His father, also named Keith Murdoch, was a war correspondent and ran several newspapers across the continent during the course of his career. The younger Murdoch took over the Adelaide News when his father died at age 67 in 1952. It would prove to be the beginning of his media empire.
Source: The Melbourne Press Club
Before entering the media business, Murdoch earned a degree at Oxford. As a student, he supported the Labour Party.
Source: BBC News
At 22, Murdoch moved back to Australia to run the Adelaide News (known to be one of the elder Murdoch's less prestigious papers). He quickly got involved in every aspect of the paper's production. He featured stories about scandals, and the business began to grow rapidly.
Murdoch purchased several other newspapers across the continent. Eventually, he controlled almost two-thirds of the Australian media market.
Source: The New York Times
In 1964, he founded the country's first national paper: The Australian. "I'm rather sick of snobs who tell us they're bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no-one else wants," he said when confronted about his tendency to publish lurid news in his papers, according to the BBC.
Source: The New York Times, BBC News
Murdoch stretched his empire even further. He expanded to the United Kingdom in 1968 and purchased The News of the World, a weekly tabloid, that year.
Source: BBC News
According to The Times, Murdoch used his newly acquired newspapers to praise Margaret Thatcher, who at the time was campaigning to become Prime Minister. This marked a shift from The Sun's previous support of the Labour Party.
Source: The New York Times, The Daily Beast
Thatcher's government assisted Murdoch's growing media empire by not alerting antimonopoly regulators when he purchased The Times of London or started broadcasting Sky Television into the UK from Luxembourg in February 1989.
Source: The New York Times, The Guardian
Around this time, Murdoch had started to spread his empire even further. He bought his first US paper, the San Antonio Express-News, in 1973 and purchased The New York Post three years later.
Source: The Guardian
Much as he did with Thatcher in the UK, Murdoch used The Post to drum up support for Ronald Reagan in New York during the 1980 presidential election. According to The Times, Reagan's team said Murdoch helped sway voters in that state.
Source: The New York Times
Reagan's administration later dropped FEC select regulations, which allowed Murdoch to buy television stations in cities where he already owned newspapers, despite this being prohibited at the time.
Source: The New York Times
Continuing his expansion, Murdoch first invested in film studio 20th Century Fox in 1985. He went on to build Fox into an entertainment empire comprised of local television stations and a broadcast network.
Source: Bloomberg, The Guardian
Later that year, Murdoch became a naturalized US citizen. This move allowed him to take full ownership of American television stations. At this point, he'd been living in the country since 1973.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
In 1996, Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched Fox News, a right-leaning 24-hour news network.
Source: Rolling Stone
According to The Times, Murdoch was inspired by CNN founder, Ted Turner, who he considered a rival.
Source: The New York Times
Murdoch is known for his neoconservative views and used both his own media outlets and others to push for the War in Iraq. "We can't back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam," he told Australian magazine the Bulletin (which he doesn't own) in February 2003, according to The Guardian.
Source: The Guardian
By 2010, a major scandal had come into public view. The Guardian broke the story that Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking into the voicemails of British politicians, royals, and celebrities creating what The Times called "the biggest crisis of [Murdoch's] career." The organization faced repeated hacking allegations in the several years prior to the scandal unfolding.
Source: The Guardian, The New York Times
In 2011, News of the World admitted to the hacking, offering up an official apology. Later that year, Murdoch was forced to testify at a public hearing in front of Parliament.
Source: CNN
A judicial inquiry followed. The Inquiry's report, published by Lord Justice Leveson in 2012, stated that when discussing policy with Murdoch, "politicians knew that the prize was personal and political support in his mass-circulation newspapers."
Murdoch also publicly supported Brexit, calling the vote a "prison break." He was later seen celebrating the referendum's result at a party with British politician Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party and current Brexit Party leader.
Source: The New York Times
In early 2015, Trump told Murdoch over lunch in the Fox News building that he was planning on running for president, The Times investigators found.
