By Brad Friedman on 12/12/2005, 11:27am PT  

It looks as though Saudi princes may now be buying their way into the good graces of news organizations --- or at least into Rupert Murdoch's FOX "News" channel and other Murdoch-owned outlets as reported by FrontPage Magazine, a rightwing website:

Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal boasted in Dubai earlier this week about his ability to change the news content that viewers around the world see on television.

In early September 2005, Bin Talal bought 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp. This made the Fifth richest man on the Forbes World's Richest People, the fourth largest voting shareholder in News Corp., the parent of Fox News. News Corp. is the world's leading newspaper publisher in English. It operates more than 175 newspapers, in the UK, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the US, and distributes more than 40 million papers per week.
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Covering the riots in Paris last November, Fox ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots." Bin Talal was not happy. "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty," he said. "Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."
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If indeed he was successful changing FOX NEWS' reports of the Paris riots, he got a big bang for his bucks.

(Hat tip RAW STORY)

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