Media mogul Rupert Murdoch never seems to be far from the headlines, in every sense. Yet his empire doesn’t seem to have been too badly hit by its many controversies, from 2011's phone hacking scandal to criticisms that his businesses dominate the media landscape too much. In fact, you could even say that his business thrives on the bad press. Click or scroll through to find out how Murdoch and his family have made their fortune, and some of the ways they spend it.
The story begins over a century ago with the rise of Sir Keith Murdoch, an enterprising journalist who became a regional newspaper magnate in Melbourne, Australia. He married a 19-year-old photographer at one of his papers, Elisabeth Greene, in 1928. They had three daughters Helen, Anne and Janet and their only son, Rupert, was born in 1931. The young Rupert was thrown into the driving seat of the family firm when he was just 22 after his father died of cancer in 1952. Murdoch had been studying at Worcester College at England's prestigious Oxford University where it's reported that he was an active member of the university's Labour Party. Following his father's death the would-be media tycoon returned to Australia to take charge of the loss-making Adelaide News.
Over the next few decades, he not only turned the paper’s fortunes around but gained control of swathes of the Australian newspaper and television industries. Murdoch launched his first national paper, The Australian, in 1964 and by 2010, his News Corp company owned around 150 newspapers in the country. Some of his papers were accused of selling sleaze, but Rupert dismissed critics as “snobs who only read papers that no-one else wants”.
Murdoch also swooped in on the British market, buying News of the World and The Sun in 1968 and 1969 respectively. He turned both into cheekier, bolder tabloid papers, with News of the World thriving for the next half-century as Britain’s biggest weekly newspaper. Murdoch's addition of photos of topless women on page three helped The Sun to overtake the Daily Mirror as the most popular daily paper. The Sun also gained political influence as it moved to the right.
There have often been crossovers between Murdoch’s professional life and his private affairs. The media giant's first marriage to an Australian flight attendant, Patricia Booker, ended in divorce, and he then went on to marry Anna Torv, a Scottish journalist at one of his newspapers. Prudence, his daughter with Patricia, was born in 1958 and he then had three children with Anna in the 1960s and 1970s: Elisabeth (pictured), Lachlan and James. Rupert and Anna were married for more than three decades, and she even had two novels published by his companies. The couple divorced in 1999 however, and while the exact figure hasn't been confirmed, there are reports of Anna having received $1.7 billion in assets in the settlement. In today's money that would be almost $2.7 billion (£2bn).
Murdoch’s first step into the US market was in newspapers, buying the San Antonio Express-News and New York Post in the 1970s. His biggest mark on the media scene was in TV and film however, as he bought 20th Century Fox in 1985, as well as buying several TV stations in that decade. In October 1996, Murdoch launched the Republican-leaning channel Fox News, which still dominates cable news ratings today. Over the years Rupert Murdoch has come under fire over his newspapers and TV channels' often right-wing influence on politics across the world and he faced questions over his own influence on their editors. His most high-profile connection is probably US President Donald Trump, and their relationship extends back to the 1980s. Some sources even claim that without the support of Murdoch's Fox News, Trump never would have made it into office in 2016.
Murdoch also became so significant in British public life that many politicians courted him after he bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981, and by this point it was very apparent that his opinions had shifted since his left-leaning university days. The renowned Sunday Times and The Times editor Harry Evans quit in 1982 over Murdoch’s alleged interference with the paper. Murdoch waged war on the trade unions soon after, sacking thousands of his printers and backing Margaret Thatcher. The Sun is still boycotted in Liverpool after its misleading coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster, in which 96 fans of Liverpool FC were killed, which suggested the fans had caused the tragedy. His company’s launch of Sky in 1989 made huge profits and transformed paid-for TV in Britain, bringing hundreds of channels, films and sports fixtures to millions of homes.
The US Fox network boomed through a stream of Hollywood blockbusters, new channels and 27 local Fox stations. Huge hits included long-running shows like The Simpsons. Murdoch even became a US citizen in 1985 to overcome rules on foreign ownership of the media, as it wasn't possible for a non-American to own more than 25% of a television system.