Source: The New York Times
The Murdoch and Trump families had been close for years prior to this. Ivanka Trump was one of five people chosen to oversee the trust for two of Murdoch's daughters. In February 2017, a spokesman for the president's daughter told the Financial Times that Ivanka had stepped down from her position as a trustee.
Source: Fortune
Despite the ties between their families, Murdoch didn't initially throw his sizable support behind Trump. In fact, the newspaper baron donated $200,000 from his personal funds to a super PAC for Gov. John Kasich in the last half of 2015.
Source: Cincinnati.com
But Murdoch softened toward Trump as the election grew nearer. "If he becomes inevitable, party would be mad not to unify," Murdoch tweeted in March 2016.
Source: New York Magazine, Twitter
Meanwhile, things within Murdoch's sprawling media empire took a turn for the tumultuous. Fox News CEO Roger Ailes resigned in July 2016 after facing allegations of sexual harassment from female Fox News hosts including Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
Source: CNN Business
Instead of finding a replacement, Murdoch took over Ailes' job himself. He referred to the position as "my retirement job," according to The Times.
Source: The New York Times
Under Murdoch's supervision, the Fox News lineup became more overtly pro-Trump. Hosts that were critical of the president, including Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren, were replaced by vocally pro-Trump hosts like Tucker Carlson.
Source: The New York Times
After Trump was elected in November 2016, he and Murdoch began to talk frequently over the phone. In April 2017, The Independent reported that, per sources close to each of the men, the two were speaking "every week to discuss strategy."
Source: The New York Times, The Independent
Faced with increasing competition from tech giants, Murdoch began meeting with Disney CEO Bob Iger to discuss the sale of 21st Century Fox.
Source: The New York Times
Murdoch and Iger announced their deal (which was initially valued at $52.4 billion) in December 2017.
Source: The Walt Disney Company
In early January 2018, Murdoch tripped while vacationing on his son's superyacht. He was flown to a hospital and underwent surgery for broken vertebrae and a spinal hematoma. Sources classified the hospitalization as "serious."
Source: The New York Times, Vanity Fair
The severity of Murdoch's fall prompted all of his adult children to gather around his hospital bedside in case he didn't make it.
Source: The New York Times
There's been discord between the wealthy Murdoch children over the years. As of now, eldest son Lachlan, 47, is considered Murdoch's heir apparent. Lachlan currently serves as the CEO of the Fox Corporation.
Source: The Washington Post
According to The Times' investigation, Murdoch's younger son James, 46, had unsuccessfully vied for his father's favor over the years.
Source: The New York Times
Murdoch also has two daughters, Prudence and Elisabeth, who are less involved with the family business.
Source: The New York Times
While he recovered from his fall in early 2018, Murdoch ran the company from his home: Moraga Estate.
Source: The New York Times, Vanity Fair
The Tuscan-inspired Bel Air estate is a working vineyard and winery. It's valued at $28.8 million, according to The Times.
Source: The New York Times
While Murdoch recovered at Moraga, 21st Century Fox received a competing bid from Comcast for $65 billion — over $12 billion more than Disney's offer.
Source: Markets Insider
Murdoch still preferred Disney to Comcast, reportedly because of his affection for Iger. Disney eventually bumped up its offer, purchasing Fox assets for $71 billion.
The deal grew Murdoch's fortune. When it closed in March 2019, Murdoch became roughly $4.3 billion richer than he was before the deal was initially announced in late 2017.
Source: Forbes
Hall, 62, is a former model who was previously in a long-term relationship with Mick Jagger. The two had a wedding ceremony in 1990 that was later declared invalid.
Source: The Washington Post
Hall is Murdoch's fourth wife. He was previously married to entrepreneur Wendi Deng, who is reported to have been unpopular with his children. According to The Times, Lachlan and James had attempted to convince Murdoch not to marry Deng prior to their 1999 nuptials.
Source: The New York Times
In early August 2019, following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left 29 people total dead, the Post featured a front page calling on President Trump to "ban weapons of war." The Murdoch-owned paper's headline was noteworthy, considering the media tycoon's conservatism and previous support of Trump.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter