The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch

I'm taken aback to see only one other five-star review here. I've read many of the books on Murdoch, most notably Shawcross' seminal  Murdoch  biography and, most recently, Dover's  Rupert Murdoch's China Adventures: How the Worlds Most Powerful Media Mogul Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife . Frankly, Michael Wolff's tale is the best.He mixes three main themes with skill: the stalking and capturing of the Wall Street Journal; the high points of Murdoch's long and storied business career; and his famously dysfunctional family (though, as daughter Elisabeth points out, it was Murdoch himself who guaranteed dysfunction by blowing up his marriage to long-time spouse Anna in favor of Wendi Deng).Yes, you need to swallow here and realize that Wolff himself is part of the tale: the fact that Murdoch has opened up to him without constraint - and opened up access to all his children as well - injects Wolff into the story because of the sheer audacity of Wolff's gambit and the stone-cold acceptance by Murdoch of Wolff's terms. As a result, we get the fascinating spectacle of Wolff interviewing the four adult Murdoch children and having each of four use the sessions as a way to telegraph a message to their father. The author clearly revels in the role.Wolff writes with a clear zest for his subject and a love of good gossip and journalism. He takes the reader on a brilliant ride. Wolff also gives just and full credit right from the very start for the enormous contributions of his researcher, Leela de Kretser. Indeed, the first words from Wolff that one encounters open cracking the book are a page+ of prose on de Kretser's considerable role. Wolff generously and genuinely opines that "(t)his book rests as much on her shoulders as mine."Good show, Michael and Leela!

"Pull up a comfortable chair, here; have a glass of this great wine I've discovered, and let me tell you all about Rupert Murdoch..."Those lines never appear in Michael Wolff's chatty and engaging biography of Rupert Murdoch, the decidedly un-engaging media titan who most of the world loves to hate. But they might as well, because Wolff takes just that kind of unstructured and original approach to his task, telling the tale of the transformation of Murdoch from Australian newspaper proprietor to (he argues) the world's first global media titan as if he were breathlessly recounting it to friends by the fire after a good dinner. Darting back and forth in time and location, Wolff goes in quest of what makes Murdoch tick, digging into everything from his relationship with his father (who helped expose the folly of the Gallipoli landings in 1915, which cost the lives of thousands of Australian WW1 troops -- a key element of the family myth) to his often-troubled ties to his children.Murdoch-haters will find lots of ammunition here, from his indifference to those rules of common courtesy that the rest of us feel we have to live by (Murdoch discards subordinates, alienates wives and children, plays power games at an advanced level with great aplomb, but almost unconsciously) to his political views (conservative/libertarian) and his refusal to step back and let the journalists run the newspapers he owns. After all, why should he? He owns the news...Wolff's narrative revolves around Murdoch's 2007 acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, a purchase that Murdoch had dreamed of for decades. Together with the author's unprecedented degree of access to Murdoch himself, his family members and closest aides, that structure takes what otherwise might have been a mundane biography of a 77-year-old empire-builder (a historical retrospective, in other words) and makes it more dynamic. This Murdoch, in Wolff's portrayal, may mumble in a thick Australian accent, wear a singlet under his shirt and die his hair orange in a futile bid to look younger beside his third wife, half his age -- but he's still able to pull off a $5 billion deal to acquire a paper that, famously, was thought to be un-acquirable at any price.There are surprising insights here -- at least to someone who doesn't scan Gawker and follow every twist and turn of the Murdoch empire. Roger Ailes at Fox may have portrayed presidential candidate and now president-elect Barack Obama as a domestic terrorist of some sort -- but meanwhile, Wendi Murdoch was having dinner with him; Wolff, asking Murdoch who he should vote for in the Democratic Party primary, is told Obama. The reason? "He'll sell more papers." (That, in a nutshell, is Murdoch as seen through Wolff's eyes -- what matters is what is good for the newspapers.) Meanwhile, Ailes, far from being the media baron's alter ego, is, as Wolff reports "Murdoch's monster -- but a very profitable one." Indeed, Fox News -- whose approach to newsgathering is one of the primary reasons for a lot of hatred of Murdoch -- makes the man itself uncomfortable a lot of the time, particularly Bill O'Reilly, for whom, Wolff writes, he can barely restrain his loathing. With Wendi at his side now, "Murdoch's life is ... largely spent around people for whom Fox News is a vulgarity and a joke", Wolff reports -- and he even raises the possibility that now he has acquired the Wall Street Journal -- a newspaper, his true love -- Fox News may go up for sale.But while marriage to Wendi Deng has changed him, it doesn't seem to have softened any of his rough edges. His eldest daughter suggests he get his hair professionally colored to a more natural shade; he retorts that she needs a facelift. He treats veteran Wall Street Journal editors, such as Marcus Brauchli, with visible scorn. When Wolff shows him at his desk, eagerly pursuing a news story, it's not one in the broader public interest. Rather, Murdoch has heard a rumor that a Hillary Clinton aide he greatly dislikes may be a partner in an online pornography venture, and has set himself -- and a New York Post reporter -- to trying to confirm it at all costs; it's a personal vendetta disguised as 'news'.No, Murdoch does not emerge as likeable or even moderately congenial in this biography, much less a hero. But nor are the more conventional newspaper proprietors, who beside Murdoch look lazy and slightly witless (even as, in some media circles, the tendency is to view their ownership as if it were some kind of golden age.) Indeed, the Bancroft family (former controling shareholders of Dow Jones), seen through Murdoch's and Wolff's eyes, emerge as a bunch of ineffective buffoons, neglecting their responsibilities to the organization they control until it's too late. It's an intriguing implicit comparison with the Murdoch family: however dysfunctional their internal relationships may be, Murdoch, his wife and four adult children all emerge as intelligent and driven to succeed in their different ways -- set any one of them against a Bancroft, and it would be a very unequal competition indeed.Wolff's ability to get inside the Murdoch inner circle, his style (which gives the book a sense of immediacy and momentum that many biographies lack) and the creative structure make this book more than just another media mogul biography. But it's not flawless -- hence the missing star in this review. It's not a book that anyone looking for insight into how Murdoch views the nitty gritty of his business dealings will find satisfying -- the complex details of the business itself are scattered here and there throughout the book and sometimes addressed or mentioned only in passing (as with the reference to Murdoch's reliance on single-copy sales rather than advertising to fuel revenues and profits.) He mentions several times Murdoch's strategy of using his higher profile as a way to get access to better dealflow, but doesn't go into details of how that works, any more than he is able to give fresh insight into the story behind how Murdoch narrowly escaped bankruptcy less than two decades ago. How did he deal with bankers (beyond, Wolff reports, kow-towing to them?) It's about A deal -- the deal the acquire the Wall Street Journal (which is deftly recounted), but not about the art of THE deal, in broader terms, which is how Murdoch manoeuvered himself into a position where he was a viable bidder and ultimately THE ONLY viable bidder for Dow Jones. A bigger issue is the difficulty Wolff grapples with throughout the book -- answering the question of what makes Murdoch, Murdoch? We hear he is impatient, ambivalent, difficult -- and get a lot of evidence to support that, in most cases -- but no clear idea of why, despite Wolff's tangential efforts to address the question. It would have been interesting to be witnesses to Wolff challenging him on just these questions -- How would Murdoch answer the direct question of "why are you so impatient?" But then, perhaps the problem lies as much or more with Murdoch himself than with the author; as Wolff notes, Murdoch is very bad at explaining himself (even his grasp of dates is shaky enough that he can be out by a decade or so in recalling an event). Murdoch just doesn't do introspection. He doesn't understand it, even on a conceptual level. Perhaps he is Nike's motto personified -- "Just do it".(One side note -- I was impressed that Wolff laid out all previous connections with Murdoch's empire up front in the main body of the biography, rather than leaving the reader to wonder. While Wolff does occasionally seem awed by the fact of being in such close proximity to such a formidable business presence, his ability to be scathing and dispassionate seems to signal that his objectivity remains intact. His final notes -- identifying the sources of some comments that initially appear very sweeping and editorial in tone -- further reinforce his credibility and professionalism, IMO.)As the book ends with a "giddy" and triumphant Murdoch taking possession of Dow Jones and its prize, the Wall Street Journal, Wolff returns to look at the question of his family and the issue of 'legacy'. That's an intriguing twist, given that the saga of the Dow Jones transaction is the end of the Bancroft family 'legacy'. Murdoch himself has no intention of ceding control to any of his children until he's unable to avoid it, but two of the four elder ones have left the family firm's embrace (at least for now) in response to familial tensions. What will happen to Murdoch's empire when the emperor is dead and gone? Will Murdoch's personality flaws lead to the same kind of family implosion that the Bancrofts experienced? Will Wendi really allow her two toddler daughters to be kept out of the family business, or will their be a coup d'etat?Hopefully, when that day comes, Michael Wolff will be the one telling us all about it...

