dabong1
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Fox News’s own promotion of consistently anti-Muslim stories has of course become an established characteristic of the channel. And most recently, Fox News have run multiple news segments making sinister insinuations about a shadowy Saudi Arabian figure with alleged ties to radical Islamist extremists who owns the “Kingdom Foundation” (aka Kingdom Holding Company) and has allegedly been a major financier of Park51/Cordoba House. Fox News have never named this person on-air.
The second-largest shareholder in Fox News
However, as viewers of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show will have found out a few days ago, the individual concerned is Al-Waleed bin Talal, a Saudi Arabian prince who is actually the second-largest shareholder of News Corp, the company which owns Fox News itself. He owns a $3 billion stake in the company. The only person who owns a bigger share is Rupert Murdoch himself. Not only that, but the prince concerned is also the chairman of Rotana, a Saudi-based media group which News Corp has been heavily engaged in further business dealings with; in fact, they recently had a high-level meeting with the prince, as shown in the photograph at the top of this article.
As Jon Stewart himself accurately observed, this has two ramifications: Either Fox News were so ignorant that they were completely unaware that the person they’ve been repeatedly making allegations about is actually the second-largest owner of their own company……Or they were already perfectly aware of this fact, but have deliberately been hiding it and have been pushing their anti-Muslim propaganda anyway. The latter is continuing to have destructive consequences both for American attitudes towards Muslims and for the ordinary Muslim population of the US itself; not only are people now advocating that mosques should be banned completely in the US, but there have even been incidents such as a black construction worker from the real Ground Zero building site almost getting lynched by a baying mob of people protesting against Park51/Cordoba House who automatically assumed that he was a Muslim (he isn’t) – or, even worse, a taxi driver in New York who was repeatedly stabbed by a passenger after the latter asked him if he was a Muslim (he is).
The fallout doesn’t stop there; as discussed in the New York Times, the actions of Fox News and their “conservative Right” supporters now risk severely damaging the American military and diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan which are being led by General David Patraeus. As confirmed by an ex-FBI interrogator of Al-Qaeda suspects, it also hands a propaganda coup to Al-Qaeda and to Osama bin Laden himself. And as a textbook example of adding fuel to the fire (almost literally, in this case), a church in Florida is still planning to go ahead with its plans to publicly burn a bonfire of Qurans on the anniversary of 9/11 this year; ironically, the pastor primarily responsible has admitted that he knows absolutely nothing about the Quran’s contents.
These attitudes, and the associated behaviour, would be abhorrent enough in any country which claimed to be civilised. However, it is an absolute travesty for them to be exhibited by such large numbers of people, including senior Republican politicians and one of the country’s most high-profile news channels, in a country whose history includes the kind of moral & intellectual giants who were responsible for the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address. So much for “never again” and “learning the lessons of history”. It is also horrifyingly clear that proponents of the Big Lie propaganda technique exist in some influential quarters of modern-day America.
Pickled Politics Alleged ?Ground Zero Mosque? financier is Fox News co-owner
The second-largest shareholder in Fox News
However, as viewers of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show will have found out a few days ago, the individual concerned is Al-Waleed bin Talal, a Saudi Arabian prince who is actually the second-largest shareholder of News Corp, the company which owns Fox News itself. He owns a $3 billion stake in the company. The only person who owns a bigger share is Rupert Murdoch himself. Not only that, but the prince concerned is also the chairman of Rotana, a Saudi-based media group which News Corp has been heavily engaged in further business dealings with; in fact, they recently had a high-level meeting with the prince, as shown in the photograph at the top of this article.
As Jon Stewart himself accurately observed, this has two ramifications: Either Fox News were so ignorant that they were completely unaware that the person they’ve been repeatedly making allegations about is actually the second-largest owner of their own company……Or they were already perfectly aware of this fact, but have deliberately been hiding it and have been pushing their anti-Muslim propaganda anyway. The latter is continuing to have destructive consequences both for American attitudes towards Muslims and for the ordinary Muslim population of the US itself; not only are people now advocating that mosques should be banned completely in the US, but there have even been incidents such as a black construction worker from the real Ground Zero building site almost getting lynched by a baying mob of people protesting against Park51/Cordoba House who automatically assumed that he was a Muslim (he isn’t) – or, even worse, a taxi driver in New York who was repeatedly stabbed by a passenger after the latter asked him if he was a Muslim (he is).
The fallout doesn’t stop there; as discussed in the New York Times, the actions of Fox News and their “conservative Right” supporters now risk severely damaging the American military and diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan which are being led by General David Patraeus. As confirmed by an ex-FBI interrogator of Al-Qaeda suspects, it also hands a propaganda coup to Al-Qaeda and to Osama bin Laden himself. And as a textbook example of adding fuel to the fire (almost literally, in this case), a church in Florida is still planning to go ahead with its plans to publicly burn a bonfire of Qurans on the anniversary of 9/11 this year; ironically, the pastor primarily responsible has admitted that he knows absolutely nothing about the Quran’s contents.
These attitudes, and the associated behaviour, would be abhorrent enough in any country which claimed to be civilised. However, it is an absolute travesty for them to be exhibited by such large numbers of people, including senior Republican politicians and one of the country’s most high-profile news channels, in a country whose history includes the kind of moral & intellectual giants who were responsible for the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address. So much for “never again” and “learning the lessons of history”. It is also horrifyingly clear that proponents of the Big Lie propaganda technique exist in some influential quarters of modern-day America.
Pickled Politics Alleged ?Ground Zero Mosque? financier is Fox News co-owner
