Mr Murdoch has four children from his previous two marriages: Lachlan, Prudence, James and Elisabeth. He is currently married to Chinese-born Wendi Deng and has two daughters with her: Grace and Chloe.
Born in 1931, Mr Murdoch began his career at an age of 22 when he inherited from his father one of Australia's leading media companies, News Limited. Until the formation of News Corp, News Limited was the holding company for Mr Murdoch. He then expanded his media business and took London by storm in the 1960s before moving to New York on his quest to become the world's most powerful media tycoon.
Mr Murdoch began building his power in Britain in the 1980s by adding The Times and The Sunday Times to his stable of media properties, including The Sun and the News of the World, the tabloid at the centre of the illegal phone hacking scandal.
His media empire came under fire last July from many sides in Britain after reports of phone and computer hacking in which journalists intercepted the voicemails of celebrities and crime victims, and now faces allegations that police officers were also paid for information that was used in newspaper reports. The allegations and subsequent enquiries came at a time when the media mogul was looking to close the biggest deal in Britain last year - takeover of the successful pay-TV group BSkyB.
The revelations convulsed Mr Murdoch's media empire, exposed the close ties between the upper echelons of Britain's establishment and provoked a wave of public anger. His son, James Murdoch, resigned as BSkyB Chairman last month but remains on the board.
After long denying that phone-hacking was institutionalised at the News of the World, the tabloid eventually admitted last year to a probe panel that it had hacked into the phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and British war dead as well as politicians and celebrities in its search for ever more-sensational front-page stories. Mr Murdoch shuttered the News of the World in July.
An enquiry by the British Parliament has criticised News Corp for showing "wilful blindness" about the scale of phone-hacking. Today, the lawmakers even said he was unfit to lead a global media empire because he has turned a blind eye to phone hacking.
Mr Murdoch's influence over British prime ministers goes back decades: Tony Blair was godfather to one of his daughters, Gordon Brown was a personal friend of the Australian-born businessman and James Cameron employed as his personal spokesman a former Murdoch editor who was himself implicated in the hacking scandal.
A naturalised US citizen with extensive media properties in Australia as well, Mr Murdoch has contributed politically to both US Republicans and Democrats but is associated with a conservative political slant. In the US, he controls the New York Post and Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, along with book publishing. He also controls a huge slice of Hollywood.
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