Today, Rupert Murdoch’s name may be one of the most familiar and repeated names in the wonderful world of media, which can be claimed to have reached such an extent that it covers the whole world. His reputation is like a gambler whose next move is practically impossible to guess. A capable pirate who only follows his established rules and knows well that the media, as the leaders of the theory of globalization, do not consider any power more powerful than themselves. They do not have any value and credit for the contractual geographical boundaries of countries and continents and they can easily take Mickey Mouse to France and impose Western capitalism on China and send CNN network to the private yard of the world’s dictator rulers.
Rupert Murdoch was born in a middle-class but influential and powerful Australian family. In his youth, he had leftist political tendencies and admired Vladimir Lenin. In 1990, he was proudly and staunchly right-wing and a close and staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. His political orientation created many enemies for him. On the other hand, his greed was doubled. For some people, especially in England and Australia, Murdoch had become a demonic figure. “Shaitan Sefat” and “Satanic” were among the words that were constantly said to him by his enemies. He did not value his enemies, but still his friends and also many of his colleagues speak of him with respect. He is sure that whatever he does is right. Rupert Murdoch says: “I owe what I have to my father. He taught me to give importance to only two categories in life. Education and communication. In my father’s opinion, this opens up another world for people.”
Murdoch’s father became a journalist and later the owner of a prestigious newspaper in Australia. After the war, when Billy Hughes managed to replace Andrew Fisher as the prime minister of Australia, he appointed Keith Murdoch as his agent and unofficial director of Australia, as well as a writer of political articles on international affairs in London. When Prime Minister Hughes came to London, Murdoch hosted a private dinner party in his flat, which was attended by Lloyd George, Bonnar Law and Lord Northcliffe, owner of The Times of London.
Murdoch Sr. was also heavily influenced by Northcliffe’s spells and charms. He learned many things about the profession of journalism from him and during his activity as a journalist in Australia, he taught these lessons to others, including his son. The slogan that North Cliff chose for his Daily News newspaper was “a magazine for busy people”. He had a very simple and effective philosophy for the publishing industry. He used to say: “A newspaper should be such that people are willing to pay money to buy it. The newspaper should be allowed to present things that are of interest to the public.” His whole effort was to offer people what they like. This was a revolutionary theory, a theory that failed to attract the attention and interest of educational professionals who believed that it knew their needs better than the people themselves. In the late 1930s, TS Eliot stated that British newspapers had a direct effect on proving that “the people of this class are bigoted, without thought and intelligence.” This tension and conflict between the educated forces of the society and the common people and their interests continued throughout the years of the 20th century. For example, Virginia Woolf referred to man as “an unknown and moving monster in the street” and said: “A crowd that shakes itself in a big shape and composition like jelly… Sometimes they shake like this, or that instincts such as hatred, revenge, and praise bubble up inside them.” Aldous Huxley also complains about the public education of that time that “they have created a class of people that I call modern idiots.”
H.J. Wells had a more serious opinion. He believed that “newspapers are a dangerous tool, because their profit motives force them to resort to such things as creating violent and vile feelings such as the sense of patriotism and war fever.” “This makes publications the primary institutions of creating and spreading hatred, and therefore a popular newspaper, in this sense, becomes a toxic and very dangerous source.” But North Cliff continued its way until it was able to become the owner of newspapers such as Observer, Weekly Dispatch and the owner of a major part of the shares of the Times newspaper and remove the Daily Mirror newspaper from the circle of competition.
Northcliffe insisted that “no newspaper article should contain more than two hundred and fifty words.” In describing a good magazine, he says: “It is an ideal magazine that contains all the news in sixty seconds.”
But the transmission of Northcliffe’s experiences was more than the contents of the newspapers, the letters he wrote to Murdoch Sr. Once, when Kate Murdoch stopped publishing the Melbourne Herald, she received a letter from Cliff that was an inspiration to her and later to her son. “The editorial should actually be the second thing that attracts the reader’s attention. The first thing should be the headlines of the most important news… Happy and smiling pictures make the reader happy… I personally like short news more… People like to read news that contains a lot of profit. Most people are eager to get a lot out of reading newspapers, so be it, if luck is with them… News about the church is also good, although people who swear to God while smoking and drinking wine have no interest. They don’t want to include religious content… I believe even in Australia sports can be exaggerated… Every woman reads what is written about artificial pearls… I still feel the lack of short news in the Herald newspapers. A few columns of such items would give a great deal of satisfaction to the purchasers for the payment of three-and-a-halfpenny… Mr. Murdoch, my young friends believe that you have not used all your abilities in the Herald.”
In the late 1920s, Murdoch began to expand the scope of the Herald empire. Sporting Gulab, D’Australian Home Builder, Wild Life and Dice In were among the magazines that were either bought by Herald Group or left the field of competition. In 1925, his group managed to buy the rival newspaper Sun News Pictorial and turn it into its most profitable product. The managers of the group were very happy about this issue and in 1926 they promoted Murdak to their group, i.e. in the management staff. Two years later, he became the company’s managing director, and in 1929 he forced the Herald Group to buy radio station 3DB, thus becoming the first Australian journalist to break into radio and television.
He introduced high speed printing machines to the press community of his country. Also, he was considered one of the pioneers in providing picturegram services. The first video radio program that was broadcast throughout the region was done by him. He loved to always be first.
