Keith Murdoch

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Colony of Victoria, Australia
Died4 October 1952(1952-10-04) (aged 67)
NationalityAustralian
EducationLondon School of Economics
OccupationJournalist
Spouse
(m. 1928)
Children4, including Rupert
Parent(s)Patrick John Murdoch
Annie Brown
RelativesPrudence Murdoch (granddaughter)
Elisabeth Murdoch (granddaughter)
Lachlan Murdoch (grandson)
James Murdoch (grandson)
Ivon Murdoch (brother)
Walter Murdoch (uncle)
Catherine King (cousin)

Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch (12 August 1885 – 4 October 1952) was an Australian journalist and newspaper proprietor who was the founder of the Murdoch media empire. He amassed significant media holdings in Australia which after his death were expanded globally by his son Rupert.

Murdoch was born in

Lord Northcliffe who served as a mentor. He also became a confidant of Australian prime minister Billy Hughes
, although they fell out by the end of the war.

In 1921, Murdoch returned to Melbourne as chief editor of

The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd (HWT). He would become managing director in 1928 and chairman in 1942, overseeing a significant expansion of the company into interstate newspaper markets and commercial radio. Murdoch established a monopoly in the Adelaide newspaper market in 1931 and in 1933 established The Courier-Mail as Brisbane's daily newspaper; he also controlled The West Australian for several years. Murdoch co-founded the Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 1935 and was the inaugural chairman of Australian Newsprint Mills. During World War II he briefly served as Director-General of Information
.

Outside of his business activities Murdoch was an art collector, serving as chairman of the

News Limited
formed the basis for his only son Rupert's global media empire.

Early life

Murdoch was born in

Victoria, Australia, with his family in 1884. His paternal grandfather was a minister with the Free Church of Scotland, and his maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.[1]

The family moved from West Melbourne to the affluent suburb of Camberwell in 1887.[2] Keith was educated at his uncle Walter's short-lived school, then at Camberwell Grammar School, where he became dux in 1903, despite extreme shyness and stammering. He decided not to go straight to university but to try a career in journalism, so family friend David Syme of The Age agreed to employ him as district correspondent for nearby Malvern. Over the next four years, he managed to create a significant increase in The Age's local circulation, to earn promotion, and to save enough money for a ticket to England, where he hoped to gain further experience and find ways to manage his stammer.[citation needed]

Education and career

From 1908 to 1909, in London, he took speech therapy with

Pall Mall Gazette. In September 1909 Murdoch returned home to resume work for The Age, now as parliamentary reporter, in which capacity he strengthened the family's relationships with politicians such as Andrew Fisher
, in some cases entertaining them at his aunt's country guest house.

First World War

In 1912, he became Melbourne political correspondent for

Dardanelles campaign in Turkey, to visit Australian troops in Gallipoli and write his impressions for the newspapers, subject to the usual military censorship. The agreement he signed specified that he was "not to attempt to correspond by any other route or by any other means than that officially sanctioned" and during the war he must not "impart to anyone military information of a confidential nature.... unless first submitted to the Chief Field Censor."[4]

Murdoch visited

Daily Telegraph correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, who was deeply concerned that censorship was being used to suppress criticism of the Dardanelles campaign, which, as Murdoch had seen for himself, had serious problems. Murdoch agreed to carry a letter from Ashmead-Bartlett to the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in London, written on 8 September, presenting his uncensored report of the situation. Hamilton quickly learned about the existence of this letter (another British reporter, Henry Nevinson, has been blamed for this but his biography points to an official Royal Navy war photographer).[5] Reaching France on his route to London, Murdoch was arrested by Military Police in Marseille
and the letter was confiscated. Arriving in London on 21 September, he spent some time at the Australian High Commission composing his own letter to his Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, in a similar vein to the Ashmead-Bartlett letter and particularly critical of the British general and administrative staff:

The conceit and self complacency of the red feather men are equaled only by their incapacity. Along the line of communications, especially at Moudros, are countless high officers and conceited young cubs who are plainly only playing at war. ...appointments to the general staff are made from motives of friendship and social influence.

— Murdoch

After sending the letter to Australia, he supplied two copies to the British Munitions Minister

The Daily Mirror
and other national newspapers, his version of events began to be published. Murdoch, initially alarmed that Northcliffe's staff had obtained a copy of his private letter, soon became a friend of the newspaper tycoon. Although his letter, written from memory, contained many mistakes and exaggerations, the main points were supported by other evidence and Hamilton was relieved of command, the subsequent operation to evacuate the troops from Gallipoli in December being accomplished with perfect effectiveness.

