(born 1931). Australian-born U.S. publisher. Rupert Murdoch put together a syndicate of newspapers in his country before beginning to buy foreign papers. He bought London's News of the World in 1969 and The Times of London in 1981. He also owned several United States papers, including the Boston Herald American and (briefly) the Chicago Sun-Times and Village Voice. In 1985 Murdoch purchased the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation along with several television stations. The following year he founded the Fox Broadcasting Network. He later purchased several book-publishing companies and merged them in 1990 to create HarperCollins Publishers.