Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Company recently announced that it will launch an Arabic-language news channel in partnership with the Fox News Network, reports The Canadian Press.

According to Ben Flanagan at The National, Prince Al-Waleed, through a Kingdom Holding press statement, spoke of the news channel as an “addition and an alternative for viewers” in the Middle East. “[It] will focus on development in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world on the political, economic and social fronts,” he continued.

Al-Waleed's news channel will be competing with Arab-language news channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. In addition to Arab news channels, the Prince's project will have to contend with popular international news channels like Rusiya Al-Youm and BBC Arabic.

The news channel will be launched in partnership with Fox, a significant part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Both Murdoch and Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal have holdings in their companies. Prince Al-Waleed has a 7 percent stake in Murdoch's News Corp, while News Corp recently paid 70 million dollars for a 9.09 per cent stake in the Rotana Media Group. Previously, Rotana and Fox International channels signed a four-year agreement with the Walt Disney Company in December 2009, bringing Disney content to the region.

In another article in The National, Ben Flanagan reports that News Corp did not confirm the extent of Fox's involvement in the news channel. However, Prince Al-Waleed maintained that the news channel would follow the “business model” of Murdoch's Fox News and Sky News channels.

Flanagan observes that “unanswered questions about the ownership and political sway of the new channel will also have a bearing on its commercial success.” He adds that an association with the US Fox News Channel, which has the reputation of a right-wing bias, “would be unlikely to prove popular in [the Middle East] region.”

Some Arab media figures are concerned about the news channel's editorial stance. “I'm a little surprised that [the association is with] Fox … what will be the level of editorial interference? That would be my primary concern,” questioned Tariq Qureishy, a Dubai-based independent media consultant.

However, Steven Hall, chief executive of CNBC Arabiya, welcomes the addition of Arabic-language news channels. “The major players have been in the business for some time and have established a connection with their audiences, but a plurality and diversity of voices is a healthy thing and should be encouraged,” he maintained.

Another controversial aspect of Prince Al-Waleed Bin-Talal's announcement was the person he chose to appoint as chief of the news channel, Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, former editor-in-chief of Saudi Arabia's Al-Watan, was forced to resign after a conflict with the newspaper.

Saudi poet Ibrahim al-Almaee wrote an article questioning aspects of Salafism, the branch of Islam dictating Saudi Arabia's governance. Although the article was published while Khashoggi was abroad, the scandal, coupled with the editor's previous clashes with the authorities, led to his resignation. Although the former editor did not agree with the article about Islam, he had previously questioned the government's stance on issues like women's rights and the religious police.

Despite some questions surrounding the news channel's political and ideological leanings, Al-Waleed remained confident that the news channel will have a niche in the Arab world. However, he did not announce when the network would begin broadcasting.