> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
>
> "Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG (born Melbourne, March 11, 1931),
> usually known as Rupert Murdoch, is an Australian-American global
> media mogul. He is the major shareholder, chairman and managing
> director of News Corporation (News Corp). Beginning with newspapers,
> magazines and television stations in his native Australia, Murdoch
> expanded News Corp into the UK, US and Asian media markets. In recent
> years has become a leading investor in satellite television, the film
> industry, the Internet and media. News Corp is based in New York.
>
> According to the 2008 Forbes 400, Murdoch is the 109th-richest person
> in the world, with a net worth of $8.3 billion. He was made a Grand-
> Officer in the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II."
>
> Political activities
>
> Australia
> Murdoch's shattering experience with Thomas Playford in South
> Australia (see above: "Start of Business Career") and his early
> political activities in Australia were to set the pattern he would
> continue to use around the world.
>
> Murdoch found a political ally in John McEwen, leader of the
> Australian Country Party and governing in coalition with the larger
> Menzies-Holt Liberal Party. From the very first issue of The
> Australian Murdoch began taking McEwen's side in every issue that
> divided the long-serving coalition partners. (The Australian, July 15,
> 1964, first edition front page: “Strain in Cabinet, Liberal-CP row
> flares.”) It was an issue that threatened to split the coalition
> government and open the way for the stronger Australian Labor Party to
> dominate Australian politics. It was the beginning of a long campaign
> that served McEwen well.
>
> McEwen repaid Murdoch's support later by aiding him to buy his
> valuable rural property Cavan and then arranged a clever subterfuge by
> which Murdoch was able to transfer a large sum of money from Australia
> to England to complete the purchase of The News of the World without
> obtaining the required authority from the Australian Treasury.
>
> After McEwen and Menzies retired, Murdoch transferred his support to
> the newly elected Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam,
> who was elected in 1972 on a social platform that included universal
> free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary
> level, recognition of the People's Republic of China and public
> ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.
>
> Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief. He
> had already started his short lived National Star newspaper in America
> and was seeking to strengthen his political contacts there.
>
> Asked about the Australian federal election, 2007, at the News
> Corporation annual general meeting in New York on 19 October 2007, its
> chairman Rupert Murdoch, once an Australian and now a citizen of the
> USA said, "I am not commenting on anything to do with Australian
> politics, I'm sorry. I always get into trouble when I do that."
> Pressed whether he believed Prime Minister John Howard should be re-
> elected he said: "I have nothing further to say. I'm sorry. Read our
> editorials in the papers. It'll be the journalists who decide that -
> the editors."
>
> United States of America
> Murdoch's publications worldwide tend to adopt conservative views.
> During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, all 175 Murdoch-owned
> newspapers worldwide editorialized in favor of the war. Murdoch also
> served on the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute.
> News Corp-owned Fox News is often criticized for a strong conservative
> and anti-liberal bias.
>
> On May 8, 2006, the Financial Times reported that Murdoch would be
> hosting a fundraiser for Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-New York) Senate
> reelection campaign. Murdoch's New York Post newspaper opposed
> Clinton's Senate run in 2000.
>
> In May 2007, Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to purchase Dow Jones,
> owner of the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the Bancroft family,
> who controlled 64%% of the shares, outspokenly declined the offer,
> opposing Murdoch's often-used strategy of large employee cuts and
> "gutting" pre-existing systems. Later, the Bancroft family confirmed a
> willingness to consider a sale--aside from Murdoch, the Associated
> Press reported that supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and Internet
> entrepreneur Brad Greenspan were among other interested parties. On
> August 1, 2007, the BBC's "News and World Report" and NPR's
> Marketplace radio programs reported that Murdoch bought Dow Jones; the
> news was received with mixed reactions.
>
> In a 2008 interview with Walt Mossberg, Murdoch was asked whether he
> had "anything to do with the New York Post's endorsement of Barack
> Obama." Without hesitation, Murdoch replied, "Yeah. He is a rock star.
> It's fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don't
> think he will win Florida...but he will win in Ohio and the election.
> I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk."
>
> United Kingdom
> In Britain, he formed a close alliance with Margaret Thatcher, and The
> Sun credited itself with helping John Major win an unexpected election
> victory in the 1992 general election. However, in the general
> elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch's papers were either neutral
> or supported Labour under Tony Blair. This has led some critics to
> argue that Murdoch simply supports the incumbent parties (or those who
> seem most likely to win an upcoming election) in the hope of
> influencing government decisions that may affect his businesses. The
> Labour Party under Blair had moved significantly to the Right on many
> economic issues prior to 1997. Murdoch identifies himself as a
> libertarian.
