Media Experts Blast New York Times Over Glowing Profile Of Koch Brothers

[YoungDemCA]

The New York Times published a fawning front-page profile of the Koch brothers last Friday. The article never mentions their efforts to secure unfettered fossil fuel consumption, which would destroy humanity’s livable climate. It was quickly criticized by leading experts as “poor journalism” and “gullible.”

The Times wants you to believe that the Kochs are “very private” but “brave,” that they are “sensitive to criticism,” and that “Charles [Koch] obviously is a classical liberal, who believes in the Bill of Rights.” What’s next for the Times — rehabbing the misunderstood Bernie Madoff?

This 1300-word piece never once mentions the Koch’s insidious efforts to fund climate science denial, block all climate action, and roll back clean energy standards at a state level. The Koch’s belief in the First Amendment extends to being the leading funder in the world of efforts to spread disinformation, smear and harass climate scientists, and generally destroy any honest national discussion of how to spare Americans and billions of people worldwide needless misery for centuries to come. Any classical liberal would do the same.

On Sunday, one of the Koch Brothers’ political groups, Freedom Partners, hosted a political forum for wealthy conservative donors. Charles Koch compared his network’s influence over U.S. elections to past “freedom movements.”

Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the Times has called “an expert on environmental communications,” told Climate Progress that “the NYT seems to be acting as if it was a PR agency for the Kochs. It is dismaying to see such poor journalism.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/04/3686673/new-york-times-gullible-puff-piece-on-kochs/

Spread this far and wide. The Kochs and their allies are a cancer.

[spanone]

1. our nation has lost the nytimes. might as well sell it to murdoch.

[bvf]

13. We lost it the day it first ran Judith Miller's byline. n/t

[KittyWampus]

28. Or when they reported Bush would have won the recount:

http://www.alternet.org/story/86585/new_york_times_perpetuates_the_myth_that_george_bush_won_the_2000_election

"In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by the New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied." Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May 23, 2008, in a review of the HBO television movie, "Recount"

That's not true.

The New York Times did not do its own recount. It did participate in a consortium. Here's what the consortium actually said: "If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin." Ford Fessenden and John M. Broder, New York Times, Nov. 12, 2001.

[bvf]

29. Thanks for the reminder, Kitty.

That particular stain slipped my mind.

In any event, I've long since rejected any citation from the NYT as anything but more shit from the machine.

[cascadiance]

33. And when they gave Bush the election in 2004 when holding back on an article then...

... about domestic spying that people should have heard about. Who was behind that move and why they held back information that Americans should have heard about more before voting in 2004 (which might have had us have a president Kerry instead of Bush being reelected) should be known more.

http://www.rt.com/usa/158780-nyt-justice-withheld-nsa-info/

Celebrating the Koch brother who built their empire on the likes of Joseph Stalin? WHY!

[stillwaiting]

20. It's happened to almost all (or all) of our media.

They fell like dominoes one after the other.

It's bought and owned now, and they work for the billionaire class, and they work AGAINST the interests of average Americans.

[Enthusiast]

21. NPR and the rest too.

[2banon]

24. Yep, and don't forget PBS NOVA, specifically sponsors a "science program",

really quite orwellian.

[hedda_foil]

30. Nova, of course, is funded by David Koch's foundation.

It no longer a science program.

[2banon]

34. I know. Nova used to be very credible.. an enjoyable and informative experience

their format and approach radically changed about 15 years ago. I don't know how many years David Koch has been funding the show. It wasn't until 2011/2012 when I became familiar with the name Koch Brothers vis a vis Wisconsin. At which point, I began to understand WHY NOVA changed to a dumbed down infotainment puff piece.

[HFRN]

2. David Koch spends very strategically in NY

support enough of the 'right' causes, and you buy the people attached to them

[HFRN]

6. 'Silicon Valley' is a parallel example, $upporting many liberal social issue causes

buy$ them immunity, from press, politicians and party members on their super anti-worker issues like H-1b guest worker visas and outsourcing

[closeupready]

12. Yup. And behaving, as an industry, as a cartel, collaborating

in having unwritten non-poach agreements (which, need it be said, keeps middle-class wages DOWN).

[Iliyah]

3. Didn't the Koch Brothers just wine and dine journalists recently.

Journalists have been bought, there is no such thing as Journalism any more. "Some" social media outlets and internet sites do still try and report the facts.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Who owns and controls the NYT and the editorial board that would allow such a propaganda piece to be printed?

