unit would have been sold to ease antitrust issues of the purchase.[128] On 5 August 2014 the company announced it had withdrawn its offer for Time Warner, and said it would spend $6 billion buying back its own shares over the following 12 months.[129]
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.[130][131][132] A number of television broadcasting assets were spun off into the Fox Corporation before the acquisition and are still owned by Murdoch. This includes Fox News, of which Murdoch was acting CEO from 2016 until 2019, following the resignation of Roger Ailes due to accusations of sexual harassment.[133][134]
Political activities in the United States
McKnight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to liberal bias in other public media.[135]
In The New Yorker, Ken Auletta writes that Murdoch's support for Edward I. Koch while he was running for mayor of New York "spilled over onto the news pages of the Post, with the paper regularly publishing glowing stories about Koch and sometimes savage accounts of his four primary opponents."[136]
According to The New York Times, Ronald Reagan's campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election.[20] Reagan later "waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market," allowing 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 Murdoch would be hosting a fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate re-election campaign.[137] In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack Obama in the democratic primaries". Without hesitating, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star. It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't think he will win Florida [...] but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."[138][139]
In 2010, News Corporation gave US$1 million to the Republican Governors Association and $1 million to the US Chamber of Commerce.[140][141][142]
Murdoch was reported in 2011 as advocating more open immigration policies in western nations generally.[145] In the United States, Murdoch and chief executives from several major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, Boe
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has similarly advocated for increased legal immigration, in contrast to the staunch anti-immigration stance of Murdoch's British newspaper, The Sun.[148] On 5 September 2010, 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". In his testimony, Murdoch called for ending mass deportations and endorsed a "comprehensive immigration reform" plan that would include a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants.[146]
In the 2012 US presidential election, Murdoch was critical of the competence of Mitt Romney's team but was nonetheless strongly supportive of a Republican victory, tweeting: "Of course I want him [Romney] to win, save us from socialism, etc."[149]
In October 2015, Murdoch stirred controversy when he praised Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and referenced President Barack Obama, tweeting, "Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide? And much else."[150] After which he apologized, tweeting, "Apologies! No offence meant. Personally find both men charming."[151]
During Donald Trump's term as US President Murdoch showed support for him through the news stories broadcast in his media empire, including on Fox News.[152] In early 2018, Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had an intimate dinner at Murdoch's Bel Air estate in Los Angeles.[153]
Murdoch is a strong supporter of Israel and its domestic policies.[154] In October 2010, the Anti-Defamation League in New York City presented Murdoch with its International Leadership Award "for his stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against anti-Semitism."[155][156]
In 2023, during a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators were endorsing election fraud claims they knew were false.[158][159] On 18 April 2023, Fox and Dominion settled for $787.5 million.
Activities in Europe
Murdoch owns a controlling interest in Sky Italia, a satellite television provider in Italy.[160] Murdoch's business interests in Italy have been a source of contention since they began.[160] In 2010 Murdoch won a media dispute with then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A judge ruled the then Prime Minister's media arm Mediaset prevented News Corporation's Italian unit, Sky Italia, from buying advertisements on its television networks.[161]
Activities in Asia
In November 1986, News Corporation purchased a 35% stake in the South China Morning Post group for about US$105 million. At that time, SCMP group was a stock-listed company, and was owned by HSBC, Hutchison Whampoa and Dow Jones & Company.[162] In December 1986, Dow Jones & Company offered News Corporation to sell about 19% of share it owned of SCMP for US$57.2 million,[163] and, by 1987, News Corporation completed the full takeover.[164] In September 1993, News Corporation have agreed to sell a 34.9% share in SCMP to Robert Kuok's Kerry Media for US$349 million.[165] In 1994, News Corporation sold the remaining 15.1% share in SCMP to MUI Group, disposing the Hong Kong newspaper.[166][better source
In June 1993, News Corporation attempted to acquire a 22% share in TVB, a terrestrial television broadcaster in Hong Kong, for about $237 million,[167] but Murdoch's company gave up, as the Hong Kong government would not relax the regulation regarding foreign ownership of broadcasting companies.[168]
In 1993, News Corporation acquired Star TV (renamed as Star in 2001), a Hong Kong company headed by Richard Li,[168] from Hutchison Whampoa for $1 billion (Souchou, 2000:28), and subsequently set up offices for it throughout Asia. 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;[5] however, the deal did not work out as Murdoch had planned because the Chinese government placed restrictions on it that prevented it from reaching most of China.[citation needed]
In 2009, News Corporation reorganised Star; a few of these arrangements were that the original company's operations in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East were integrated into Fox International Channels, and Star India was spun-off (but still within News Corporation).[169][170][171]
Personal life
