Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-American media mogul. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate. In 1953, Murdoch became managing director of News Limited, inherited from his father. In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World and then The Sun. He moved to New York in 1974 to expand into the US market and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet. In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed BSkyB in 1990 and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000 Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.
In July 2011 Murdoch faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty and public citizens. He faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption in the UK and FBI investigations in the US.
Early Life
Murdoch was born in Melbourne, the only son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Elisabeth Greene (born 1909). His mother is of English and Scottish ancestry. His parents were both born in Melbourne. Keith Murdoch was a renowned war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate. He asked for a rendezvous after seeing her debutante photograph in one of his own newspapers and they married in 1928, when she was aged 19 and he 23 years her senior. In addition to Rupert, the couple had three daughters: Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929–2004).
Murdoch attended the elite Geelong Grammar School, where he had his first experience of editing a publication, being co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived. He worked part time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father from an early age to take over the family business. Murdoch read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford University in England, where he supported the Labour Party. After her husband's death from cancer in 1952, Elisabeth Murdoch went on to invest herself in charity work, as life governor of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and establishing the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. At 102 (in 2011) she has 74 descendants. Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.
From : www.wikipedia.org