>
> In a speech in New York, Rupert Murdoch said that the UK Prime
> Minister Tony Blair said the BBC coverage of the Hurricane Katrina
> disaster was full of hatred of America. Murdoch is a strong critic of
> the BBC, which he believes has a left wing bias.
>
> In 1998, Rupert Murdoch made a failed attempt to buy footballing power
> Manchester United FC. He offered £625 million. It was the largest
> amount of money anyone had offered for a sports club. It was rejected
> by the United Kingdom's Competition Commission, citing that the
> acquisition would have "hurt competition in the broadcast industry and
> the quality of British football".
>
> On June 28, 2006 the BBC reported that Murdoch and News Corporation
> are flirting with idea of backing Conservative leader David Cameron at
> the next General Election. However in a later interview in July 2006,
> when asked what he thought of the Conservative leader, Murdoch replied
> "Not much".
>
> In 2006, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Murdoch was to
> offer Tony Blair a senior role in his global media company News Corp.
> when the UK prime minister stood down from office.
>
> He is also accused by former Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan having a
> personal vendetta against him and of conspiring with MI5 to produce a
> video of him confessing to having affairs - allegations which Sheridan
> had previously sued News International over and won. On being arrested
> for perjury following the case Sheridan claimed that the charges were
> "orchestrated and influenced by the powerful reach of the Murdoch
> empire"
>
> Personal life
> Murdoch has been married three times. In 1956 he married Patricia
> Booker, a former shop assistant and air hostess from Melbourne, with
> whom he had his first child, a daughter Prudence Murdoch, born in
> 1958. Pat did not like Adelaide with its extremes of weather and where
> she had few friends and Rupert was frequently away building the
> foundations of his future empire. They divorced in 1967. In the same
> year, he married Anna Tõrv, an Estonian-born cadet journalist working
> for his Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
>
> Tõrv and Murdoch had three children: Elisabeth Murdoch (born in
> Sydney, Australia August 22, 1968), Lachlan Murdoch (born in London,
> UK September 8, 1971), and James Murdoch, (born in Wimbledon, UK
> December 13, 1972). Murdoch's companies published two novels by his
> then wife: Family Business (1988) and Coming to Terms (1991); both
> were seen as being vanity publications. Anna and Rupert divorced
> acrimoniously in June, 1999.
>
> Wendi Deng MurdochAnna Murdoch received a settlement of US$ 1.2
> Billion assets. Seventeen days after the divorce, on June 25, 1999,
> Murdoch, then 68, married Chinese born Deng Wendi, later changed to
> Wendi Deng. She was then 30, a recent Yale School of Management
> graduate and newly appointed vice-president of STAR TV. Anna Murdoch
> was also remarried, in October 1999, to William Mann.
>
> Murdoch has since had two children with Deng: Grace (born in New York
> November 19, 2001) and Chloe (born in New York July 17, 2003).
>
> Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan, formerly the deputy chief operating
> officer at the News Corporation and the publisher of the New York
> Post, was Murdoch's heir apparent before resigning from his executive
> posts at the global media company at the end of July 2005. Lachlan's
> departure left James, chief executive of the satellite television
> service British Sky Broadcasting since November 2003, as the only
> Murdoch scion still directly involved with the company's operations,
> though Lachlan has agreed to remain on the News Corporation's board.
>
> After graduating from Vassar College and marrying classmate Elkin
> Kwesi Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame
> Pianim) in 1993, Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, along with her husband,
> purchased a pair of NBC-affiliate television stations KSBW and KSBY in
> California on a $35 million loan from her father. By quickly re-
> organizing and re-selling them at a $12 million profit, Elisabeth
> emerged in 1995 as an unexpected rival to her brothers for eventual
> leadership of the publishing dynasty's empire. But after quarreling
> publicly with her assigned mentor Sam Chisholm at BSkyB, she veered
> out on her own as a television and film producer in London, where she
> has enjoyed independent success in conjunction with her second
> husband, Matthew Freud.
>
> It is unknown whether Murdoch will remain as News Corp's CEO
> indefinitely. The American cable television entrepreneur John Malone
> was for a time the second largest voting shareholder in News
> Corporation after Murdoch himself potentially undermining the family's
> control. In 2007, the company announced that it would sell certain
> assets and provide cash to Malone's company in exchange for the
> cancellation of their stock. Murdoch in 2007 issued his older children
> with equal voting stock perhaps to test their individual interest and
> ability to run the company according to standards he has set.
>
> Rupert Murdoch is the 2008 gala honoree for Endeavor (nonprofit), a
> non-profit organization that supports high-impact entrepreneurs in
> emerging markets."