05/22/15

How the Media Got Into Bed with the Clintons

Republican operative Karl Rove writes in The Wall Street Journal that “few demonstrate as much contempt for journalists as do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” That may be true for Obama, but Mrs. Clinton has taken a different approach. Her platforms, the Clinton Foundation and its project, the Clinton Global Initiative, have given the appearance of humanitarian work, drawing many big names from the media into her network of influence. No wonder they treat her with deference and respect. The media have been compromised.

“Until late Tuesday afternoon,” reports USA Today, “the Clinton Foundation website listed CNN anchor Jake Tapper as a ‘speaker’ at a Clinton Global Initiative event scheduled for June 8-10 in Denver. After USA TODAY asked CNN about the event, Tapper’s name was swiftly removed from the Clinton Foundation website.”

It appears that Tapper will still participate in the meeting, but not as a speaker.

This Tapper controversy should put an end to the pretense that George Stephanopoulos of ABC News is the only member of the journalism business who was compromised through his involvement in the Clinton Foundation. A list of media members of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2011 included Stephanopoulos and many others:

Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN
Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times
Lionel Barber, U.S. Managing Director, The Financial Times
Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times
Maria Bartiromo, Anchor, CNBC (now with Fox Business Network)
Matt Lauer, Host, The Today Show, NBC
Matthew Bishop, New York Bureau Chief and American Business Editor, The Economist
Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent and Moderator of Meet the Press, NBC News
Greta Van Susteren, Anchor and Host, Fox News Channel
Anderson Cooper, Anchor, CNN
Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS
Katie Couric, Anchor, CBS News (now with Yahoo)
Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International

The pro-Clinton group Media Matters has been having a field day with the news that Fox News personalities were on the list. The group points out that Van Susteren and Bartiromo have both lavished praise on the Clinton Global Initiative for its good work.

For our part, we have been drawing attention to media links to the Clintons for at least 10 years. It wasn’t considered controversial by the media, on the left or right, until the release of Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Schweizer has attempted to link some of the contributions made to the Clintons to actions taken by the Obama administration when Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State.

We noted back in 2005 that Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of the Fox News parent company, was a participant in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting held in New York in mid-September of that year. As we also pointed out, Clinton himself had appeared on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News Channel show to promote the event.

That same year we reported that the Fox News Channel, in addition to giving Clinton a platform to talk about his Global Initiative, had done then-Senator Hillary Clinton a big favor by canceling some interviews with Ed Klein, the author of a book critical of Hillary.

Back in 2007 we noted that Murdoch had personally made a $500,000 gift to the Clinton Global Initiative.

“In terms of the Clinton Global Initiative,” Van Susteren told former President Clinton in a 2010 interview, “I’ve seen so many of the good works in terms of the money that goes around the world, whether it’s clean water in different areas. If there is one particular mission for you to describe the Clinton Global Initiative, what is it?”

Clinton’s lengthy reply to this softball question included praise for Frank Giustra, the Canadian business executive, for giving $20 million. Giustra’s donations have subsequently been linked to a plan to win U.S. approval to sell a uranium company to Russia.

Rather than look into the contributions of Giustra and others, Van Susteren encouraged others to contribute to the Clintons. She said to the former president, “A lot of people look at the program, a lot of big names, big contributors and very generous, what about somebody who says I don’t have any big money to contribute. I might have some ideas, or I’m willing to do some leg work to help. How can I participate?”

Isn’t that nice? Even Fox News was in bed with the Clintons.

In a September 27, 2012 column, we pointed out that members of the media scheduled to speak at that year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting were:

Nicholas D. Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times
Piers Morgan, Host, CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight
Charlie Rose, Executive Editor and Anchor, “Charlie Rose”
Fareed Zakaria, Host, CNN-GPS

It turns out that 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney even attended and addressed that year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting. Perhaps he had been told by Republican advisers like Rove that it was a humanitarian event with a bipartisan flavor.

“Since serving as President here in America,” Romney declared, “President Clinton has devoted himself to lifting the downtrodden around the world. One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate. That is how needy and neglected causes have become global initiatives.”

