http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/24/fox-turns-on-wilders/ If there is one major news outlet that would be expected to leap to the defense of free speech when that vital linchpin of liberty is under attack, one would expect that Fox News would be the one organization to do so. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the Obama administration tried to cut Fox out of access to the White House. To their credit, Fox’s competitors leapt to defend – not Fox, whom the rest of the mainstream networks despise – but free speech. That episode makes the way that all the networks, and Fox in particular, are ignoring the Geert Wilders trial so troubling and, in the case of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., rather mystifying, at least until one scratches the surface a bit.
Nobody expects CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. to cover the Wilders trial because those networks have established beyond any reasonable doubt that they are not going to cover issues related to Islam if the story in question doesn’t fit neatly within their “Islam isn’t the problem, it’s just a few explosive bad apples” narrative. Journalists who bend over backward to disconnect Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan from his jihadist inspirations aren’t likely to care about a political leader living across the pond who is obviously nothing more than a fringe, right-wing Islamophobe. But Fox? We’ve come to expect more from Fox. Perhaps it’s time to start expecting less, at least when issues involving Islam are involved.
What’s ironic about Fox ignoring the Wilders’ story is that the most important part of the attack on this Dutch politician doesn’t involve Islam at all, not really. If Fox editors and pundits honestly believe that Wilders is a fringe politician, spouting paranoid nonsense, fine. They’re wrong, but their opinion of Wilders and his ideas are irrelevant. What’s at stake here is a principle that is vital to western civilization: the basic right of free peoples to formulate and express their ideas, even when one finds those ideas abhorrent.
In addition to ignoring the fact that free speech is on trial in the Netherlands, some Fox commentators have recently attacked Wilders and his ideas, the implication being that even if a viewer is astute enough to realize that this Dutch politician is on trial for what he has said, Wilders is merely a nut job who’s not worth worrying about anyway. On March 9 Glenn Beck characterized Wilders as a “far right” politician, then when on to ominously observe that “the left – in Europe – is communism; the right is fascism – in Europe.” A first grader could connect those particular dots, as Beck intended. This is the same Glenn Beck who, a year ago, welcomed Wilders on his show and was downright sympathetic to the attacks on Wilders’ right to free speech that the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party had endured. Wilders experience, Beck declared, was a warning to America: “If you want to see what our future looks like, all you need to is look to Europe.”
Beck has apparently forgotten what he said, or has decided that free speech isn’t really that important a principle after all. Ironically, Wilders is hardly “far right” in his political views. Rather, his politics defy any sort of easy categorization. What Wilders understands is that an Islamic state has no use for the kind of healthy debate that makes democracy work. When Sharia Law is implemented, it’s the Quran’s way or the highway. Wilders’ political goal is to put measures in place that will ensure that the Netherlands remains a free, democratic nation. Wilders’ legal fight is about the freedom to work toward that goal.
Wilders criticizes Islam, not Muslims, because he believes that Islam is ultimately employed as a totalitarian system of governance, whatever it’s attributes or flaws as a religion. Otherwise sensible conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer, dismissed Wilders’ concerns out of hand:
“What he (Wilders) says is extreme, radical, and wrong. He basically is arguing that Islam is the same as Islamism. Islamism is an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam]. The untruth of that is obvious. If you look at the United States, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. are not Islamists. So, it’s simply incorrect. Now, in Europe, there is probably a slightly larger minority but, nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are not.”