Residence
In 2003, Murdoch bought "Rosehearty", an 11 bedroom home on a 5-acre waterfront estate in Centre Island, New York.[172] In May 2013, he purchased the Moraga Estate, an estate, vineyard and winery in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.[173][174][175] In 2019, Murdoch and his new wife Jerry Hall purchased Holmwood an 18th-century house and estate in the English village of Binfield Heath, some 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Reading.[176]
In late 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported that Murdoch and Hall had been isolating in their Binfield Heath home for much of the year. He received his first COVID-19 vaccine in nearby Henley-on-Thames on 16 December.[177]
Marriages
Murdoch with his third wife, Wendi, in 2011
In 1956, Murdoch married Patricia Booker, a former shop assistant and flight attendant from Melbourne; the couple had their only child, Prudence, in 1958.[178][179] They divorced in 1967.[180]
In 1967, Murdoch married Anna Torv,[178] a Scottish-born cadet journalist working for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Mirror.[180] In January 1998, three months before the announcement of his separation from Anna, a Roman Catholic, Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great (KSG), a papal honour awarded by Pope John Paul II.[181] While Murdoch would often attend Mass with Torv, he never converted to Catholicism.[182][183] Torv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in Sydney, Australia on 22 August 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London, UK on 8 September 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in London on 13 December 1972).[178][179] Murdoch's companies published two novels by his wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991). They divorced in June 1999. Anna Murdoch received a settlement of US$1.2 billion in assets.[184]
On 25 June 1999, 17 days after divorcing his second wife, Murdoch, then aged 68, married Chinese-born Wendi Deng.[185] She was 30, a recent Yale School of Management graduate, and a newly appointed vice-president of his STAR TV. Murdoch had two daughters with her: Grace (born 2001) and Chloe (born 2003). Murdoch has six children in all, and is grandfather to thirteen grandchildren.[186] Near the end of his marriage to Wendi, hearsay concerning a link with Chinese intelligence (which was later proven to be unfounded) became problematic to their relationship.[187][188] On 13 June 2013, a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed that Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City, US.[189][190] According to the spokesman, the marriage had been irretrievably broken for more than six months.[191] Murdoch also ended his long-standing friendship with Tony Blair after suspecting him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married.[192]
Jerry Hall, Murdoch's fourth wife, whom he married in March 2016, photographed in 2009
On 11 January 2016, Murdoch announced his engagement to former model Jerry Hall in a notice in The Times newspaper.[193] On 4 March 2016, Murdoch, a week short of his 85th birthday, and 59-year-old Hall were married in London, at St Bride's, Fleet Street with a reception at Spencer House; this was Murdoch's fourth marriage.[194] In June 2022, The New York Times reported that Murdoch and Hall were set to divorce, citing two anonymous sources.[195][196] Hall filed for divorce on 1 July 2022 citing irreconcilable differences;[197] the divorce was finalised in August 2022.[198]
During Saint Patrick's Day celebrations in 2023,[199][200] Murdoch, who is quarter Irish, proposed to his partner, Ann Lesley Smith. The engaged couple first met at an event that they both attended in September 2022.[201] In April 2023, two weeks after the couple were engaged, Murdoch suddenly called off the engagement. The split was said to be caused by Murdoch's discomfort with Smith's religious views and her infatuation with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, reportedly referring to him as "a messenger from God".[202][203] Carlson was fired from Fox News three weeks later.[204]
Children
Murdoch has six children.[205] His eldest child, Prudence MacLeod, was appointed on 28 January 2011 to the board of Times Newspapers Ltd, part of News International, which publishes The Times and The Sunday Times.[206] Murdoch's elder son Lachlan, formerly the Deputy Chief Operating Officer at the News Corporation and 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.[205] Lachlan's departure left James Murdoch, Chief Executive of the satellite television service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003 as the only Murdoch son still directly involved with the company's operations, though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.[207]
After graduating from Vassar College[208] and marrying classmate Elkin Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim) in 1993,[208] Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth and her husband purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations in California, KSBW and KSBY, with a $35 million loan provided by her father. By quickly re-organising and re-selling them at a $12 million profit in 1995, Elisabeth emerged as an unexpected rival to her brothers for the eventual leadership of the publishing dynasty. But, after divorcing Pianim in 1998 and quarrelling publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she struck out on her own as a television and film producer in London. She 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.[208]
Until September 2023, it was not known how long Murdoch would remain as News Corporation's CEO. For a while the American cable television entrepreneur John Malone was the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch himself, potentially undermining the family's control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain assets and give cash to Malone's company in exchange for its stock. In 2007, the company issued Murdoch's older children voting stock.[209]
