Rupert Murdoch Biography and Photos

Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG (born 11 March, 1931 in Melbourne, Victoria), usually known as Rupert Murdoch, is an Australian-born American global media mogul. He is the major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation (News Corp). Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the UK, US and Asian media markets. It was in the UK that he diversified into TV, creating Sky Television in 1989. In recent years he has become a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry, the Internet and the media.

Murdoch's father was Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch, a powerful Australian newspaper proprietor of Scottish descent (Clan Murdoch is actually a sept of Clan MacDonald) His mother is Dame Elisabeth Murdoch (née Elisabeth Joy Greene), the daughter of a wealthy Irish family. Rupert attended Geelong Grammar School, one of Australia's most elite private schools, and was reading philosophy, politics and economics at Worcester College, University of Oxford, England, when his father died in 1952.

Before his death, Keith Murdoch had accumulated a great number of shares in newspaper companies, including some representing a controlling interest in News Limited, an Adelaide company publishing an afternoon newspaper called The News. He had appointed an experienced journalist named Rohan Rivett, a childhood friend and mentor of Rupert Murdoch, as editor of The News, with the hope that Rupert would enter a career in journalism and that Rivett would assist Rupert in learning the skills required. In his will, Keith Murdoch instructed his trustees that Rupert should begin his career at The News "if they consider him worthy of support". At that time of his father's death, Murdoch had written articles for Oxford student newspapers and had worked for a number of newspapers in a junior capacity. However, some thought he appeared to have little interest in journalism, but noted his enthusiasm for gambling and making money.[4] At the time of his death Keith Murdoch was heavily in debt, but possessed within a private family trust a considerable number of newspaper shares, some of which may have actually belonged to The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd.The trustees, in consultation with Keith's widow and Rupert's mother, Lady Murdoch, were forced to sell many of the shares and other property in order to pay death duties (inheritance taxes) and repay debt. Elisabeth was able to retain only the family home, Cruden Farm, plus the shares in News Limited and its subsidiaries, a Melbourne magazine publishing company named Southdown Press and The Barrier Miner, a regional newspaper at Broken Hill, New South Wales.