News Corporation

The company’s origins lie in News Limited, created in 1923 by James Edward Davidson to purchase two small newspapers in New South Wales and South Australia. Keith Murdoch, who had become chief editor of the Melbourne Herald in 1921, began a campaign of buying other Australian newspapers, and this led to his becoming a major shareholder in News Limited. Murdoch-owned newspapers gained a reputation for supporting conservative policies and politicians. They also engendered criticism for stripping the newspapers of their editorial independence. When Murdoch died in 1952, his son, Rupert Murdoch, inherited two Adelaide newspapers, The News and the Sunday Mail, and the following year he joined the board of News Limited.

Rupert Murdoch focused The News on gossip and scandal, which proved to be a lucrative strategy, and he set about buying newspapers in the major cities of Australia and using the same approach to increase circulation. In 1960 News Unlimited made the crucial acquisitions of the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror in Sydney. In another watershed event, the company launched a national newspaper, The Australian, in 1964. Murdoch’s newspapers emphasized crime, scandal, human interest stories, and sports, and they maintained a politically conservative editorial stance.

In 1969 Murdoch and News Limited were able to add the London papers News of the World and The Sun to their portfolio. Murdoch then immersed himself in political editorializing in Australia before turning his attention to the U.S., where he bought two daily newspapers in San Antonio, Texas, in 1973 and added the New York Post in 1976. Back in Australia, in 1979 Murdoch gained control of television stations in Sydney and Melbourne, and the following year he established News Corporation as a holding company.

News Corporation then acquired (1981), through its British subsidiary, The Times of London and The Sunday Times. As the decade continued, News Corporation acquired what was then called Twentieth Century–Fox Film Corporation and several independent American television stations and folded them into a new company, Fox Inc., which became the fourth major broadcast network in the U.S. News Corporation also acquired a group of American trade publications, including Travel Weekly and Aviation Daily. Murdoch also purchased several prestigious book publishing companies in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and New Zealand and merged them (1990) into HarperCollins Publishers.

News Corporation began focusing more on television than on newspapers, most notably in 1996, when it established the Foxtel pay television network in Australia and debuted the Fox News Channel in the U.S. The company also bought and later sold several American newspapers. As the 21st century began, News Corporation acquired the pioneering social network Myspace as well as Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. However, events began to go less smoothly for News Corporation. The rise of rival social networks caused News Corporation to have to sell Myspace at a loss. Credible allegations that the British tabloid News of the World had hacked phone records of prominent people and crime victims forced the closure of the paper, which did not end the increased scrutiny of both News Corporation and Murdoch himself. In addition, there was growing concern about the number of news outlets controlled by News Corporation and its right-leaning reporting and editorializing.

In 2013 News Corporation was split into two companies: its print holdings were gathered into a company that was also named News Corporation (usually called News Corp.), and the media and television assets were held by 21st Century Fox. Murdoch remained chairman of both companies. However, as a result of a series of events set in motion by 21st Century Fox’s attempt to take over Sky Group (parent of Sky News) in Britain, 21st Century Fox was purchased by the Disney Company in 2019. At the same time, American broadcast sports and news assets, including Fox News, were spun off from 21st Century Fox as a new company, Fox Corporation, headed by Murdoch.