Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced he was stepping down from the two News Corp businesses in the United Kingdom. By doing so, he has symbolically put a distance between himself and the vast empire he started 43 years ago with the purchase of The Sun and News of the World.
Officials at the media conglomerate called Murdoch’s resignations just a simple corporate housecleaning prior to the media empires splitting of its entertainment and publishing businesses into two separate companies.
Both new entities will be chaired by Murdoch, which will allow him to continue to have influence over the newspapers. He also will be the entertainment arm’s CEO. The exit by Murdoch from the New International and Times Newspapers boards was announced in an email from Tom Mockridge the News International CEO to his employees. In the email, Mockridge wrote that Murdoch resigned from a total of 12 subsidiary boards in India, the U.S. and Australia.
However, in the United Kingdom, the news was noticed the most. In the UK, Murdoch turned the News of the World and The Sun into tabloid newspaper market leaders. He bought both the Times and the sister Sunday Times during 1981. During his time in the UK, he also fought unions in Wapping in 1986, which was a pivotal point in the transformation of the press baron from Australia into one of the world’s biggest media moguls.
Recent investigations into computer hacking, phone hacking and payoffs to officials have caused Murdoch and his group many problems over the past 18 months. The events have led to more than 70 arrests and a number of different lawsuits.