[AllFieldsRequired]

5. Yeah, that is the end of the NYT. It is only a matter of time, we fight the good fight

but these guys have all the money and power.

And they desperately hate working people and minorities and will spend every last fucking dime if necessary destroying both.

[Fred Sanders]

9. On the bright side, we all now know that when push comes to shove who - and what - the NYT will push first.

[AllFieldsRequired]

10. I mean the god damn KOCH BROS...jesus! Think about what that means!

[hifiguy]

7. Ugh.

[KansDem]

8. "I want my fair share –and that's ALL OF IT."

No mention of this incident?

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars' worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home? Koch answered:

"I want my fair share – and that's all of it."

Now "all of it" includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world's filthiest oil, crude made from tar sands, down from Canada to his family's refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Greg Palast

Looks like NICHOLAS CONFESSORE will be getting the "Judith Miller Award for Excellence in Journalism."

[AllFieldsRequired]

11. Do you know a business person who is a repub or tea partier? Talk to them long enough and

in EVERY case you will hear this kind of stuff.

[HFRN]

14. Koch - keep 'ol Charlie Happy

from the book 'Sons of Wichita', a very interesting read

[2banon]

35. Well this explains a lot: "The DLC was created with $100,000 of Koch money"

Bill Clinton's Administration, though nominally Democratic, went easy on Koch interests. Vice-President Al Gore especially, head of the Reinventing Government Commission, attacked regulations with more verve than Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher. Gore's anti-regulation guidebook was the "Mandate for Change" drafted by the Democratic Leadership Council. It was the DLC that had launched the career of the previously unknown Bill Clinton, its first chair, and Al Gore's career as well. The DLC was created with $100,000 of Koch money.

The Kochs use of fronts for corporate donations to politicians was plain illegal—until, in 2010, the US Supreme Court decriminalized this game in the Citizens United case. The lawyer for Citizens United is Ted Olson, whose day job is representing Koch Industries.

Note: The Kochs are bi-partisan employers. They also retain lawyer Bob Strauss, former Chairman of the Democratic Party.

That's the attorney Ted Olson who fought all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of the LGBT community against Calif. Prop 8's anti-gay marriage ban. (just underscoring a point I repeatedly attempt to make wrt Identity Politics voting practices)

But this one really caught my attention:

The Themis Machine

As if their billions, their think tanks, lawyers, fronts and political action fund were not enough to scare the bejeezus out of politicians, there is Themis. Themis, created by the Kochs, is the nation's most sophisticated, detailed database on every American living, surpassing the most demonic dreams of the FBI.

Themis, for example, knows the last time you, Jack, downloaded porn.

Given their power and their Themis, is it really possible for a few greenies and some fact-afflicted scientists to stop the Kochs from jamming their pipeline right up our aquifers?

Absolutely. Indeed, that's the only way it will be stopped, because the Kochs have already put the politicians in their pipe and smoked them.

I did NOT know the Koch Brothers created a database collecting information on every single American citizen superior and more sophisticated than even the FBI's.

[tazkcmo]

15. Can we now stop linking to this rag?

I don't trust anything they print anymore.

[Yavin4]

16. That story was bought and paid for by the Kochs

Most Americans don't realize how often "news articles" is planted by PR firms.

[sulphurdunn]

17. People should leave the Kochs alone.

They are true humanitarians who have sacrificed their lives to the unbridled pursuit of wealth and power for the betterment of mankind.

[Scurrilous]

18. Might as well change their name to The New York Knee Pads.

$$ $$

[Unknown Beatle]

19. The Gray Lady

is now the Yellow Lady.

[Alkene]

22. Koch Brothers: private and sensitive,

like a persistent abscess on the inner thigh.

[think]

23. Mika & Joe also were giving the glowing treatment to the Koch bros awhile back

[Angry Dragon]

37. is that the Joe that killed his intern??

[Skittles]

25. NYT lost credibility when they pimped for the war in Iraq

f*** them

[Triana]

26. NPR does the same - they had a program on about the Koch convention in Cali.

All fawning, few facts.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

27. And yet the RW still call the NYTimes a "liberal" paper.

Koch Bros and their cronies have funded this move of the center to the far right. Money well spent for them.

[freshwest]

31. So, they love the Kochs and hate our candidates. Just a coincidence. n/t

[SunSeeker]

32. The Gray Lady continues her descent into the depths of hell. nt

[Angry Dragon]

36. the Kock brothers are the new John Birch Society

[bvar22]

38. The "Grand Old Lady" has been reduced to...

...turning tricks while standing up in unlit doorways.