The comment goes to show how Clinton, who disgraced himself by having sex with a White House intern and was impeached, has had his reputation rehabilitated. A Republican who got caught doing such things would be forced to slink away and beg for forgiveness from the media.

Romney may have gotten bad advice about going to that event, but it was Romney himself who told Jan Crawford of CBS News during the campaign that the major media were not in the tank for President Obama and that he had no plans to challenge liberal media bias.

No wonder the Democrats are so confident about their ability to manipulate the press. They have the Republicans eating out of their hands.

02/11/15

Will Saudi Prince Thwart Terror Probes?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

CNN has a problem: one of its hosts, Michael Smerconish, is uncovering evidence about the Saudi role in 9/11. But a CNN analyst, Frances Townsend, has been rubbing elbows with one of the alleged Saudi financiers of al-Qaeda. Perhaps they ought to get together and compare notes.

The strange story begins with Smerconish on his CNN show last Saturday interviewing attorney Sean Carter, who recently took a sworn statement from 9/11’s so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui.

Convicted terrorist Moussaoui, speaking from behind federal prison walls, had told Carter and other attorneys suing Saudi Arabia over its role in 9/11 that three major Saudi figures, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Prince Turki al-Faisal, were on a list of donors to al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. The Saudi regime flatly denied the allegations and dismissed Moussaoui as a lunatic.

Alwaleed stands out as the Saudi on the list who could most be affected by the disclosure. He is the largest individual foreign investor in the United States, with investments in 21^st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News; TimeWarner, the parent company of CNN; Citigroup; Twitter; and Apple. He has close personal relationships with corporate America’s CEOs, including, and especially, Rupert Murdoch.

Carter told Smerconish that he had confidence in the veracity of the allegations made by Moussaoui. “We actually brought some subject matter experts, counterterrorism experts with us so that we would be able to sort of gut check what he was saying throughout the testimony. And he provided incredibly detailed testimony about al Qaeda’s operations during that period, the organizational structure and who was responsible for certain activities, the nature of al Qaeda’s facilities within Kandahar [Afghanistan] at that time, and everything he said when he was providing this very detailed, directly responsive testimony checked out for us.”

Showing no deference to the prince, known as “His Royal Highness,” Smerconish said on his CNN show that the 28 classified pages of a congressional report on the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks should be released to the public. These pages reportedly concern Saudi financing of al-Qaeda, and may even name the top Saudis implicated in the 9/11 attacks.

Acting unconcerned, Alwaleed seems to be proceeding with business as usual. In fact, it was recently revealed that Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, participated in a business meeting with Alwaleed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) reported that the meeting was about “political, business and economic issues.”

What is also astonishing about the meeting was the participation of CNN National Security Analyst Frances Townsend, who previously served as Assistant to President George W. Bush for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and chaired the Homeland Security Council from May 2004 until January 2008.

If anyone should be aware of the role of Alwaleed and other Saudis in financing al-Qaeda, it is Townsend.

In addition to serving as an analyst for CNN, Townsend is currently Executive Vice President for Worldwide Government, Legal and Business Affairs at MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings. The firm is wholly owned by billionaire financier Ronald O. Perelman and maintains investments in cosmetics, entertainment, biotechnology and military equipment.

Townsend’s involvement in the meeting with Alwaleed assumes even more significance because she serves as president of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), which is currently demanding that Twitter “immediately take action and adopt policies to stop extremists from misusing the social network.”

CEP President Townsend and CEP Chief Executive Officer Ambassador Mark Wallace co-authored a letter to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo “seeking an opportunity to discuss solutions to the growing crisis we face from extremists seeking to weaponize Twitter and commit cyber-jihad. Twitter rebuffed CEP’s invitation.”

But it was Alwaleed who invested $300 million in Twitter in late 2011. “Twitter is a very strategic investment for us,” he said at the time. Awaleed’s KHC even posted a video of the meeting. “During the meeting,” KHC reports, “Mr. Costolo thanked the Prince for giving him the opportunity to meet with him.”