Weeks after his divorce from Anna, Murdoch married 30-year-old Wendi Deng, an executive at News Corp’s Star TV network in Hong Kong who was nearly 40 years his junior. Murdoch and Deng had two daughters, Grace Helen and Chloe, and she is said to have helped Murdoch expand his empire into Asia. The third marriage also ended in divorce in 2013 reportedly because Murdoch disliked Deng's close relationship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
His fourth and current wife is model and actress Jerry Hall, who he married in London in 2016. Between the two of them the pair have 10 children.
Rupert’s eldest son Lachlan was widely seen as the probable heir to the Murdoch empire in the 1990s, much like his father before him. The Princeton graduate impressed with his work at News Corp in Australia, saving property website realestate.com.au from near-insolvency and transforming it into a business worth billions. Lachlan rose through the company and became publisher of the New York Post, but frictions reportedly grew with his father. Lachlan made the surprise decision to leave News Corp in 2005, resigning from his role as deputy chief operating officer. He spent nine years involved in other media businesses in Australia, apparently telling friends he would never go back to News Corp. But in 2014, in a dramatic turnaround, he did just that and returned as a non-executive co-chairman at News Corp and 21st Century Fox. In 2019, following the sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney for $71.3 billion (£53.9bn), Lachlan became chief executive of Fox News Corporation.
Many media reports about Lachlan’s promotion portrayed it as a setback for his younger brother James. After not completing his film and history studies at Harvard, James was until recently the frontrunner to inherit the throne after Lachlan’s departure. He won praise for turning around Star TV, and then went on to secure several promotions within his father’s companies. James’ career suffered a huge blow in 2011 when both he and his father were grilled by British politicians over their knowledge of a major scandal at News of the World. The newspaper closed later in the year following claims that it had paid police officers for stories and hacked into the phones of celebrities and crime victims, including a murdered schoolgirl.
Recently James told The New Yorker that "there are views [he] really disagree[s] with on Fox", which some have taken to be a direct criticism of his father. In March 2019 James founded Lupa Systems, a private investment company, to assemble a new portfolio of media companies. Lupa Systems then bought a minority stake in digital media company Vice Media later in the year, with 21st Century Fox having bought a 5% stake in the company back in 2013. James has since gone one step further, and he resigned from News Corp's board of directors in July due to what he described as "disagreements over certain editorial content". It is thought to be specifically related to Fox News' coverage of climate change and the Australian bush fires. More liberal than his father, he and his wife Kathryn (pictured) donated more than $1.2 million (£899k) to Joe Biden's presidential campaign in June 2020.
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Meanwhile, Rupert’s daughter Elisabeth has been less widely tipped as a possible successor to the empire. She has been married three times, and in 2017 she became the wife of Keith Tyson, a Turner Prize-winning artist. Like Lachlan and James, Elisabeth also worked for her father, leading his broadcasting arm BSkyB at the time of its audacious but unsuccessful takeover bid for Manchester United in 1999. Elisabeth walked out on BSkyB in 2000, five years before Lachlan’s departure, also reportedly down to friction between her and her father. She went on to build her own independent TV production company, Shine, which was widely seen as a success. It was bought by none other than News Corp for $673 million (£415m) in 2011.
The Murdoch family have not held back on spending their share of the vast profits generated by their companies, including investing in property. Rupert's father Sir Keith Murdoch's first purchase was the 153-acre Cruden Farm near Melbourne as a wedding gift to his wife. After a lot of refurbishment the property, and particularly its gardens, was lovingly tended by Rupert's mother Dame Elisabeth Murdoch until her death in 2012. While the farm does not host weddings, it is commonly used for photos and filming.
Rupert Murdoch's third wife Wendi also had a perchant for property and she is said to have persuaded him into buying what was New York's most expensive apartment in 2005. The media giant and his third wife paid $44 million for the 20-room, top-floor apartment on Fifth Avenue, which in today's money comes to an eye-watering $58.6 million (£44.2m).
