20100207

Should Fox News Register as a Saudi Agent?

Diana West writes:  "A couple of week's ago, I blogged about Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's charm-blitz through NY, juxtaposing Fox News' Neil Cavuto's sweetheart interview with "the prince" and Charlie Rose's far more revealing conversation -- essentially, it's (everything's) all Israel's fault, and "my" 1.5 billion Muslims are all like the underpants' bomber's father.

I kept thinking about Alwaleed -- his stake in News Corp., his stakes in Georgetown and Harvard -- and realized that as a leading scion of the so-called House of Saud (q: how many countries are named for their rulers?), a totalitarian theocracy whose foundational documents -- the Koran, the Sunnah, the Hadiths -- place it in direct ideological conflict with the US Constitution, he operates not just as a billionaire businessman, but also, inevitably, by virtue of who he is, as an agent of Saudi influence.

News Corp. wants to do business with him? Fine. But shouldn't News Corp.'s Fox News thus be required to register with the State Department as a foreign agent of Saudi Arabia? That's the question posed by this week's syndicated column: