Murdoch grew up on 'ritual feuding with other media'
NEW YORK -- It's hard to find anyone indifferent about News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.
Fans see him as a visionary — someone who has used shrewd understanding of finance and a keen sense of popular tastes to shake up the media business as he built a movie, TV, newspaper, magazine and book empire. Fox Broadcasting — his biggest achievement — helped to break the collective lock on prime-time TV by ABC, CBS and NBC. Fox News offered a lively alternative to CNN.
"He has a broader perspective and greater patience than any of the other media" leaders, says Christopher Dixon, managing partner for media investments at Gabelli Group Capital Partners. "If he sets his eye on a target, he usually will get it."
That patience was on display after he set his eye on Dow Jones.
Critics, however, say he has coarsened the culture by pandering to popular tastes in news and entertainment. They also charge that he has used his enormous media power to inappropriately promote his business interests and political views.
"His success has been at the expense of the public interest," says Andrew Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, a consumer advocacy law firm. "The concentration he has achieved is antithetical to Federal Communications Commission media policy and bad for free speech."
The son of a powerful Australian newspaper owner, Murdoch initially resisted following in his father's footsteps. He was known as "Red Rupert" at Oxford University in Britain, where he studied political science and kept a bust of Vladimir Lenin on his dorm room mantel.
Family business pulled apart
His life changed after 1952, however, when his father, facing mounting debts and a boardroom coup, died of a heart attack. The family had to sell most of its newspaper interests, although Rupert was able to take charge of The Adelaide News.
"He grew up in Australia in an atmosphere of ritual feuding with other media," says Australian Financial Review reporter Neil Chenoweth, who wrote a Murdoch biography. "It's a tribal thing."
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