Murdoch also owns a luxury apartment in the wealthy Mayfair area of central London, which Deng reportedly revamped. The Guardian reports that he “frequently assembled some of London’s elite” at the flat, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Homeland star Damian Lewis. More recently, in March Murdoch and current wife Jerry Hall purchased a property in the Cotswolds, England for a reported £30 million ($39.7m).
Another of Murdoch’s properties is his Moraga Estate in Bel Air, Los Angeles, which reportedly cost him around $29 million (£21.7m) when he bought it in 2013. Murdoch apparently saw the estate for sale in an advert in one of his own newspapers, The Wall Street Journal. Described as the area’s only working winery, it was hit by the wildfires that ripped through the south of California in 2017.
With business interests around the world, Rupert Murdoch has clocked up more air miles than most. Not one to travel in economy class, Murdoch has owned several private planes over the years. His custom-built Boeing 737 is thought to have set him back tens of millions of dollars and he also owns a Gulfstream G650, costing around $84 million (£63.5m).
Luxury aircrafts aren't Murdoch's only means of travelling in style, as he also has a small fleet of superyachts. When it was built, the 200-foot (61m) Vertigo (pictured) was the seventh largest sailing yacht in the world. The yacht has won multiple awards and features a 10-person jacuzzi and outdoor cinema facilities. A couple of Murdoch's yachts are available for hire, and one was even the location of the tycoon's wedding to Wendi Deng.
Murdoch's love of splashing the cash seems to be hereditary, and daughter Elisabeth and her former husband Matthew Freud, the great grandson of neurologist Sigmund Freud, were said to throw lavish parties at their homes in Notting Hill and Oxfordshire. Notable guests included senior politicians, as well as celebrities like the singer Bono. Elisabeth even rubs shoulders with royalty, pictured here with the Duchess of Cambridge at a charity event in 2011.
James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn have also invested in some eye-catching properties, although the location likely means that they have fewer celebrity guests dropping by. The couple bought an extremely remote, off-grid property in rural Canada in 2017, which comes with a hot spring and access to a lake.
In 2017 Lachlan Murdoch and his wife, model Sarah O’Hare, parted with $29 million (£22m) for a large estate in Aspen, which boasts impressive mountain views, a 300-bottle wine cellar and an art gallery. Back in 2009 they also bought a former French consulate in Sydney for AU$23 million, or AU$28.4 million (US$20.6m/£15.6m) in today's money, which later ended up in the hands of actor Russell Crowe (pictured).
Murdoch has come under fire in his native Australia, after former prime minister Kevin Rudd launched a high-profile petition calling for an inquiry into Murdoch's dominance of the media landscape in Australia. The petition, which gained more than 500,000 signatories as of 3 November, states: “We are especially concerned that Australia’s print media is overwhelmingly controlled by News Corporation, founded by Fox News billionaire Rupert Murdoch, with around two-thirds of daily newspaper readership." However, the current Liberal-National government, led by Scott Morrison, is not expected to act upon the petition.
Despite showing support for Donald Trump in the lead up to the 2020 election, Murdoch-owned conservative news outlets in the US including Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal appear to have distanced themselves from him after his defeat by Joe Biden in the US 2020 election. Marking a notable shift in their rhetoric, these three media outlets have urged Trump to accept his defeat, with Fox News newsreader Laura Ingraham calling for the sitting president to show "grace and composure" in order to defend his legacy. It has also been reported that Trump called Murdoch "in a rage" on 5 November, after Fox News projected Biden had won in the swing state of Arizona earlier than other media outlets.
With the family's net worth currently at $18.9 billion (£14.2bn), according to Forbes, the subject of who will take over the family business empire after Rupert Murdoch steps down has been hotly debated. James Murdoch was seen as a likely candidate up until his resignation from News Corp’s board of directors earlier this year. Now it looks most probable that Lachlan, who became chief executive of Fox News Corporation in 2018, will take the reins. Given Rupert Murdoch's colourful past it's difficult to know what the octogenerien will do next, but whatever it is, it is likely to be newsworthy.
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