Rupert Murdoch

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation in the 20th and 21st centuries, one of the largest media companies in the world, with the Fox Broadcasting Corporation, Wall Street Journal, DirecTV, HarperCollins and countless other entities among its acquisitions. Murdoch began his media empire in his native Australia, where he earned a reputation as a newspaper publisher whose focus on the darker side of the news generated huge circulation numbers. He quickly expanded his growing empire of Australian newspapers to imprints in New Zealand, Britain and eventually the United States. In the 1980s, Murdoch branched out into electronic media through his acquisition of 20th Century Fox and the launch of the Fox television network; within a decade's time, he had moved on to the British satellite service British Sky Broadcasting and Fox News Channel.