Rupert Murdoch is the most significant media tycoon the English-speaking world has ever known. No one before him has trafficked in media influence across those nations so effectively, nor has anyone else so singularly redefined the culture of news and the rules of journalism. In a stretch spanning six decades, he built News Corp from a small paper in Adelaide, Australia into a multimedia empire capable of challenging national broadcasters, rolling governments, and swatting aside commercial rivals. Then, over two years, a series of scandals threatened to unravel his entire creation.Murdoch's defenders questioned how much he could have known about the bribery and phone hacking undertaken by his journalists in London. But to an exceptional degree, News Corp was an institution cast in the image of a single man. The company's culture was deeply rooted in an Australian buccaneering spirit, a brawling British populism, and an outsized American libertarian sensibility,at least when it suited Murdoch's interests.David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR News, explains how the man behind Britain's take-no-prisoners tabloids, who reinvigorated Roger Ailes by backing his vision for Fox News, who gave a new swagger to the New York Post and a new style to the Wall Street Journal , survived the scandals,and the true cost of this survival. He summarily ended his marriage, alienated much of his family, and split his corporation asunder to protect the source of his vast wealth (on the one side), and the source of his identity (on the other). There were moments when the global news chief panicked. But as long as Rupert Murdoch remains the person at the top, Murdoch's World will be making news.

In July 2012 Rupert Murdoch experienced what he called "the most humbled day of my life" (he misspoke - he meant "humbling") when he was testifying in front of a British Parliamentary inquiry into the activities of his British newspapers and was assailed by a man carrying a paper plate full of shaving foam. Murdoch looked tired, old, and out of touch with the organization he had created. It seemed that he was within weeks of losing control of the business he had amassed and unquestionably loved: his global newspapers, prominent among them the British no-prisoners-taken red-topped tabloids. Within six months it was as if it had never happened. News International's share price was robust, Murdoch's control unquestioned and he had promoted a bold division on News into two companies, one focusing on digital and TV, the other on print. The summer's stories of the jockeying among Murdoch's children and corporate lieutenants to succeed him were silenced; what promised to be the second half of King Lear never unfolded - the king remained resolutely on his throne. No sons or daughter would displace him anytime soon. There had been casualties - the flame-haired Rebecca Brooks faced a prison sentence; Prime Minister David Cameron was embarrassed; and the News of the World was shuttered. But the company in general, and Murdoch in particular marched on relentlessly to the sound of its own song, the News Internationale, as it were. Other news barons are more flamboyant - Murdoch cannot match Silvio Berlusconi for tawdriness, and he does not own a sports franchise - but none is as significant a factor in the popular culture across the English speaking world. Murdoch has changed the landscape of news in Australia, first, Britain and now America. Always controversial, he has also overseen an talent pool of newspapermen and women that are the envy of their rivals. Almost no one in the US wants the Wall Street Journal to return to what it was before Murdoch bought it in 2007. Murdoch may not be liked, but he is respected. His competitive instincts are second to none. And in Fox TV, he owns America's most fearlessly disruptive popular cable station. So much has happened in the Murdoch story that it's amazing that almost five years have passed since the last full biographical treatment. NPR News's David Folkenflik brings us up to date with the ongoing greatest story of all time: the man who makes the news, literally: Rupert Murdoch.