It appears that the Townsend/Wallace letter that went to Costolo, and was copied to four different Twitter executives, should have gone to Alwaleed personally.

In 2005, Townsend, then Homeland Security Adviser to President George W. Bush, praised what she said was Saudi Arabia’s increasingly effective response to terrorism. “The Saudis really are making substantial progress,” she said.

A transcript from a counterterrorism conference in Saudi Arabia quoted her as praising “the leadership and commitment the Saudis have shown towards finding practical and effective ways to fight terrorism…” She said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were engaged in a “critically important strategic partnership.”

But it appears that Townsend and other U.S. officials may have been privy to other information that cast doubt on Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism efforts.

In 2007, according to a leaked cable, The New York Times reported that Townsend had “told her Saudi counterparts in Riyadh” that President Bush was “quite concerned” about the level of cooperation the U.S. was getting from the Saudis.

It has, of course, been widely reported that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis and that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a Saudi as well. The bulk of the terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay were from Saudi Arabia. What’s more, numerous reports implicate Saudi Arabia in funding the Islamic State, known as ISIS.

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), the co-chairman of the official inquiry into 9/11, told Patrick Cockburn of the British newspaper The Independent, “I believe that the failure to shine a full light on Saudi actions and particularly its involvement in 9/11 has contributed to the Saudi ability to continue to engage in actions that are damaging to the U.S.—and in particular their support for ISIS.”

After the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi regime launched a public relations strategy in the U.S. that was analyzed in the academic paper, “Message strategies of Saudi Arabia’s image restoration campaign after 9/11.” The analysis notes that Saudi Prince Alwaleed’s donation of $10 million to a fund for 9/11 victims and their families was part of this campaign. But the donation was rejected by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after Alwaleed blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy.

The Alwaleed donation was described in the academic paper as part of the Saudi regime’s “Good Intentions” ploy to repair its battered image as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In the wake of Moussaoui’s allegations, it would appear that Alwaleed may be counting on his status as “the largest individual foreign investor” in the United States to discourage any more investigations into his financial activities.

As President Obama seeks Congressional support for a war against ISIS, with Saudi Arabia as an alleged ally in the fight, it would seem that the Saudi role in funding the Global Jihad Movement should take center stage.

But it appears that major American news organizations are compromised by their financial ties to the Saudis.

02/6/15

Scandal Rocks Fox News Over Saudi Terror Link

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Fox News Correspondent James Rosen reported on Wednesday night that a “major investor in the parent company” of Fox News has been implicated in financing the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Rosen made the embarrassing disclosure in a story on the channel’s “Special Report” show hosted by Bret Baier.

The alleged al-Qaeda financier, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, is a very close friend of Rupert Murdoch and his family, who control major media companies like News Corp and 21^st Century Fox. The latter is now the parent company of the Fox News Channel.

The second largest shareholder in the Fox News parent company after the Murdoch family, Alwaleed has been addressed as “Your Highness” during his appearances on the network. His recent appearances have made him sound moderate, while denouncing Islamic extremism and the ISIS terrorist group.

Fox News is to be congratulated for reporting on a developing scandal that puts its chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rupert Murdoch, in a very bad light.

A video posted by Alwaleed’s company, Kingdom Holdings, shows Alwaleed and Murdoch warmly embracing at one of several intimate meetings they have held over the years. Alwaleed has also met regularly with Murdoch’s liberal son, James Murdoch, the co-chief operating officer of 21^st Century Fox.

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Alwaleed offered a $10 million contribution to a 9/11 fund for families and victims. Then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected the money because Alwaleed had blamed the terror attacks on U.S. Middle East policy.

Rosen, a hard-charging investigative reporter, really had no alternative but to cover the damaging disclosures. The allegations were made by Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker of 9/11, and provided in the form of a sworn statement to attorneys for families of 9/11 victims for their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. He is serving a life sentence at a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Fifteen of the 19 terrorist hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks came from Saudi Arabia, and the role of the Saudi government and its top officials and citizens in the massacre of nearly 3.000 Americans on that day has been a matter of controversy ever since.

