Fox News has spent years ridiculing France for sins real and imagined. Now the mayor of Paris is punching back with plans to sue the network after its coverage “insulted” her city in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Some Worldcasting readers are said to take issue with our most recent piece contending that the Fox News Channel is a key player in U.S. public diplomacy. A great misperception is that FNC is solely a domestic U.S. cable news service, with minimal foreign distribution. But Fox News Channel is not only international in scope, it is in fact broadcast in 88 countries worldwide.

The Fox News Channel, buoyed by its new huge audience ratings and profits, is expanding its influence as a credible source for news and articulator of U.S. public diplomacy, through huge viewership on its coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war.