Saudi Prince Buys Faux News

Thanks to Joseph Trento for providing a personal glimpse into the greed machine that has become the news business.  Below is more info from HuffPost regarding this Prince's meddling in the USA's internal affairs.  Forget about freedom of the press, my friends.  It's all about the bottom line.

Trento’s Take: 
Fox News Can’t Upset Murdoch’s Saudi Prince
03 February 2010
Written by Joseph Trento
[...]  I had said to Doocy that Saudi Arabian money was still financing Al Qaeda. Doocy did not react to my comment. But ten days later I learned that Fox’s parent company, News Corporation, was, at the time of my interview, negotiating with a Saudi prince to vastly increase his stake in the company.
The notorious Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, nephew to the Saudi king, met with Rupert Murdoch in Hong Kong on Jan. 14. The prince issued a press release after the meeting stating that the prince’s Kingdom Holding Company had discussions that "touched upon future potential alliances with News Corp."
[...]  Alwaleed is the same Saudi prince who made headlines right after 9/11 when he personally went to Ground Zero and offered then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check for the relief efforts. But Alwaleed could not keep his mouth shut. He released a bizarre statement that blamed the attacks – not on the 15 airline hijackers from Saudi Arabia – but on the United States’ support of Israel. Giuliani, “America’s mayor,” saw a political opportunity and, confident that his reaction was appropriate, immediately refused the prince’s donation. He said: “There is no moral equivalent for this attack.”
Remarkably, I find myself agreeing with Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan appointee who is not happy about Murdoch’s new dealings with the prince. He recently wrote:
... Even more troubling than having a Saudi spinmeister, even a lousy one, at the decision-making table of America’s most successful, and conservative, television network is another aspect of Al-Waleed’s deal with Mr. Murdoch. The Australian entrepreneur has reportedly also given the prince the unfiltered ability to broadcast Saudi-produced materials directly into America on Murdoch’s satellite. Here’s how that part of the deal will evidently work: Prince Al-Waleed’s Rotana Audio Visual Company, which operates TV channels in the Middle East, has signed a deal with DirecTV, the TV-satellite firm controlled by News Corp. As a result, it would seem Rotana will be able to beam its programs into U.S. cable boxes without interference from federal regulators, or anybody else…What passes for entertainment in Saudi Arabia mostly looks like jihadist agitprop to the rest of us. Rotana has a huge library of movies, music and television programs. Such programming has to also include vicious anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American incitement. That is, after all, the only kind of material the Wahhabi religious censors approve for production and broadcast in Saudi Arabia. Could that be what the prince has in mind for DirecTV subscribers? [...]

http://www.dcbureau.org/20100203319/Trento-s-Take/trentos-take-fox-news-cant-upset-murdochs-saudi-prince.html

Here's the HuffingtonPost's coverage of Prince Alwaleed's business exploits, including threats to Citigroup:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Seeks Deeper Ties To News Corp

TAREK EL-TABLAWY | 01/17/10
CAIRO — The Saudi billionaire whose investment firm is one of the biggest stakeholders in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said he is looking to expand his alliances with the media giant, in the latest indication that his appetite for growth remains robust even as his company retrenches.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king and who was listed last year by Forbes as the world's 22nd richest person, met with News Corp.'s chief executive Rupert Murdoch on Jan. 14 in a meeting that "touched upon future potential alliances with News Corp.," according to a statement released by his Kingdom Holding Co. late Saturday.
[...]  Kingdom Holding's statement said Alwaleed is already the second largest stakeholder in News Corp., with 5.7 percent of the shares of the media company. The stake is held through Kingdom Holding, in which Alwaleed holds a 95 percent stake.
The investment company has a diverse portfolio, ranging from hotels to shares in Apple, eBay and Citigroup.
Alwaleed, and the investment firm, were hit hard by the global meltdown.
He has since focused on shoring up borrowing power, in part through a recent decision to transfer 180 million of his shares in Citigroup to Kingdom Holding. In a statement last week, he described the move – valued at about $600 million – as key to facilitating future borrowing and growth.
The Saudi royal also met last week with Citigroup's chief executive Vikram Pandit, according to a statement by Kingdom Holding e-mailed Sunday.
Alwaleed raised his stake in Citigroup to 5 percent in late 2008 from less than 4 percent in a move that came as the company was facing a possible collapse. Kingdom Holding says Alwaleed is the single largest shareholder in Citigroup.
Citigroup has repaid the money it borrowed from the U.S. government during the financial crisis, but still faces a new fee to be levied on banks by the Obama administration to recoup $120 billion in taxpayer money used to support faltering companies.
Alwaleed said he was opposed to the move, arguing that "I believe taxing the banks right now is not the right time at all."
[...]  The $120 billion recovery goal is the most that administration officials expect to lose from the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that bailed out banks, automakers and other financial firms.
Alwaleed's Rotana already has an alliance with News Corp.
In 2008, the two companies teamed up to bring Fox Movies to the Arab world and then last year, Rotana and Fox International Channels signed a multi-year output deal with The Walt Disney Co. to provide a range of programing to viewers in the Middle East, according to the statement by Kingdom Holding.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/18/saudi-prince-alwaleed-bin_1_n_426891.html?just_reloaded=1