Rosen said Moussaoui’s sworn statement named Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,“a leading Saudi businessman and major investor in the parent company of this network,” as one of the financiers of al-Qaeda.

But Alwaleed is much more than just an investor in Murdoch’s companies. He is also a personal friend of Murdoch’s who boasted in 2005 that a phone call to Murdoch resulted in the Fox News Channel altering its coverage of Muslim riots in France, in order to eliminate references to the religious affiliation of the Muslim extremists.

“I picked up the phone and called Murdoch and said that I was speaking not as a shareholder, but as a viewer of Fox. I said that these are not Muslim riots, they are riots,” Alwaleed reportedly said. “He [Murdoch] investigated the matter and called Fox and within half an hour it was changed from ‘Muslim riots’ to ‘civil riots.’”

I asked Murdoch about this at the 2006 annual meeting of News Corporation. He confirmed that a call from Alwaleed had resulted in the change. Murdoch said the change was made after it was determined that there was also a Catholic role in the riots. I had never heard or seen it reported anywhere that there was a Catholic role in the riots.

In 2002, it was revealed that Alwaleed had contributed $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front that has boasted of influence over Fox entertainment programs. The bio for Nihad Awad, CAIR’s Executive Director and co-founder, describes how he “has successfully led negotiations with Fortune 500 companies and Hollywood film corporations on issues of concern to American Muslims. These issues include religious discrimination in the workplace, racial and religious profiling, negative stereotypes about Muslims in major Hollywood films, and products that are offensive to Muslims.”

In recent years, however, Alwaleed has postured as an opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups. In 2013, for example, he announced the sacking of Tarek Al-Suwaidan as director of one of his TV channels because of his Muslim Brotherhood ties. Alwaleed said at the time that he was opposed to “the Brotherhood terrorist movement.”

The channel is a part of Alwaleed’s Rotana Group, an Arab media conglomerate based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that is partly owned by News Corp.

On the October 26, 2014, “Sunday Morning Futures” Fox News Channel program hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Alwaleed declared that Saudi Arabia was opposed to the terrorist group ISIS, regarded by many experts as a spin-off from al-Qaeda.

The following exchange took place:

Bartiromo: Prince Alwaleed, what do you say to those out there who say that Saudi Arabia has had a history of supporting and funding some extremists, particularly in Syria, for example? Do you believe Saudi Arabia should take some responsibility for ISIS even being formed?

Alwaleed: Well, the whole world has to take responsibility, not only—I mean, there is no doubt there are some Saudis, like there are some people in the United States, like in Europe, in some other Arab countries, who really are (INAUDIBLE) and support these terrorist groups.

Alwaleed didn’t explain who these Saudis or other people were. He went on to tell “Maria” that she should “rest assured” because Saudi Arabia “right now has enacted laws” against supporting terrorist groups.

During another appearance with Bartiromo, Alwaleed called ISIS a “disease” that has to be eradicated.

While Alwaleed is now putting the best face on what the Saudis and other “moderate” Muslims are supposedly doing around the world to counter terrorism, his behind-the-scenes influence on the Murdoch empire continues to generate controversy. Speculation emerged recently that Alwaleed’s influence was a factor in the Fox News Channel’s apology for covering Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” in Europe where non-Muslims and police fear to enter.

The unwarranted apology dismayed conservatives who were counting on Fox News to cover the growing problem of the Islamization of Europe.

It is curious that as the Moussaoui allegations against Alwaleed and other Saudi officials and citizens were making news, it was suddenly disclosed that Alwaleed was reducing his stake in News Corp while maintaining his investment in 21st Century Fox.

Alwaleed’s organization, Kingdom Holding, discussed the change in stock ownership in an announcement featuring a photo of Alwaleed and Murdoch walking through what appears to be a newsroom. It said Alwaleed remains “fully supportive of Rupert Murdoch and his family.”