But what Wilders is saying and what pundits like Krauthammer think Wilders is saying are two different things. Of course most Muslims living in the United States are not Islamists. Of course the majority of the Muslims living in Europe are not Islamists. It’s safe to wager that the majority of Muslims living in Iran are not Islamists either. That’s not the point. Wilders, and any rational thinker, can’t help but observe that Muslim nations are overwhelmingly ruled by governments that are, in effect if not in name, theocracies. Sometimes those theocracies are dangerous, hostile tyrannies, as in the case of Iran, and sometimes they are indifferent, if occasionally useful, friends of the west like Saudi Arabia. At either end of the spectrum, no Muslim-ruled nation respects western traditions and values like freedom of speech, the equality of peoples and the right of dissent. Wilders hasn’t been trying to demonize individual Muslims, he’s been trying to keep the Netherlands from turning into an Islamic state. One may disagree with his methods, but to say that he doesn’t have the right to employ those methods because the theocratic system he opposes is so violently hyper-sensitive is patently ridiculous and downright cowardly.
So, why is Fox following its brethren in the media by ignoring the Wilders trial, a story that is full of so many themes that might otherwise attract Fox’s attention? Could it have anything to with Saudi Arabian prince Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s stake in News Corp.? Might Murdoch’s increasingly cozy relationship with Arabic media giant Rotana Group have something to do with it? Murdoch’s maverick news organization appears to playing a subtle, yet dangerous game.
Unlike its fellow networks, Fox is ready and willing to denounce radical jihadists who threaten not only the west, but who – if left unchecked – will upset delicate power structures in Muslim theocracies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that lean toward the west. But, for Fox, calling out the religious system of governance that empowers and enriches the princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE seems to be out of bounds. Free speech, it would appear, has it limits – even at Fox News.
The answer
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Diana West: Stop Mau Mauing Geert Wilders
By: Diana West
Examiner Columnist
March 14, 2010
When Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol each from their respective Fox News perches branded Dutch political phenom Geert Wilders as beyond the political pale, it was shocking and outrageously so, and for several reasons.
One. I've grown used to Fox News and all other media ignoring not just the Wilders story but also the cultural story of the century, altogether -- namely, the Islamization of Europe, something Wilders, a great admirer of Ronald Reagan and a committed supporter of Israel, is dedicated to halt and reverse.
The survival instinct of the Dutch, who earlier this month gave unprecedented electoral victories to Wilders and his party, is a strong indicator that this civilizational transformation is not irreversible.
But covering the Islamization of Europe, as readers of this column know, usually makes for bad news. And worse, at least according to the powers that be, even halfway competent reporting on the subject puts Islam in a bad light because it reveals exactly what happens to Western-style liberty when Muslims enter a non-Muslim host country in sufficient numbers to enact and extend Shariah (Islamic law) over a heretofore Judeo-Christian-humanist society.
Better safe (politically correct) than sorry (subject to potential boycott or worse), our media prefer frittering away precious powers afforded by the First Amendment.
This motto seems to go double at Fox ever since Rupert Murdoch, for reasons unknown, sold what is now a 7 percent stake of Fox's parent company News Corp. to a scion of the Shariah-dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
For the Fox commentators, supposedly punditry's bulwark of Western values, to bring it up just to slap it down -- and without factual care (to say the least) -- was disappointing but also irresponsible.
Two. Readers may recall that I've questioned Talal's ownership stake before. This week, much too synergistically, after Murdoch's and Talal's all-stars warned Fox viewers about the Wilders threat, in effect, to Islam in Europe, Murdoch was in Abu Dhabi, along with Talal and 400 other media executives, announcing that key components of the News Corp. empire were moving into the Islamic world, into the United Arab Emirates.
Remember the UAE, notorious for enslaving Bangledeshi boys as camel jockeys, for its support of Hamas? It was the UAE whose ministers and princes were hunting with Osama bin Laden, preventing the Clinton White House from taking a cruise missile shot at the jihad kingpin.
It was the UAE that was one of three countries (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) to recognize the Taliban. And it was the UAE's Dubai Ports World that was thwarted in a pre-tea-party populist uproar about these connections and more (11 of the 9/11 hijackers, including two UAE citizens, were deployed to the United States from Dubai). The UAE is "not free" now, says Freedom House, and never has been. You get the picture.
