Matthew Rickardson

He has been one of the most important kind of media owners, not only for what he owns, but also for the way he's used it.

He has had this fascinating, but for many people, poisonous impact on political discourse, on politics more generally.

I think Rupert is a very

Is Rupert Murdoch a nepo baby?

Murdoch is absolutely a Nepo baby.

If the term Nepo baby was in existence in 1931, yes, he is a Nepo baby.

My name is Des Friedman and I am a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths University of London.

My name is Matthew Rickardson and I'm a Professor of Communication at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

One of our former prime ministers, Malcolm Turnbull, who tangled with Rupert Murdoch, has described him as Australia's deadliest export.

His whole presentation is of this kind of scruffy, rebellious outsider figure shaking his fist at the establishment and the elites.

The reality is that when he was born in 1931, his father was the managing director of a big newspaper group in Australia.

They lived in

possibly the wealthiest suburb in Melbourne in Australia, went to Oxford University and then his father dies in 1952 and leaves him one afternoon newspaper in Adelaide, which is another city here in Australia.

His father, Keith, really pioneered tabloid journalism in Australia.

My name is Graham Murdoch.

No relation.

And I'm an emeritus professor at the University of Loughborough in the UK.

Keith Murdoch realized that newspapers had the power to bring down politicians.

So Rupert inherited not just newspapers, but actually a whole kind of philosophy, if you like, of what newspapers could do and how they operated.

He's very clear from very early on that he wants to learn everything about running newspapers.