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." This didn't make the "Muslim"
riots go away, but Alwaleed managed to fog our perception of them. With a
phone call, the Saudi prince eliminated the peculiarly Islamic
character of the unprecedented French street violence for both the
viewers at home and, more significantly, for the journalists behind the
scenes. When little owner doesn't want "Muslim" rioting identified and
big owner agrees, it sets a marker for employees. Alwaleed's stake, by
the way, is now 7 percent. We can only speculate on what other
acts of influence this nephew of the Saudi dictator might have since
imposed on Fox News and other News Corp. properties. (I have long argued
that News Corp. should register as a foreign agent, due to the stock
owned by a senior member of the Saudi ruling dynasty.) Alwaleed hasn't
shared any other editorial exploits with the public. But that opening
act of eliminating key information from News Corp.'s coverage of Islamic
news might well have set a pattern of omission. Recently, such a
pattern of omission in News Corp.'s coverage of the Gore-Al Jazeera deal
seems evident. I say "seems," because I can't be entirely certain that I
haven't missed something in my research. But judging from online
searches of news stories and audio transcripts, two salient points are
missing from at least the main body of News Corp.'s coverage. One
is reference to the noticeable alignment of Al Jazeera with the Muslim
Brotherhood, the global Islamic movement whose motto is, "The Koran is
our law; jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest
hope." The second (with an exception noted below) is reference to Al
Jazeera's superstar host and ideological lodestar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a
leading Muslim Brotherhood figure. The influence of al-Qaradawi at the
network and in Qatar -- where, according to Freedom House's 2012 press
report, it is against the law for journalists to criticize the Qatari
government, the ruling family or Islam -- can hardly be overestimated. Strange
omission? This relationship between the Qatari-controlled network and
the Muslim Brotherhood organization has been observed for years. Back in
2007, for example, Steven Stalinsky reported in The New York Sun that
various Arab commentators referred to Al Jazeera as "the Muslim
Brotherhood channel" and the like. What's more, reference to the
relationship appears at least in passing in coverage of the Gore deal at
mainstream media sites such as USA Today and the Seattle Times. More
discussion is available at some conservative outlets, including Rush
Limbaugh and The Blaze. (Searches at Breitbart and the Washington
Examiner, like News Corp. sites, yielded nothing on these same points.
Call it, perhaps, "the Fox effect.") Given the rise of Muslim
Brotherhood parties in the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring --
undeviatingly cheered on by Al Jazeera -- the network's Muslim
Brotherhood connection, which extends to Al Jazeera's sponsors inside
the Qatari ruling family, is a crucial point to miss. Especially when it
seems to be missed across the board. The same goes for failing to
mention Al Jazeera's leading personality, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in the
Gore deal coverage. This longtime "spiritual guide" of the Muslim
Brotherhood hosts one of Al Jazeera's most popular shows, "Sharia and
Life." Among other poisonous pronouncements, al-Qaradawi has called for
Americans in Iraq and Israelis everywhere to be targeted by terrorists
("martyrs") who would then find a place in Islamic paradise. Given Al
Gore's refusal to sell his network to Glenn Beck's The Blaze TV due to
political differences, Muslim Brother Al-Qaradawi and his Shariah
ideology become highly relevant. Then again, maybe one man's news story
is just another man's clipping on the cutting-room floor. Meanwhile,
the one story I found in News Corp. coverage of the Gore deal that
mentions al-Qaradawi -- a column by Gordon Crovitz -- neglected to note
al-Qaradawi's place in the Muslim Brotherhood. Particularly given
current events, this is a little like forgetting to mention that Hermann
Goring was in the Nazi Party. Could normal editorial discretion
or plain ignorance be at work here? I suppose so. Still, there is that
tie-in between News Corp. and the House of Saud to consider, a
partnership I find more troubling than Gore's deal with the Qatari
emirate. Not only does Alwaleed own a stake in News Corp., Murdoch owns
an even more substantial stake (18.97 percent) in Alwaleed's Arabic
media company Rotana. Within the Alwaleed-Murdoch-Rotana galaxy is
a 24-hour-Islamic outlet called Al Risala, which Alwaleed founded in
2006. The channel's director and popular "tele-Islamist" is Tareq
Al-Suwaidan, widely reported to be a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Kuwait. The station's "Supreme Advisory Committee" includes Abdullah
Omar Naseef, who, according to former federal prosecutor Andrew C.
McCarthy, is "a major Muslim Brotherhood figure" involved in the
financing of al-Qaida. Al Risala, then, would seem to fit right into the Al Jazeera-Qaradawi-Muslim-Brotherhood lineup. We
know Alwaleed has influenced Fox editorial matters before. Could that
Alwaleed influence -- even his very presence - account for why News
Corp. hasn't hit harder on the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaradawi angles
of the Gore-Jazeera deal? I don't know, but I wonder. Don't you?