It is now complete with the macabre vision of News Corp.'s Middle Eastern headquarters rising into the skyline, the better to oversee, perhaps, Murdoch's new 9.1 percent stake in Prince Talal's Arab media company, Rotana.
What effect does the Islamization of News Corp. have on "fair and balanced" news stateside? I don't know. But when one of the big bosses is a Saudi prince, it doesn't exactly encourage reporters to doodle spoofs of the Danish Motoons on their notepads, let alone engage in "offensive," PC-busting debate in the newsroom or on the air.
Three. Regardless of cause or effect, the fact remains that in classifying Wilders as a fascist (Beck), denouncing his views as "extreme, radical and wrong" (Krauthammer), and slandering him as a "demagogue" (Kristol), Fox's opinion leaders expressed themselves in terms that surely thrilled not just Murdoch's Islamic-prince cronies, but also the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference.
This is the organization driving the advance of Shariah in the world, as, for example, at the United Nations, where it leads an endless campaign to outlaw all criticism of Islam -- such as Wilders' -- under the PC-sensitive rubric of banning "defamation of religion."
Now, one thing you don't want to do in this life is thrill the OIC, particularly on its smooth drive to extend Shariah that is only now, according to OIC planning, unexpectedly blocked by Wilders. But how it hurts to see Fox pushing in the wrong direction.
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Stop-Mau-Mauing-Geert-Wilders-87703402.html#ixzz0jC92GD9d more
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1895261 News Corp. buys 9 percent of Mideast's Rotana
February 23, 2010 - 10:25am
By ADAM SCHRECK
AP Business Writer
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said Tuesday it will spend $70 million for a slice of Arabic media giant Rotana Group, pushing deeper into the growing Middle East market while strengthening ties to a key Saudi shareholder.
News Corp., the parent of Fox News Channel and distributor of "Avatar," said it will acquire a 9.1 percent stake by buying newly issued shares in Rotana, which is headed by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The New York-based media company said it has an option to boost its Rotana holding to 18.2 percent within 18 months.
The deal gives News Corp. a firmer toehold in the rapidly developing but fragmented Middle East media market, which has witnessed an explosion in cable and satellite television programming in recent years.
"A stake in Rotana expands our presence in a region with a young and growing population, where (economic) growth is set to outstrip that of more developed economies in the years ahead," James Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp.'s European and Asian operations, said in a statement. "Rotana is a leading player in the Middle East and we look forward to working together."
The deal will also give News Corp. two seats on the Mideast company's board, spokeswoman Alice Macandrew said.
Rotana, which bills itself as the Arab world's largest music producer, boasts many of the region's biggest stars, including Egyptian singer Amr Diab and Lebanese diva Elissa. It also operates a number of music and movie satellite channels and controls a film library of more than 1,500 Arabic movies.
Alwaleed, who also heads Saudi investment firm Kingdom Holding Co., is a longtime investor in News Corp., with a stake of about 7 percent of the company, according to a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That makes him News Corp.'s biggest shareholder after members of the Murdoch family.
Rotana already distributes Fox films in the Middle East through an earlier deal with News Corp.
In a statement announcing Tuesday's deal, Alwaleed said he hoped the deeper partnership would help build Rotana's presence across the region while "expanding its reach to the Arab diaspora around the world."
Alwaleed, a nephew of the Saudi monarch, was ranked as the world's 22nd-richest person by Forbes magazine last year.
His Kingdom Holding holds big stakes in several major American companies, including Citigroup Inc. and Apple Inc.
The investment company, however, was hurt by the financial crisis and the prince recently transferred 180 million of his own Citigroup shares to Kingdom Holding at no cost in an effort to boost the firm's borrowing power. The deal was valued at about $600 million.
The News Corp.-Rotana deal had been rumored for years and widely anticipated for weeks. Speculation mounted about an imminent deal after Alwaleed met with Rupert Murdoch in New York last month and said he was looking to expand alliances with the media giant.
(Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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