The disclosures of a Saudi role in financing al-Qaeda is a subject that deserves more follow-up from Fox News and other media organizations.

To its credit, the Fox News website is now running a follow-up story noting that the new charges are prompting calls for the declassification and release of 28 classified pages of the full report on 9/11. The role of Saudi Arabia in the attacks is said to be a major topic covered in the 28 pages.

01/21/15

Hypocritical New York Times Takes on Steven Emerson

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

When the New York Times sees a gaffe made on Fox News, it blasts the network in article after article, in this case at least three times, but when its own reporters make basic fact-checking mistakes, the paper’s readers receive casual notice at the bottom of an article.

In some editions of the Times, Stephen Castle and Robert Mackey misidentified the parent company of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s title at News Corporation, and “paraphrased incorrectly in some editions” Rupert Murdoch’s Twitter comments. That’s three errors in one article.

These errors were in an article criticizing Steven Emerson, a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi and Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, who mistakenly said that “[A]nd in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Emerson retracted his statement, saying that he “clearly made a terrible error for which I am deeply sorry,” and Fox News issued an on-air apology regarding the incident. Emerson even made a donation to Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Will The New York Times make similar donations on behalf of its numerous errors in the Castle and Mackey article?

Writers for the Times didn’t hold back: “Maybe if these ‘journalists’ left their bubble and actually talked to more Muslims, they wouldn’t spew nonsense—such as that Pakistan is an Arab country or that Birmingham, England, is entirely Muslim and a no-go area for Christians,” wrote Nicholas Kristof for the Times. “That paranoid claim by a Fox News ‘expert,’ later retracted, led wags to suggest that the city had renamed itself Birming, since Muslims avoid ham.”

The New York Times repeatedly labeled Emerson a “self-described expert on Islamist terrorism.” Investigative reporter Gary Weiss, in an outstanding blog post on this controversy, noted, “When you call someone a ‘self-described expert’ it’s a bit like calling someone a ‘self-described doctor.’…He or she is a phony.”

Weiss suggested that Kristof was perhaps carrying a grudge against Emerson for an article years earlier in which “Emerson raked [Kristof] over the coals for a column that criticized the U.S. and Israel for isolating the Hamas terror group.

But as Weiss pointed out, the late New York Times managing editor A.M. Rosenthal called Emerson “one of the nation’s best national security correspondents” whose “investigative work on radical Islamic fundamentalism is absolutely critical to this nation’s national security. There is no one else who has exhibited the same expertise, courage and determination to tackle this vital issue.” And Weiss cited other examples of praise for Emerson on the pages of the Times: “In this article in the Times in 1988,” wrote Weiss, “veteran Times reporters Martin Tolchin and Richard Halloran described Emerson as ‘an expert on intelligence.’”

But the Times are a-changing.

Times executive editor Dean Baquet has announced that the paper won’t publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons “primarily” because doing so might offend its Muslim readers.

While Emerson clearly was wrong on the specifics of what he said, he was referring to the undeniably expanding Islamization occurring in parts of Europe. This news story from CBN in 2010 captured this very real phenomenon, which does exist, and continues to grow.

Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid cited some of the outstanding work that Emerson has done through the years, which is the reason that the left has come after him so hard: “For his part, Emerson has been consistently correct about the development of the Islamic extremist networks that now threaten America and the world,” writes Kincaid. “His latest film, ‘Jihad in America: The Grand Deception,’ describes how Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as CAIR, have pursued a strategy described in secret documents as the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ of destroying Western civilization from within.” He also referred to Emerson’s 1994 documentary, “Jihad in America,” which “included previously unknown videos of the clandestine activities of radical Islamic terrorist groups in the United States.”

Besides, the Times, as AIM has cited for 45 years, often gets the big things wrong as well. For example, we debunked their December, 2013 story on Benghazi that they intended as the definitive statement. We’re still waiting for their retraction or correction on that one.

Despite his mistake, Emerson is one of the nation’s leading experts on Islamic terrorism. The New York Times, on the other hand, has shown itself time after time to be hypocritical and agenda-driven.