I got the book for the gossip and there was plenty of that in it. But over all the book was a struggle to get through, using the Dow Jones takeover has through line while he told the Murdoch history didn't really work because the deal just wasn't that interesting. And dear god I think I've never used the kindle dictionary feature so much before. (opprobrium I think was the last word I looked up so maybe I'm just an idiot)

A must read for anyone interested in the media today and how it effects us all. A blow by blow account of all his business dealings. Absolutely amazing!

Still relevant after over a decade. If you liked “Fire and Fury”, you will love this one. Research for Wolff’s more recent hit book was cut off prematurely, but “The Man Who Owns the News” is a complete story and a complete personal history of an incredibly influential man.

We learn that Rupert Murdoch is not as much of a right wing ideologue as everyone gives him credit for. He has bought, created and run right wing media properties (FOX News), left wing media properties (The Village Voice) and tabloids (News of the World). Rupert is all about business and he will do anything that is "good business". He also won't hesitate to use his media properties to advocate positions that are positive for his businesses. That said, every once in a while Ol' Rupe will buy something simply to satisfy his own quirky personality (The Wall Street Journal). He has the consummate media marauder longing for recognition of his success and his own brand of genius. The open secret is that "the establishment" will never really invite him to their parties and that if they did, Rupert really doesn't want to go.

Interesting read about the "secrets" of Rupert Murdoch, his empire, and the politics behind the scenes of this family and the industry. Well worth the time to read and become knowledgeable about how the publishing industry shapes and controls how we view the world.

Book arrived very quickly. I worked on the Executive floor woth Murdoch 's Personal Assistant. We had a great time working in Fleet street. Looking forward to reading this book.

Satisfaisant

It took a lot less time than it should have, so I was very happy but, the book did have some dents in the paper wrap which really doesn't matter from me.... totally recommended.

focused mainly on others in the subjects family I was more interested in a historical timeline of the subject

Murdoch,you either love or hate him he gets what he wants money and power are no object,this book contains many people and interesting facts.In business you will do anything to either climb the ladder or get what you want.Both families mentioned in this book are only interested in gaining more power or money.A lot of back stabbing,hatred and no love for one and another.This books contains many facts and interviews very well written and researched.