AL WALEED BIN TALAL AND RUPERT MURDOCH'S BUSINESS GETS EVEN COZIER

CBC News tells of a new channel being launched as a joint venture between the Saudi prince who blamed America and Israel for 9-11, and FOX's owner:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has announced plans to launch a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel in partnership with Rupert Murdoch's Fox network.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, former editor in chief of Alwatan newspaper and a media adviser to Prince Turki Al-Faisal at Saudi embassies in London and Washington D.C., will head the station.

Khashoggi is a controversial choice because he has clashed with Saudi authorities over religious police and women's rights and resigned from his newspaper position earlier this year over an editorial questioning Salafism, a form of Islam at the heart of the conservative state.

But as Diana West tells, this whole matter with Khashoggi seems to have been resolved rather nicely, so we shouldn't be taken in so easily. As the BBC explains:

The opinion piece by Saudi poet Ibrahim al-Almaee criticised Salafism, a conservative school of Sunni Islam that draws inspiration from the practices of the earliest Muslims.

Saudi Arabia is governed under an austere form of Salafi Islam, Wahabbism.

[...]

"We believe in al-Watan newspaper, and we believe in reform," Mr Khashoggi said after resigning. "The newspaper is more important than I am, and I hope it will continue. We may question social issues like women's rights, but we should not have allowed an article to question the essence of faith."

He said he was abroad when the decision was made to publish the article, and he did not agree with the points made by Mr Almaee.

[...]

Mr Khashoggi will keep his position on the editorial board of the paper, and said he would continue to write in support of reform.

So that mystery is solved.

And now, let's take a moment to consider: should Murdoch be dealing with a man like bin Talal who insults the American-Israeli crowd with blame-the-victim tactics and who could be supporting terrorism against the west? That this has gone largely without comment from some prominent conservatives is worthy of some serious head-shaking at how irresponsible some people can really be.