Keith Murdoch
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Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch (August 12, 1886 - October 4, 1952) was an Australian journalist and media mogul and the father of Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch was born in Melbourne in 1886 and was educated at Camberwell Grammar School and the London School of Economics. After graduation, he began a career in journalism with The Age. He married Elisabeth Green, now Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in 1928 and they had three daughters and a son.
Murdoch applied to become Australia's official war historian upon the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. In the ballot to decide on that position he lost out to Charles Bean.
In August 1915 that Murdoch managed to get permission to visit Anzac Cove, and for the purpose of investigating the alleged mismanagement of mail sent to Australian soldiers serving in the Gallipoli campaign. Murdoch agreed to hand deliver a letter detailing the mismanagement of the campaign from the British reporter Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett to the British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
On route to London, Murdoch was arrested by French Military Police in Marseilles and the letter was confiscated. Murdoch made it to London but without the letter so he wrote a replacement to the Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher in a similar vein to the Ashmead-Bartlett letter.
It is commonly believed that the letter and the fuss that it created helped bring an end to the Gallipoli campaign.
See also: The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, Herald SunTemplate:Australia-bio-stub