Lying Murderers and the Media Who Protect Them

The housing crisis, hurricanes, political corruption, Wall Street meltdowns and major, OVERT wars on two fronts. Pakistan soldiers have been told to fire at American soldiers who have crossed the border into their sovereign country. We comfortably ponder the insanity that has become normal while people who live in other places spend their days in fear of US missiles crashing into their homes. Is there any line across which BushCo. won’t tread in its last, desperate grasp at “full spectrum dominance?” Will the human beings who wield power ever realize that today’s destruction will cause blowback so severe that 9/11 will seem like just a bad day? And how the hell are the rest of us going to pick up the pieces once the house of cards come tumbling down?
You know our “foreign policy” sucks really huge eggs when Ollie North is defending the case. For a quick brief on the details, go to ThinkProgress.org’s excellentU.S. Military Relied On Oliver North To Dispute Afghanistan Civilian Deaths»
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/08/military-oliver-north/
Glenn Greenwald’s excellent blog discusses the disgusting attempts at covering up this latest disgraceful military episode in Afghanistan.
Thursday Sept. 11, 2008 07:13 EDT
The government, the media and Afghanistan
North Now
[...] What makes the Azizabad attack particularly notable is the blatant and now clearly demonstrated lying engaged in by the U.S. Government regarding this incident, with the eager propagandistic assistance of what we are constantly told is the "legitimate news arm" of Fox News -- namely, Brit Hume's show and his stable of "legitimate news reporters." Working in unison, Fox and the Pentagon continuously denied claims that large numbers of civilians had been killed in the airstrike, accusing the villagers of lying and U.N. investigators of having been "duped." But a mountain of documentary evidence and independent investigations have now conclusively confirmed that it was the U.S. Government that was lying and the villagers' claims which were true all along, forcing the military to "reinvestigate" its own conclusions. While local villagers, the Afghan government, U.N. investigators, and independent journalists all insisted that the U.S. air attack resulted in the slaughter of 95 civilians, including 50 children, and killed no Taliban fighters, the U.S. military repeatedly issued vehement denials of those claims, insisting for weeks "that only 5 to 7 civilians, and 30 to 35 militants, were killed in what it [said] was a successful operation against the Taliban." The Bush administration even "accused the villagers of spreading Taliban propaganda" and claimed "that the villagers fabricated such evidence as grave sites," even though those "villagers have connections to the Afghan police, NATO or the Americans through reconstruction projects, and they say they oppose the Taliban." [...] There are numerous vital issues raised by this episode relating both to the bombing and particularly how the U.S. Government so frequently issues false claims, but in light of all the recent uproar over what is and is not "appropriate journalism," I want to focus for the moment on Fox News' role in this. When the U.S. military originally was denying the villagers' claim, the Pentagon claimed it had had conducted an investigation and that an unnamed "independent journalist" who happened to be with them confirmed their account that large numbers of Taliban were among the dead and only very few unarmed civilians were. But then this was revealed:

The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was a[ Marine] colonel.

That "independent journalist" is the same person who, in 1986, proudly went before Congress and boasted: "I will tell you right now, counsel, and to all the members here gathered, that I misled the Congress," [my bold] and then justified that lying -- and to this day still justifies it -- on the ground that it was for a greater good. That behavior -- which led to multiple felony convictions that were ultimately overturned because he had received immunity in connection with his testimony -- hasn't prevented North from being employed as a "reporter" by the serious, legitimate news arm of Fox News, nor from appearing regularly on Brit Hume's Serious News Show as a journalist, nor being cited as an "independent journalist" by the U.S. military to confirm its claims and accuse Afghan villagers of lying about the number of their dead.
[...] [Jim] Angle then introduced Fox News "national security correspondent" Jennifer Griffin, and this is what Fox viewers heard:

GRIFFIN: So what did happen during the 2:00 a.m. raid into Azizabad? The Special Forces teams involved have been muzzled pending the new investigation, but FOX News cameramen Chris Jackson and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North happened to be embedded [my bold] with the Marine Special Forces Unit involved in the raid. This is their video exclusive to FOX News. They witnessed the entire operation firsthand. (END VIDEOTAPE)

Fox's news show -- not Bill O'Reilly, but Brit Hume's "legitimate news program" -- continued to insist, based upon the "reporting" of "journalist" Oliver North and his cameraman, that the U.S. military's original claims were true, and the villagers and the U.N. were lying, even as the U.S. military itself was, in light of the ample evidence, severely backtracking on its story:

[...] "The [video] footage that is there on this shows horrendous pictures of these bodies and clearly identifies women and children. In some cases, the bodies are not in one piece," a U.N. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Whether you say it was 76 or 82 or even 92 -- it was clearly not seven who were killed there." Said a senior U.S. military official: "Whatever information [Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan] got that was shared by Afghan and U.N. representatives led him to believe there was good cause to want to look at all of this more deeply."