Murdoch has two children with Wendi Deng: Grace (b. New York, November 2001)[30] and Chloe (b. New York, July 2003).[179][180] It was revealed in September 2011 that Tony Blair is Grace's godfather.[210] There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and his oldest children over the terms of a trust holding the family's 28.5% 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 Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it (which would mean, if Murdoch dies while at least one of the children is a minor, that Deng would exercise that control). 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.[211]
Portrayal on television, in film, books, and music
Murdoch has been portrayed by:
- Barry Humphries in the 1991 mini-series Selling Hitler
- Hugh Laurie in a parody of It's a Wonderful Life in the television show A Bit of Fry & Laurie
- Ben Mendelsohn in the film Black and White
- Paul Elder in The Late Shift
- Himself on The Simpsons, first in "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" and later in "Judge Me Tender"[212]
- Patrick Brammall in the 2-part mini-series Power Games
- Simon McBurney in the 2019 mini-series The Loudest Voice
- Malcolm McDowell in Bombshell
- Ben Miller in two UK comedy TV series: Tracey Ullman's Show and Tracey Breaks the News.
Murdoch and rival newspaper and publishing magnate Robert Maxwell are thinly fictionalised as "Keith Townsend" and "Richard Armstrong" in The Fourth Estate by British novelist and former MP Jeffrey Archer.[213]
Towards the end of his touring career, Eagles drummer and lead singer Don Henley would often dedicate his 1982 hit "Dirty Laundry" to Rupert Murdoch and Bill O’Reilly.[214][215]
In 1999, the Ted Turner-owned TBS channel aired an original sitcom, The Chimp Channel. This featured an all-simian cast and the role of an Australian TV veteran named Harry Waller. The character is described as "a self-made gazillionaire with business interests in all sorts of fields. He owns newspapers, hotel chains, sports franchises and genetic technologies, as well as everyone's favourite cable TV channel, The Chimp Channel". Waller is thought to be a parody of Murdoch, a long-time rival of Turner.[216]
In 2004, the movie Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism included many interviews accusing Fox News of pressuring reporters to report only one side of news stories, in order to influence viewers' political opinions.[217]
In 2012, the satirical show Hacks, broadcast on the UK's Channel 4, made obvious comparisons with Murdoch using the fictional character "Stanhope Feast", portrayed by Michael Kitchen, as well as other central figures in the phone hacking scandal.[218]
The 2013 film Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues features an Australian character inspired by Rupert Murdoch who owns a cable news television channel.[219][220]
In the novel Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn the eponymous lead character is at least partly inspired by Murdoch.[221]
Murdoch was part of the inspiration for Logan Roy, the protagonist of TV show Succession, who is portrayed by Brian Cox.[222]
Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard wrote the track "Evilest Man" about Murdoch, for their 2022 album Omnium Gatherum.[223]
Influence, wealth, and reputation
Murdoch accepting the Hudson Institute's 2015 Global Leadership Award in November
According to Forbes' real time list of world's billionaires, Murdoch is the 34th richest person in the US and the 96th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$13.1 billion as of February 2017.[224] In 2016, Forbes ranked "Rupert Murdoch & Family" as the 35th most powerful person in the world.[225] Later, in 2019, Rupert Murdoch & family were ranked 52nd in the Forbes' annual list of the world's billionaires.[226]
In August 2013, Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology, wrote an article for the Conversation publication in which he investigated a claim by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd that Murdoch owned 70% of Australian newspapers in 2011. Flew's article showed that News Corp Australia owned 23% of the nation's newspapers in 2011, according to the Finkelstein Review of Media and Media Regulation, but, at the time of the article, the corporation's titles accounted for 59% of the sales of all daily newspapers, with weekly sales of 17.3 million copies.[227]
In connection with Murdoch's testimony to the Leveson Inquiry "into the ethics of the British press", editor of Newsweek International, Tunku Varadarajan, referred to him as "the man whose name is synonymous with unethical newspapers".[228]
News Corp papers were accused of supporting the campaign of the Australian Liberal government and influencing public opinion during the 2013 federal election. Following the announcement of the Liberal Party victory at the polls, Murdoch tweeted "Aust. election public sick of public sector workers and phony welfare scroungers sucking life out of economy. Other nations to follow in time."[229]
In November 2015, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said that Murdoch "arguably has had more impact on the wider world than any other living Australian".[230]
In late 2015, The Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou began a series of investigative articles on Theranos, the blood-testing start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes, that questioned its claim to be able to run a wide range of lab tests from a tiny sample of blood from a finger prick.[231][232][233] Holmes had turned to Murdoch, whose media empire includes Carreyrou's employer, The Wall Street Journal, to kill the story. Murdoch, who became the biggest investor in Theranos in 2015 as a result of his $125 million injection, refused the request from Holmes saying that "he trusted the paper’s editors to handle the matter fairly."[234][235]
In November 2021, Murdoch accused, without providing evidence, Google and Facebook of stifling conservative viewpoints on its platforms, and called for "substantial reform" and openness in the digital ad supply chain.[236]
See also
- Murdoch family
- List of assets owned by 21st Century Fox
- List of assets owned by News Corp
- The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty (BBC Two documentary)
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Robert Jay QC: This is 4 March 1983. You apparently said this: "I give instruction to my editors all round the world, why shouldn't I in London?" Do you remember saying that?
