RUPERT MURDOCH
By Thomas Harris
It is fair to say that Australian born Rupert Murdoch made his own fortune. Murdoch returned to Australia in 1952 after the death of his father Keith, who was said to have been Australia’s most influential newspaper executive of his time. After death duties and tax, his father’s legacy, his businesses and considerable fortune was reduced to one newspaper The Adelaide News.
Over the next 20 years, Murdoch expanded his businesses hugely, buying more Australian newspapers such as The Daily Mirror, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, and record label, Festival Records.
Murdoch was fast to earn a competitive and ruthless name for himself while creating his “mother-company” News Corporation. He was also a vocal and active objector to the Australian law that you could not own both a newspaper and a television station in the same city.
Murdoch expanded into Britain in the mid 60’s, becoming a major media force with the The Times and The Sun.
In 1973 he bought his first American newspaper, The San Antonio News. Soon afterwards, he founded the National Star, three years later he bought the New York Post.
During the 1980’s, he created Sky Television, a British satellite network.
He became a citizen of the United States in 1985 which satisfied the legal requirement, that one must be a U S citizen to own an American TV station, he then created the Fox Network.
By 1991, News Corp. had amassed huge debts, mostly from Murdoch’s British Sky Television; this forced him to sell many of his American magazine interests. Eventually he forced a merger between Sky TV and opposing network British Satellite Broadcasting, on his own terms he created BSkyB, which has dominated the British pay-TV market ever since.
Murdoch has been married three times. He married first in 1956, then 1967, and lastly in 1999, with children resulting from each marriage. It is interesting to note that, while he claims to despise nepotism (perhaps because of the fact that he inherited comparatively little from his father) he has shamelessly promoted three of his four children to run his companies.
Clearly, Rupert Murdoch is a very gifted entrepreneur, making huge amounts out of very little. Starting with a local newspaper, ‘The Adelaide News’, and expanding over 60 years into the massive media empire he controls today (total value $30b US).
News Corp’s. holdings now include a ‘lion’s share’ of the Australian newspaper industry and about one-third of Britian’s. His personal fortune amounts to US$5.5b, making him the 54th richest man in the world. He holds a 28.5% stake in his company, News Corporation.
So what does he have to do with poverty?
“His many detractors would say Murdoch’s success has resulted in the dumbing-down of the media, with quality entertainment and journalism replaced by mindless vulgarity”. (Walker:BBC)
While at first this may not seem connected to poverty, it gains a certain logic when you link it up with the fact that newspapers, TV and other media sources are where most people find out about world events.
“The 1990s have witnessed the decline of the press as a public forum. This can be attributed largely to the relentless corporate takeover of the Indian press and the concentration of ownership in a few hands. Around seven major companies account for the bulk of circulation in the powerful English language press… ‘The Times’ is clear and unequivocal in its priorities. Beauty contests make the front page. Farmers’ suicides don’t. Sometimes reality forces changes, but this is the exception, not the rule,” says Indian author and journalist P. Sainath.
He continues to say that the idea traces back to Rupert Murdoch and the capitalist’s overwhelming desire for profit – “A business like any other, not a public forum”, says Sainath. This ‘style’ is being pursued by many other large newspapers in India.
How can people find out about problems in other countries (e.g. poverty) to provide their support or aid, let alone rationalise how important the issue on a larger scale, when such articles are placed next to sport or fashion etc.
When you consider Murdoch’s personal fortune of $5.5b, one realises just how much power this man has compared to a whole country. East Timor, for example, one of the world’s poorest countries, has an annual estimated GDP of $370m (CIA Fact-book, 2004).
The annual worldwide cost of giving children a basic education is around $10 billion. Murdoch, a single man, could supply half of that money himself. If he is (as he says) earnestly in support of meritocracy (the idea that one gets to where they are through their own achievements), then surely he would be happy to supply others with their own chance to succeed. If not, and he feels no such responsibility, then it becomes clear why he doesn’t feel guilty about publishing newspapers with a motto that is money-making, instead of using the power at his disposal to diminish poverty and other world issues, making the world a better place.
References:
P, Sainath: ‘None So Blind as Those Who Will Not See’
Walker, A: ‘Rupert Murdoch: Bigger Than Kane’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2162658.stm