It is hardly uncommon for claims by the U.S. Government regarding the multiple countries in which our "War on Terror" is being waged to be vehemently disputed by a whole array of people. The only difference here is that video, other documentary evidence, and independent investigations have all emerged confirming the falsity of the U.S. Government's claims.
[...] Way beyond Fox, this is the same thing that our media generally (and with some important exceptions) has been doing for years, at least -- mindlessly repeating and confirming false Government claims. [my bold] That's what makes Carlotta Gall's on-scene actual investigation of the Pentagon's Afghanistan claims so notable -- it's so unusual. From Jessica Lynch's heroic Rambo-like firefight to Pat Tillman's murder by Al Qaeda monsters to pre-war claims of the Iraqi menace to post-war claims of Glorious Progress to current claims of the Grave Russian and Iranian Threats to the concealment and then justification of virtually every act of government radicalism over the last eight years, our media has, by and large, done what Fox News did in the Azizabad case -- offer itself up as an uncritical conduit for state propaganda.

And that's to say nothing of their more overt propagandistic activities -- the still-extraordinary fact that for the last seven years, virtually every American news program has employed as "independent analysts" people who were part of a formal, coordinated and likely illegal U.S. Government propaganda program run out of the Pentagon, a program which resulted in countless false stories broadcast by these networks to boost Government lies. And even after all of that was revealed and documented on the front page of the NYT, these media outlets -- all 3 networks, plus CNN and others -- continue to employ the propagandists, and worse, refuse even to tell their viewers about what happened, or even to disclose to their viewers the existence of the story, and then -- at best -- actually defend it all when forced on their obscure blogs to mention it.

* * * * *
There’s more. I urge you to read the full post: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/11/azizabad/

"Fox is a Corporate Whore!"

I agree! It seems people who labor for Rupert Murdock enjoy putting themselves in challenging situations. Watch this oh, so macho cameraman freak out when he realizes he's surrounded by LEFT WING FREAKS!

Montel Williams Stands Against Stupidity & Cowardice

From Daily Kos:
Montel Williams Loses Job after Defending Troops on Fox News
by Brandon Friedman
Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 11:39:14 PM PST
For just over three minutes on Saturday morning, TV talk show host Montel Williams owned the hosts of Fox and Friends. A former Marine and Naval officer, Montel lectured the stunned hosts on the stupidity of spending air time on the death of Heath Ledger, rather than covering the war in Iraq. It was a spectacle rarely seen on live cable television, as Montel exposed and condemned both tabloid "news" shows and much of American culture for what they have each become: shallow and greedy.
Three minutes into this awkward segment on Fox, one host cut off Montel in order to go to a commercial. Montel did not return after the break. Four days later, after 17 years as a television host, Montel lost his job. Variety reported on Wednesday that the:
Fate of "The Montel Williams Show" was sealed when key Fox-owned stations opted not to renew it for the 2008-09 season. I have no idea whether Montel already knew his show wasn’t going to be renewed, and thus felt emboldened to cut loose on the air, or whether his firing was a result of his actions on Saturday. Either way, Montel Williams exhibited courage this week that few in the television industry ever will. And for that, American troops around the world stand with him. We support him not only because he stood up for the troops, but because he did it on Fox News—a station that has done more damage to the U.S. military since 9/11 than any other.
Montel Williams is an American patriot. Though he left the military years ago, he has never forgotten "his" troops.
For that we salute and thank you, Montel. Best of luck with whatever you choose to do next.
Montel turns the tables on a Fox Morning Television show

Bo Reilly Bites It

Unbelievable and unacceptable! Keep watching the video after the initial incident for a montage of attack reports from the Foxes at Obama. I never would have believed Americans would accept such blatant insanity on television, but there it is for the whole world to see.
http://foxattacks.com/obama?utm_source=rgemail
Please spread the video FAR AND WIDE. We want thousands signing on to support Obama in hanging tough against the FOX bullies.
Robert Greenwald
P.S. Let's have a little fun too. Post a comment on the blog with all the reasons you can think of why Obama should not go on Billy's show. The most compelling/funny/interesting will score some cool BNF gear and a signed Outfoxed: FOX Attacks! Special Edition DVD.