Keith Rupert Murdoch ( MUR-dok; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the United Kingdom (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian), in the United States (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through Fox Corporation). He was also the owner of Sky (until 2018), 21st Century Fox (until 2019), and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st-richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world, according to Forbes magazine. Due to his extensive wealth and influence over media and politics, he has been described as an oligarch. Murdoch was born and raised in Melbourne. After his father, Keith, died in 1952, he took over the running of The News, a small Adelaide newspaper owned by the former. In the 1950s and 1960s, he 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 American market; however, he retained interests in Australia and the United Kingdom. He bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, in 1981. In 1985, Murdoch became a naturalised American citizen, giving up his Australian citizenship, to satisfy the legal requirement for American television network ownership. The next year, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his British printing operations in London, causing bitter industrial disputes. Murdoch's holding company News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990 and, during the 1990s, expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, his News Corporation owned more than 800 companies in more than 50 countries, with a net worth of more than $5 billion. Many of Murdoch's papers and television channels have been accused of right-wing bias and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have linked his influence with major political developments in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. In 2011, he 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 by the British government, and FBI investigations in the United States. Murdoch resigned as a director of News International the next year. In 2023, he announced that he would be stepping down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp. The Murdoch family was involved in a U.S. court case in which his three children—Elisabeth, Prudence and James—challenged his bid to amend the family trust to ensure that his eldest son, Lachlan, retains control of News Corp and Fox Corp, rather than the trust benefiting all of his six children, as is specified in its "irrevocable" terms. In 2025, they reached a settlement, giving Lachlan ownership of Murdoch's media empire.
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