The Life and Legacy of Rupert Murdoch

While you may or may not know the name Rupert Murdoch, you certainly know his work. He is the founder of Fox News, now 21st Century Fox; along with sixty percent of all Australian news outlets, multiple large tabloids in London, and many newspapers in most of the English-speaking world.

He began his life on a farm in Melbourne, Australia, the son of distinguished journalist, Keith Murdoch. He moved to London and studied at Oxford before becoming a journalist for The Birmingham Express along with an apprenticeship at The Daily Express. After his father died in 1952, he moved back to Australia and inherited his father’s newspaper: Adelaide News. He quickly rose to the top of the Australian media market because of relaxed monopoly control in Australia, purchasing companies and putting others out of business.

After taking over most of the Australian media market, he moved to London, where he purchased The Sun and News of the World. He wanted to purchase The London Times, but the UK prevented him from doing that because it would create a monopoly, meaning he would own too much of all the media companies in the UK. This could potentially impact him being able to get the media companies to say what he wants. That is an incredibly dangerous and slippery slope, so most western countries like the US, the UK, and Germany have laws preventing it. So to get around this, he threw his full weight behind a candidate who would support the acquisition, and when she won, she turned the other way, allowing Murdoch to purchase the paper. After that, he moved onto the American market and founded what we now know today as  21st Century Fox.

This is where his sons come in. While Rupert Murdoch had 4 children, his two sons, Lachlan and James, were the two in line to inherit his empire. People say that Lachlan is even more right-leaning than his father. He is an Australian Nationalist and a huge Trump supporter. James, on the other hand, is much more of a centrist, and a huge environmentalist. Lachlan seemed like the obvious choice to inherit his father's empire, and while he has, his father had one more trick up his sleeve.

The reason there was even a discussion of succession was because Rupert Murdoch is an 88-year-old man and has already been in the hospital once for falling down. Due to past fights with both of his sons, it is speculated that Rupert Murdoch trusted neither of his children. People think that is the reason that before handing his empire to Lachlan, he made the biggest deal of his life, and gave away two-thirds of his company in an 80 billion dollar deal to Disney, in the Disney Fox merger. This sale means that the final one-third of Rupert Murdoch’s empire is in the hands of his right-leaning son, and will quite probably continue down the path his father set it on.

By Owen Stone