Is Saudi Prince Steering News Corp. Coverage?

Ever since Al Gore sold Current TV to Al Jazeera, the network founded and funded by the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, the former vice president has drawn continuous fire in conservative media. Fox News, the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, for example, have all castigated Gore, a man of the Left and leading avatar of "global warming," for such hypocrisies as timing the deal to avoid Lefty tax hikes and bagging $100 million in greenhouse-gas money. These same news outlets share something else in common: They all belong to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. That means they also belong to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Alwaleed owns the largest chunk of News Corp. stock outside the Murdoch family. Shortly after his purchase of 5.5 percent of News Corp. voting shares in 2005, Alwaleed gave a speech that made it clear just what he had bought. As noted in The (U.K.) Guardian, Alwaleed told an audience in Dubai that it took just one phone call to Rupert Murdoch -- "speaking not as a shareholder but as a viewer," Alwaleed said -- to get the Fox News crawl reporting "Muslim riots" in France changed to "civil riots." Townhall