Therefore, it is natural that Rupert Murdoch, the son of Kate Murdoch, will also inherit what his father had earned. He started his career from a bankrupt newspaper of his father. A newspaper that was gradually damaged and could not continue to survive. He maintained this newspaper for three years and developed the publishing area and pages of the newspaper. During ten years, he went from this newspaper to another newspaper and increased the quality of the publications he published. Before entering the European and American markets, he founded News Corporation in Australia in the 60s and took the first steps of development in 1969 by buying the News of the World and Sun and the New York Post in the middle of the decade. It took 70 AD.
But the newspapers and written media could not quench the thirst of Rupert Murdoch, he launched the Sky TV satellite and cable network in the 80’s with the intention of entering the small magic box, which, despite the initial failures and bad luck, finally came out of the water. He also became the owner of 64% of the shares of the Star TV network, which is headquartered in Hong Kong. The clear and clear strategy of this network is to conquer the skies with the help of satellite communication in an area as wide as Japan to Turkey, which has so far been able to capture a major part of the large markets of China and Japan.
In 1985, by purchasing half of the shares of the company, 20th Century Fox Cinema, he acquired the right to broadcast more than 3000 movies. But it seems that the ownership of major televisions was more to his taste, and 2 years later in 1987, he founded the Fox television company, which has become the fourth best television network in the United States after ABC, CBS, and MSNBC. And it has become one of the most watched television news networks in the world. In this way, Murdoch now owns more than 3 television stations in the United States and feeds about half of the home televisions in the United States. In the field of written publications, he also owns 4 best-selling magazines in the United States, and since 1987, the largest American publishing house (Harper Collins), which has now changed its name to (HarperCollins), has been added to Murdoch’s assets.
But in recent years, Rupert Murdoch has become very interested in the profitable satellite television industry and has made modern investments, especially in the field of live coverage of sports events such as football and basketball matches from these networks. The widespread interest of the people of the world in such programs and the ability to manipulate the personality of popular players and deal with their private issues can pour rich profits into the pockets of the likes of Murdoch.
In 1984, Murdoch had become one of the largest publishers in the United States of America by owning newspapers in San Antonio and other publications such as the New York Post, Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, Star, Village and Weiss, and New York Magazine. With this in mind, he approached Hearst to see if he could acquire the Baltimore News-American, an occasional evening newspaper that he intended to publish as a morning paper and distribute in Washington, D.C., an hour’s drive or train ride away. The city was far away. He even considered buying the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. None of these deals were completed. He claimed that there is no other press peak that he can climb. No newspaper at the level of the Boston Herald is interesting to him anymore. He used to say: “I’m not going to go back and forth to buy small newspapers in the suburbs of America anymore.” He, like many others, wanted to buy the Washington Post and change its liberal policies, but he could never afford such a deal. Therefore, out of necessity, he said “that newspaper is not for sale”.
Gradually, the American elites compared him with figures such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst. An article on the front page of Forbes magazine was written by Thomas Ehanlon, one of the oldest American journalists, to highlight the reasons for Murdoch’s royal ambitions and his professional genius. The title of the article was “What does this man want?” And it was followed by “many things!” Ahanlon praised Murdoch and said, “At a time when most of today’s media companies are run by businessmen who are relatively uncharacteristic and bound by figures and numbers, Rupert Murdoch…among them is the only one who combines taste and emotion and He instills a sense of shrewdness in his publications.” He describes Murdoch as follows: “Half accountant, half gambler, half genius and skilled marketer and the other half a shrewd journalist… When Rupert Murdoch retires in the 21st century and resting on his own farm in Australia, no trace of his current popular image will remain. Others will praise him as a wise scientist who followed the footsteps of luck and fortune and was able to build a global empire in the field of what will become the greatest human industry in the 21st century, that is, the communication industry.
One of Murdoch’s successes during half a century of media activity was that he was able to acquire a market all over the world. From his point of view, these free markets of the world were considered part of his property. Once, when he went to Prague with his wife Anna Murdoch, he made a lot of noise. He entered this country when Czechoslovakia was experiencing a transitional period and the transition to democracy. On the first night, Murdoch and Anna attended a dinner hosted by Shirley Temple Black, the United States ambassador to Czechoslovakia, who was considered one of the powerful supporters of Slav Havel and other opponents of the communist system. Before leaving this country, Murdoch gave an interview to Lido Novin newspaper reporter: In this interview, Murdoch quoted Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States at the time, and told the reporter of this newspaper that the events that are happening in Eastern Europe are “the last part of the history of the devil’s empire. This moment is one of the most hopeful moments in the history of human life” when Murdoch was reminded that he had always used to follow a liberal policy, so that even during his studies in Oxford, he showed off a bust of others. In response, he said, “At that time, I was young, and I might even have other insolent ideas in my mind.” It is not wise to be a socialist at the age of 40,” he added, “but my opinion has always been that what is important is that all members of the society should have the same status…. A truly first-class society should not close the door on someone close When I was young, I thought that whatever we want to achieve, it should be the most complete. But today I know that nothing in this world is perfect and I know that we only have to be the best. “Real democracy must have the nature of both economy and politics in its core, because one is impossible in isolation from the other.”
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