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- ^ .
Asked if there is any truth to recent press describing his newfound piety, Murdoch replies: "No. They say I'm a born again Christian and a Catholic convert and so on. I'm certainly a practising Christian, I go to church quite a bit but not every Sunday and I tend to go to Catholic church—because my wife is Catholic, I have not formally converted. And I get increasingly disenchanted with the C of E or Episcopalians as they call themselves here. But no, I'm not intensely religious as I'm sometimes described." Interviewed in 1992. Nicholas Coleridge, Paper Tigers (1993), p. 487.
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'Outfoxed' accuses Fox of slanting the news. Outfoxed, which is being promoted by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn, charges that Fox News executives order their cable TV anchors, reporters and producers to slant the news to be pro-Republican and pro-Bush administration
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Further reading
Hardcopy
- Chenoweth, Neil (2001). Rupert Murdoch, the untold story of the world's greatest media wizard. New York: Random House.
- Dover, Bruce. Rupert's Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost A Fortune And Found A Wife (Mainstream Publishing).
- Ellison, Sarah. War at the Wall Street Journal: Inside the Struggle To Control an American Business Empire, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. ISBN 978-0-547-15243-1 (Also published as: War at The Wall Street Journal: How Rupert Murdoch Bought an American Icon, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 2010.)
- Evans, Harold. Good Times, Bad Times, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983
- Harcourt, Alison (2006). European Union Institutions and the Regulation of Media Markets. London, New York: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6644-1.
- McKnight, David. "Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation: A Media Institution with A Mission", Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Sept 2010, Vol. 30 Issue 3, pp 303–316
- Munster, George (1985). A Paper Prince. Ringwood VIC, Australia: Penguin Books Australia Ltd. ISBN 0-670-80503-3.
- Page, Bruce (2003). The Murdoch Archipelago. Simon and Schuster UK.
- Shawcross, William (1997). Murdoch: the making of a media empire. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Souchou, Yao (2000). House of Glass – Culture, Modernity, and the State in Southeast Asia. Bangkok: White Lotus.
Online
Lists
- Rupert Murdoch collected news and commentary at The Economist
- Rupert Murdoch collected news and commentary at The Guardian
- Rupert Murdoch collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Murdoch, Rupert (1931–) resources from Trove at the National Library of Australia
- Talking About Rupert Murdoch at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
Individual items
- Profile archived May 2012 at Forbes
- Arsenault, A & Castells, M. (2008) Rupert Murdoch and the Global Business of Media Politics. International Sociology. 23(4)
- Cooke, Richard (July 2018). "The endless reign of Rupert Murdoch: After decades of influence, the media mogul isn't so much a person as an epoch" (essay). The Monthly.
External links
Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
- Rupert Murdoch at IMDb
- Appearances on C-SPAN
Stacey Walking Down Playmate’s Stairs with tips in her Stockings NY, NY, 1978 by Meryl Meisler
We’re celebrating Meryl Meisler and her five-decade career as a photographer, which began in 1973. We see Meryl’s work from her early years in suburban Long Island pugatory to hanging out in the clubs of topless dancers and bottomless drinks in 1970s Manhattan, to days teaching the overlooked in pre-gentrified Bushwick, to the present, where Meryl is focusing once more on night life and new self-portraits.
Her pictures show us life lived at ramming speed. And here we focus on some of her photographs of women in New York City – the women living it large in an era shaped by safe, affordable and effective birth control, the feminist movement – hail to the campaigners and the ones who did – co-operation, free self-expression and equality.
