The ongoing scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. involves a lot of high-profile women. Today we take a look at some of the most famous ones — and a few less well-known women in Murdoch’s life.
Rebekah Brooks
You may have heard a lot about Brooks in recent weeks — she was, until last Friday, the CEO of News International, News Corp’s British newspaper company. She was also the editor of News of the World, the newspaper accused of hacking the voicemail of a murdered girl and making her family think she was still alive. The paper has now closed, and Brooks was arrested Sunday on charges of corruption and hacking. In a hearing before the House of Commons today, Brooks maintained she knew nothing about any hacking at the News of the World. She called the Milly Dowler allegations “probably the most shocking thing I’ve heard for a long time and certainly the most shocking thing I’d heard about potential journalists who work for News International.”
Wendi Deng
Murdoch’s third and current wife, Deng made news today for smacking a man who threw a pie at the mogul (watch it here). Headlines included obnoxious “tiger wife” and “crouching tiger” jokes referring to Deng’s Chinese ancestry. Deng had been in the US quite a while by the time she married Murdoch, her third husband, but the story of her early years in the country is sort of interesting. From the Daily Beast:
When her family relocated to Guangzhou in southern China, she changed her name to Wen Di, enrolled in medical school but quit, and then befriended an American family, the Cherrys. Like her own father, Jake Cherry was a factory manager and an engineer. Wendi learned English from him and his wife, Joyce. Their friendship grew and the Cherrys agreed to sponsor the 19-year-old Chinese woman to come to the U.S. for undergrad courses at California State University in Northridge. There Wendi lived with the Cherrys, sometimes sharing a room with their young daughter. She eventually moved out, and two years later, in 1990, married Jake, who by that time had divorced Joyce. After a marriage that lasted long enough for Wendi to obtain her U.S. green card, Wendi divorced Jake, who is three decades her senior.
Deng appears to have a fondness for older men — when she married Murdoch, she was 30 and he was 68. Now 43, she’s been called “a de facto diplomat on behalf of NewsCorp in China.” She also served as a producer on the movie version of Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
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