This fron UrgentAgenda is scary.
THE FUTURE OF FOX NEWS – AT 10:15 P.M. ET: Those on our side have come to depend on Fox News as one of the few outlets where our views get a fair hearing. But will that always be the case?
There have been some disturbing signs in recent days. Fox, of course, is under the control of Rupert Murdoch, pro-American stalwart and something of a media genius. But Murdoch is aging, and it's widely reported that his son, James, who's becoming increasingly powerful in the parent News Corporation, which owns Fox, has views rather different from those of his father. In particular, James has an affinity for the Arab world, despite the fact that freedom of the press doesn't exactly thrive in that culture.
Fox News has received an infusion of Saudi money, primarily from a Saudi prince who spreads money around the United States to buy influence. Fox announced a few weeks ago that its Mideast headquarters would be in Abu Dhabi.
The obvious question is whether these changes will affect Fox's reporting. Several commentators have already noticed, as have I, a subtle change to a more pro-Arab line in some Fox news reports. A report by Amy Kellogg about the Golan Heights last night was particularly disturbing, coming from a reporter who's been reliable in the past. Left out completely, and shockingly, was the fact that the Golan had been used as an artillery platform by Syria to pound villages in Israel proper before Israel seized the Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War. Some of the reporting from Jerusalem has also been leaving out the context that Fox has normally supplied in the past.
How far will this go? Hard to say. But I'm afraid the signs aren't good. Rupert Murdoch will fade away. Money talks. It is frightening to think of the influences that may come into play in the Murdoch empire in the future, an empire that includes Twentieth Century Fox studios, the Times of London, and the The Wall Street Journal. We may find Fox taking the side of the very people who would deny it the freedom to report freely.
So far I haven't seen any anti-American slant creeping into Fox's reporting, but one can legitimately have concerns. James Murdoch is British, but educated in the United States at Harvard, from which he dropped out. His wife works for a Bill Clinton-sponsored organization, the Clinton Climate Initiative.
Bill Katz is no alarmist. If he is concerned we all should be.
On Twitter I am Lesabre1
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