Rupert Murdoch biography

Rupert Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956, and they had a daughter, Prudence, before divorcing in 1965. He married Anna Torv in 1967, and they had four children before eventually divorcing in 1999. Only seventeen days after his second divorce, Murdoch married third wife Wendi Deng. They have two children.

Murdoch has drawn wide criticism for monopolizing control over international media outlets as well as for his conservative political views,

which are often reflected in the reporting of Murdoch-controlled outlets such as Fox News Channel. In the 2010 American midterm elections, News Corp donated $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group supporting Republican candidates. Critics argued that the owner of major news sources covering the election should not contribute directly to the political campaigns involved.

Murdoch's News Corporation now controls a significant share of virtually all forms of media across the globe. He owns many of the books and newspapers people read, the television shows and films they watch, the radio stations they listen to, the websites they visit, and the blogs and social networks they create. He has amassed a fortune of approximately $6.2 billion, and Forbes magazine recently ranked him ahead of many heads of state as the thirteenth most powerful person in the world.

Although he could never have imagined the power he would one day yield, this kind of influence was exactly what Murdoch sought as a young publisher building his empire. "I sensed the excitement and the power," he recalls. "Not raw power, but the ability to influence at least the agenda of what was going on." And after six decades working in the media, Murdoch says he could not imagine his life any other way. He says, "If you're in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community& I can't imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to."

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