Meryl Meisler Self-Portrait – Playmate-Hostess
My favorite Jewish Mother, Sylvia Frances Schulman Meisler reading on Thanksgiving Evening, 1978
Feminine Floored Hurrah (Potassa de la Fayette), NY, NY, Hurrah, March 1978 #2
Dallas Performs near-Mirrors – Hurrah Wild-Wild West Party
Self-Portrait, My Childhood Bedroom Mirror, North Massapequa, NY, February 1976
Miss Malice, birthday femme, Switch n’ Play, Littlefield, Brooklyn, NY, January 2023
Love in Bloom G-d Bless America Henry Street Settlement Good Companions Senior Center 1978
Coli, Playmate Hostess, NY, NY, December 1978
Two Queens, One Blonde, One Brunette, COYOTE Hookers Masquerade Ball, CopaCabana, February 14, 1977
Gold Stars Arch (Dallas) Le Clique, NY, NY, June 1978.
Mom Getting her hair Teased at Besame Beauty Salon North Massapequa, NY, June 1976
Two Women on Floor Next to Judi Jupiter During The Prom Party. Les Mouches, NY, NY
June 1978
JJ Holding Head as Hair Flies While Dancing with Judi Jupiter, Studio 54, NY, NY, July 1977. Studio 54, July 1977
Ripped Stocking and Garter Dance Trio at GG’s Barnum Room, NY, NY, December 1978
The Joy And Pain of Life in New York City – 1939-1946
Fire, fights, joy and despair on the streets of New York - Weegee captured it all
https://flashbak.com/weegee-
“When you go out on a story, you don’t go back for another sitting. You gotta get it.”
– Weegee (Arthur Fellig)
c. 1939 Nobody Works on Labor Day!
In 2012, a treasure trove of Weegee (1899–1968) pictures was found. Taken by the photographer between 1939 and 1946, they show life, death and drama in New York.
April 28, 1943 “Hep Cats in a Hurry — Hurry, Hurry, Hurry — Only 6000 Seats Left.”
Weegee was born Ascher Fellig was born in what is now Ukraine in 1899. He and his family moved with his family to New York in 1909, where in a bid to better fit in the Jewish immigrant changed his name to Arthur. He found work as a photographer’s assistant and darkroom technician for several years before, before setting up s a freelancer close to police headquarters in lower Manhattan.
That proximity to police and the police radio in his car meant he was often the first photographer to arrive at scene of crime and automobile accidents. We’ve seen his lurid and raw photos of murder on the streets of New York, the revellers and derelicts at Sammy’s on The Bowery, and his clandestine pictures of love in the dark of a NYC cinema and people watching the unfolding horror a plane hit the Empire State building.
Jan. 1, 1940 “Ice Sheathed Firemen at Coney Island New Year’s Eve Fire.
March 29, 1942 Almost a Nosedive.
Why Weegee? Moma explains:
He was a photographer so attuned to the goings on of New York’s city streets that he seemed to intuit events before their unfolding—at times he seemed possessed, like a Ouija board.
Weegee embraced this origin story, attributing “Weegee” to a simplification of “Ouija” in signing and answering fan mail, often expanding his title to “Weegee the Famous.” But in fact, his name is rooted in his beginnings in the world of press photography. Weegee worked as a “squeegee boy” in the darkrooms of the New York Times, removing excess water from prints so they could be placed on a chrome-plated sheet, which was then inserted into heated dryers.2 As his technical prowess with the process developed, the mocking “squeegee boy” assignation morphed into a praising nickname, “Mr. Squeegee,” which ultimately wore down into “Weegee.”
Oct. 27, 1941 Flood Halts Bronx Subway.
1940 Buddy the bulldog hangs out among the milk bottles in the lobby of 850 Park Avenue.
c. 1939 St. Martins Church.
1943 “Fireman holding Torahs saved from a fire.
1945 Military personnel wave from the portholes of a ship.
July 27, 1945 The Critic.
April 29, 1941 A black cat found dropped in a mailbox on West 42nd Street with some pretzels and clams to snack on.
June 14, 1945 Keeping Cool.
Dec. 15, 1939 Henrietta Torres and her daughter Ada outside a deadly tenement fire in Brooklyn.
Sept. 8, 1943 It’ll be a Pleasure.
Aug. 14, 1945 Sailors celebrate VJ Day.
April 16, 1942 Crash Victim.
c. 1946 Weegee the Noted Photographer.