In 1917, while visiting the Western Front as an unofficial war correspondent, Murdoch attempted to conduct negotiations with Field Marshal Douglas Haig in support of the Australian government's policy of the Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F.) divisions to be brought together into a united Australian Corps.[7] Although Murdoch pushed for the appointment of Major General Brudenell White as the new corps commander while denigrating Major General John Monash (who was of Jewish German ancestry), the latter was given command when the Australian Corps was formed in 1918.[8] Along with official war correspondent Charles Bean, Murdoch continued to lobby for Monash's demotion by appealing directly to Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes and misleading him into the belief that the A.I.F.'s senior officers were strongly opposed to Monash.[7] When Hughes visited the front just before the Battle of Hamel intending to replace Monash, he first consulted the same senior officers and discovered that their support for their commander was strongly positive and that Monash's powers of planning and execution were excellent.[9] The subsequent outcome of the Hamel assault closed the question of Monash's suitability but later in the same year Murdoch attempted again to convince Hughes that Monash should not control the repatriation of Australian troops.[7]

Melbourne Herald

Murdoch remained in London, expanding the cable service, writing influential journalism—and helping his friend Billy Hughes on visits to England—until he was offered the post of chief editor at the Melbourne Herald, which he took in January 1921. Arranging for the paper's general manager to be demoted, he began applying Lord Northcliffe's principles, with frequent advice from Northcliffe himself. As he had in London, he focused on political controversy, but he also made the Herald influential in other ways, through such devices as improved arts coverage, and celebrity contributions. When Hugh Denison, proprietor of the Sydney Sun, tried to break into the Melbourne market with the Sun News-Pictorial in 1922, Murdoch fought a long campaign which eventually resulted in the Herald, its own circulation up by 50%, taking over the new tabloid in 1925. He acquired the nickname "Lord Southcliffe" and in 1928 became managing director of the company, by which time the Sun was on its way to becoming Australia's highest-selling newspaper.

In 1927 he saw a photograph of an attractive 18-year-old

Langwarrin. They had children Helen (later Mrs Geoff Handbury), Rupert Murdoch, Anne (later Mrs Milan Kantor) and Janet (now Mrs John Calvert-Jones). In the early years of World War I he had been engaged for a time to Isabel Law, daughter of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister Bonar Law.[11]

From 1926 onward, he had led a campaign to take over newspapers elsewhere in Australia, with varying success. In Adelaide, for example, the Herald publisher took over the feeble

Australian Broadcasting Commission from establishing its own news service). He also led both the merger of rival cable services to form Australian Associated Press
Ltd in 1935, and a project to build a paper-mill in Tasmania.

1930s and after

In the

Second World War. In June 1940 Murdoch was appointed to a newly created Australian Government post, Director-General of Information, and on 18 July he obtained authorisation to compel all news media to publish Government statements as and when necessary. Comparisons were made with Goebbels, press co-operation was swiftly withdrawn, politicians protested, and despite agreements to modify the regulation, in November he was obliged to resign the post.[13][14]

Returning to the newspapers (from which he had agreed to distance himself while serving the Government) he spent the rest of the war encouraging a patriotic spirit, and attacking the Labor Prime Minister, John Curtin (who led a minority government in 1941, and was re-elected with a dramatic majority in 1943). In 1942 he became chairman of the Herald group, and in 1944, maintaining his connection with the art world, he established the Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. The following year he became chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria. Becoming increasingly ill with cancer, he retired from most of his work except the Herald in 1949, and made a deal with the Herald board to buy control of the Adelaide newspapers, in return for first option in any future sale of his Brisbane newspaper shares.

Death and legacy

Murdoch died at the family property, Cruden Farm,

News Limited
, proprietors of the Adelaide News.

Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism has been awarded to a News Corp Australia journalist each year.[16][17][18]

In popular culture

See also

Principal sources

General

  • Australian Dictionary of Biography Murdoch, Sir Keith Arthur (1885–1952) published by Australian National University,
    ISSN 1833-7538
  • Tom D C Roberts Before Rupert: Keith Murdoch and the Birth of a Dynasty University of Queensland Press, 2015,

Early life and First World War

Additional references

  1. ^ "Ancestry of Rupert Murdoch". Wargs.com. Retrieved 15 July 2011.
  2. ISSN 1833-7538
  3. ^ The Saturday Paper, 28 Nov-4 Dec 2015, review of Tom D.C. Roberts, Before Rupert. Retrieved 9 September 2019
  4. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 100–103. Archived from the original
    on 12 March 2011.
  5. ^ "War, journalism and the shaping of the twentieth century: the life and times of Henry W. Nevinson", par Angela V. John, page
  6. ^ Catalogue record Lloyd George papers National Archives, Kew
  7. ^ a b c Australian Dictionary of Biography Murdoch, Sir Keith Arthur (1885–1952) Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University
  8. ^ Perry (2004), p. xiii
  9. ^ Perry 2004, p. 349.
  10. ^ Teresa Murphy "Happy day for a Dame" Archived 6 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Frankston Standard Leader 13 February 2008
  11. ^ The Independent, "Keith Murdoch: A new book examines Rupert Murdoch's father, Gallipoli, and the birth of the media dynasty", 20 October 2015. Retrieved 7 October 2017
  12. ^ London Gazette, 14 July 1933
  13. ^ Time "Censorship Down Under" 30 December 1940
  14. ^ Edward Louis Vickery Telling Australia's story to the world: The Department of Information 1939–1950 PhD thesis, Australian National University (Aug 2003)
  15. ^ The Argus Probate report Melbourne, 12 December 1952
  16. ^ "Advertiser, AdelaideNow win awards". adelaidenow. 29 October 2010. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  17. ^ Krusche, Derrick (8 November 2022). "Top honours for Telegraph journalists". dailytelegraph. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  18. ^ "News Corp Australia's best of the best for 2018 announced at the News Awards". NewsCorp Australia. 16 August 2018. Retrieved 20 September 2023.

External links