Fox News to The Sun: Who will inherit Rupert Murdoch’s US$17 billion media empire – 1 of his 6 children, or new wife Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s ex?

The Murdoch family's nearly US$17 billion fortune comes from a media empire that dates back to the 1950s.

Rupert Murdoch, the 89-year-old patriarch of the family, inherited a chain of Australian newspapers from his father, who was a war reporter-turned-publisher, in 1952. At the time, Murdoch was 22 years old and had just graduated from Oxford University.

He included scandalous stories in his papers which helped with sales. The early success allowed him to expand quickly. He started Australia's first nationwide newspaper, The Australian, in 1964. By the 1970s, he was purchasing titles like the UK's News of the World and The Sun. He founded Fox News in 1996.

In 2018, The New York Times wrote that Murdoch was able to grow the empire so quickly “in part by ruthlessly using his platform to help elect his preferred candidates and then ruthlessly using those candidates to help extend his reach.”

When Murdoch entered media markets for the first time, part of his strategy was to publish salacious content that others wouldn't — perhaps most famously in the form of the topless women on the third page of The Sun. Years later, his English newspaper holdings were embroiled in a major voicemail hacking scandal — earning him the nickname “the dirty digger” from the satirical news magazine Private Eye.

Rupert Murdoch helms the Murdoch family empire

Murdoch's name is synonymous with media and influence. He has built an empire that comprises Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and other networks and newspapers all across the world.

As he entered his late eighties his succession plan emerged as a question.

Over the span of his five-decade career, he has been married four times and fathered six children.

Murdoch sold 21st Century Fox to Disney for US$71.3 billion in 2019, netting US$12 billion that he then distributed equally between his six children.