Rupert Murdoch

He turned a small-town newspaper into a diverse media empire that informs and entertains half the world

WILLIAM SHAWCROSS / Time Magazine 25oct99

Press barons have always been feared, even hated, for the power they can wield over us. But until recently they have been the creatures of the neighborhood. Rupert Murdoch is the first press baron to be a monster of the entire world. That's globalization for you.

And monster is how many people do see Murdoch. He is subjected to far more criticism, if not abuse, than any other contemporary media mogul (except perhaps Bill Gates, and in both cases, mythomania plays a part). Throughout his life he has been attacked for his right-wing politics and for allegedly lowering the standards of everything he touches. Now he is criticized for apparently kowtowing to China, where he is building up his television interests.

The brickbats keep on coming, but Murdoch's great strength is that he does not care. Unlike many moguls, he does not try to cow critics by casting libel writs like confetti. Nor, conversely, does he try to convert his critics--though his charm in private is legendary. He just carries on and does exactly what he likes. He told me recently that he saw himself pretty much as a libertarian: "What does libertarian mean? As much individual responsibility as possible, as little government as possible, as few rules as possible. But I'm not saying it should be taken to the absolute limit."

Rupert Murdoch's achievement is that he is the only media mogul to have created and to control a truly global media empire. He understood sooner than anyone else the opportunities offered by new technology--computers, satellites, wireless communications--to create first an international press and then a television domain.

Although now an American citizen (he made the change so he could buy American television stations in the 1980s), Murdoch was born in Australia and into the newspaper industry. In the 1950s he inherited his first paper, the Adelaide News, from his father, Melbourne publisher Sir Keith Murdoch; it was the town's sleepy second paper, and he shook it by the scruff of the neck and unleashed it on the competition--if only to gain the means to escape from Adelaide.

His life since then can be seen as a series of international leaps in which he's acquired more and more properties, jazzing them up or dumbing them down, according to your taste. In the '60s, it was Sydney (the Mirror), London (the News of the World and the Sun); in the '70s, New York (the New York Post which he turned from a staid liberal matron into a provocative conservative roustabout); in the '80s, Hollywood (20th Century Fox and Fox TV) and again London (acquiring the Times and Sunday Times, facing down the unions at Wapping and launching satellite television, later called BSkyB, in Britain); in the '90s, Asia (Star Television). Murdoch himself has called these acquisitions a series of battles in an unending war for more.

At the beginning of the '90s the empire nearly came to pieces as Murdoch's vast expenditures on satellite TV in Britain, coupled with the recession, meant that for the first time in his career he was at risk of defaulting on his huge loans around the world. There were cliffhanging moments as he sought to have them all rescheduled. Eventually, because most bankers had reason to trust Murdoch (unlike, say, his great rival Robert Maxwell), they agreed to roll over his debts and the empire that was on the brink of becoming a fire sale was reprieved.

Since then, its comeback has been sensational. The News Corp holdings now include a lion's share of the newspaper industry in Australia, about one-third of British newspapers (including raunchy, intrusive tabloids and the broadsheet Times) and BSkyB, which is now immensely successful. In the U.S. he has film and TV interests, newspapers, book publishers, sports teams, and much more. In Asia he has Star Television.

Of all these, Star, which Murdoch bought in 1993, has been the most difficult to grow. Its potential is vast: the footprint of its satellites extends from Japan to the Middle East via Southeast Asia and covers two-thirds of the world's population. But Murdoch soon discovered that there is no pan-Asian audience, only local audiences. In India cricket will sell hundreds of thousands of dishes; in Japan, not one. It is trying to build an audience in China that has landed Murdoch in more controversy.

Murdoch, a devout anti-Soviet and anti-communist, became bewitched by China in the early '90s. The Chinese leadership, while liberalizing in terms of economics, still attempted to control information; satellite broadcasting seemed an obvious threat to its ideological stranglehold.

To try and persuade the Chinese he was not a danger, Murdoch threw the BBC off Star. He argued that it was gratuitously attacking the regime, playing film of the massacre in Tiananmen Square over and over again. He also pointed out that since the BBC broadcasts only in English, almost no Chinese could understand it. In 1998 he ordered his British publishing firm, HarperCollins, to drop the memoirs of Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and another fierce critic of Beijing. The reward came last December when Chinese President Jiang Zemin praised Murdoch for the "objective" way in which his papers and television covered China.

When I put it to him that he was betraying his anti-communist values to ingratiate himself with Beijing, he said: "I don't think there are many communists left in China. There's a one-party state and there's a communist economy, which they are desperately trying to get out of and change. The real story there is an economic story, tied to the democratic story." He argues that Western entertainment, even without Western news, will help further dilute the regime.

Murdoch has saved and created newspapers and TV stations, but his critics claim that he has usually done so by running them downmarket. It is a criticism he fiercely rejects. I asked him recently why he aroused so much anger, particularly in Britain. "I'm a catalyst for change," he replied. In the U.K. his greatest successes were to break the print unions' stranglehold on the press and to establish satellite broadcasting against huge odds. "You can't be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place." He sees himself as a radical conservative in the mold of Margaret Thatcher, whom he supported.

Now on the cusp of the millennium and at the end of his 60s, Murdoch is on a roll. His personal life has recently been revolutionized. To the astonishment of his friends, he and his wife Anna separated and then divorced in June after 31 years of marriage. (Their children, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, play important roles in the company.) Murdoch has now married 31-year-old Wendi Deng, who grew up in China and was working for Star TV when he met her. They have bought an apartment in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district, and Murdoch seems more relaxed than ever.

But he has not stopped. One of the reasons he and Anna drifted apart, he says, is that she wanted him to slow down, and he could do no such thing. He is getting into the Internet now. Murdoch wants to die (many years on) with his boots on his feet, several screens of his own programs from around the world in front of him, a newspaper in one hand, and a mouse racing through his Internet world in the other. He is determined to make News larger and larger, a virtual leader as well as a physical one. On past form, he will succeed.

William Shawcross is the author of Murdoch: the Making of a Media Empire

BORN March 11, 1931, in Melbourne 1953 Takes News Ltd. reins 1964 Launches Australian 1967 Marries Anna Torv 1969 Takes over U.K. News of the World and Sun 1976 Buys New York Post 1981 Takes over Times and Sunday Times 1985 Buys 50% of 20th Century Fox; becomes an American citizen 1987 Takes over Herald and Weekly Times 1997 Fox co-releases Titanic, highest-grossing film in history ($1.8 billion)

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