News Corporation is donating $20 million to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the media company said Wednesday.
The gift will go toward the Hollywood charity's $350 million capital campaign. The MPTF provides assistance, medical care and housing to movie business retirees. The fundraising drive is targeted at supporting primary health care, building a cash reserve and renovating facilities on the organization's Wasserman Campus in Woodland Hills.
"The MPTF is vital to the long-term health of the entertainment industry and provides crucial support to many valued members of the creative community," Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., said in a statement. "I'm so pleased we can play a role in its ongoing success and hope that this commitment will spur others within the entertainment community to get involved and join this important mission."
The money raised by the campaign will not be used to prop up the MPTF's financially troubled long-term care facility.
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However, that operation no longer faces closure, as it once did, and it has even begun admitting new patients for the first time since plans to shutter the facility were announced in 2009.
News Corp.'s donation comes on the heels of a $30 million gift last month by media mogul Barry Diller. Diller, a billionaire and the former chairman of Fox and Paramount Pictures, currently heads the internet company, IAC/InterActiveCorp.
Among the major figures in the entertainment industry who have contributed to MPTF are construction and entertainment magnate Steve Bing, "Hangover" director Todd Phillips, producer Joe Roth, George Clooney, media and music entrepreneur David Geffen and Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg.
In a statement, MPTF Foundation Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg praised Murdoch and his company's commitment to the non-profit organization.
"Rupert Murdoch has been a major donor to MPTF for nearly twenty years," Katzenberg said. "He was one of the first people I approached when I became involved as Chairman of the MPTF Foundation in 1991. He said yes then and has never stopped, and now this incredible commitment from News Corporation is the ultimate expression of generosity."