Founder of Fox Corporation and News Corp. As of 2025 he is 94 years old and nearing his 95th birthday. He has six children. His father, Sir Keith Murdoch, began his newspaper career in England under Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail, who declared the key ingredients of news to be "health things, sex things, money things". Sir Keith built a newspaper chain in Australia that provided a fancy childhood, but when he died aged just 67, Rupert's mother, Lady Elisabeth, sold many assets to cover debts, greatly reducing the family empire.
As a student at Oxford he was known as "Red Rupe" and had a bust of Lenin in his rooms. In the subsequent decades he rebuilt the empire and then some: in Australia he acquired rivals; in Britain he started with the Sun before taking over the Times; in America he took control of 20th Century Fox. His remaining newspaper and TV assets are worth a combined $40bn.
He is notorious for editorial interference. "I didn't come all the way from Australia not to interfere," he told one editor. He employed "telephone terrorism", calling staff day and night and firing off faxes from his yacht. Executives learned to build coverage around his prejudices without instructions being spelled out directly—a practice one underling described as "anticipatory compliance", which has insulated Mr Murdoch from scandals such as the News of the World phone-hacking affair.
The Sun has been a political weathervane rather than a signpost, flipping from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair to David Cameron and back to Sir Keir Starmer. Mr Murdoch held a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in 2007, later backing Donald Trump, with whom he has had a fraught relationship.
His second wife, Anna, wrote a novel, "Family Business", about a media dynasty that implodes when the father dies and his heirs fight. His divorce settlement with Jerry Hall, his fourth wife, included a clause forbidding her from talking to the writers of HBO's "Succession", which appears to be largely based on the family.
He remains a regular, if somewhat hobbled, presence at the Fox lot in Century City. His stated retirement plan: "to be carried out of here."
In January 1986 Mr Murdoch thwarted Britain's turbulent, technology-blocking print unions by moving his entire newspaper operation to a derelict warehouse district in Wapping, east London. A year of clashes between working journalists, pickets and policemen ensued. With Margaret Thatcher's government in his corner, Mr Murdoch won. Britain's union movement never recovered.
In 2019 he sold Fox's general-entertainment assets to Disney for $71bn, at what turned out to be the top of the market. His main online investment was in Myspace, just before it flopped.
On September 8th 2025 the family announced a resolution to the decades-long succession dispute. Lachlan Murdoch, the third-eldest of his six children, will inherit a controlling stake in both Fox and News Corp until 2050. Three siblings—Prudence, Elisabeth and James—reportedly gave up their votes in exchange for about $1bn each. Rupert had earlier lost a case in a Reno, Nevada probate court seeking to change the family trust to protect Lachlan's position. In 2022 he had attempted to recombine Fox and News Corp but was opposed by James and other shareholders.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say. And then say it with the utmost levity.