An anti-Koch ad from the Courage Campaign
In the New York Times, Amy Chozick wrote an interesting piece (4/21/13) about the libertarian-right Koch brothers’ interest in buying the Tribune Company. Why would profit-seeking businessmen want to buy money-losing newspapers? Chozick reports that “the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas.”
Buying a media company in order to advance your politics might strike some as worrisome, but Chozick has an anonymous source who attended a Koch seminar suggesting that the fears about editorial meddling might be overblown:
One person who attended the Aspen seminar who spoke on the condition of anonymity described the strategy as follows: “It was never ‘How do we destroy the other side?'”
“It was ‘How do we make sure our voice is being heard?'”
A Koch spokesperson spoke about their “respect the independence of the journalistic institutions” under discussion, and another anonymous source weighed in:
One person who has previously advised Koch Industries said the Tribune Company papers were considered an investment opportunity, and were viewed as entirely separate from Charles and David Kochs’ lifelong mission to shrink the size of government.
So it’s not so much about promoting a particular ideology at the papers, and certainly not about “destroying” the other side. But how have the Kochs handled media outlets that covered them critically? Andy Kroll of Mother Jones (4/22/13) reports:
One journalist with whom Koch Industries has clashed is David Sassoon, the publisher of InsideClimate News, a nonprofit website devoted to environmental journalism. InsideClimate News recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the dodgy oversight of U.S. oil pipelines. After InsideClimate News reported on Koch Industries’ ties to the Canadian tar sands business, Koch Industries blasted the site’s “agenda-driven, dishonest journalism” and pressured Reuters, the global news service, to reconsider its decision to publish InsideClimate News‘ stories. (Reuters stood by Sassoon and his small team of reporters.)
I asked Sassoon, fresh off his Pulitzer win, what he thought of the news of Koch Industries potentially bidding on the Tribune Company newspapers. “We reported on the Kochs’ involvement in the tar sands, and they played hardball to try to shut us up,” he wrote in an email. “They pressured Reuters to drop us as a content partner, and ran ads on Google and Facebook calling me liar…. What we’ve experienced of them firsthand makes me think they would not be trustworthy stewards of the honorable traditions of journalism.”
Now, maybe that’s not as exciting as a well-placed anonymous source, but it’s a far more revealing glimpse at what the Kochs really think about the “other side.”
The Kochs have a team of specialists headed by spokesperson Missy Cohlmia, who monitor press coverage, issue regular, disingenuous press releases, edit Wikipedia pages, sponsor junk scientists to oppose studies of global warming, and contribute heavily to about a hundred “think tanks” (actually propaganda factories) that spread their message.
Pretending to be libertarians, they embody fascism instead.
They have elected scores of theocratic and racist state and national politicians. They have been throwing their support behind the expansionist for-profit prison industry for at least 17 years, using their stooges at non-profits such as the Reason Institute to produce ridiculous, non-peer reviewed “studies,” that purport to confirm their biases. They also use academic institutions to do their public relations spin, most notably the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to which they’ve contributed over $10 million and which regularly produces bunk “research” to push the brothers’ political views.
Through their stooge group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, they have been in the forefront of the efforts to deny the vote to Democrats, minorities, students, union members and any other groups that collectively support financial and environmental legislation and common sense. They have worked to destroy Social Security and state and municipal retirement systems.
If these scumbags buy the Tribune Company, they’ll make Murdoch look like a piker and will bring back the yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst.
On the record and quoted by name, a disaster. Anonymous, no problem. Guess which assessment I trust more?
The Koch brothers simply cannot be in control of all this media, just as it is breaking out of climate denial.
The time for inaction is rapidly running out. CO2 is at nearly 400 ppm. How can it not be totally obvious that we must subordinate economic issues to planetary welfare?
Indeed it is quite possible to serve both the economy and the ecology at the same time, by transitioning subsides, investments and jobs over to clean energy.
A workable plan to transition to clean energy is proposed at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-climate-bomb-failures-to-confront-the-unspeakable-and-the-way-ahead/5329875
@Abettervision
Both the Koch’s and Murdochs are despicable criminal corporations who have no business in the “news business.” We already know what Murdoch has done to this country with his FAUX News, Washington Post, and Wall St. Journal. God help America if the Koch’s join him in this endeavor by brainwashing the whole country.
Wow! Being invited to a Koch seminar, or being a Koch adviser, and praising Koch respect for media independence is really going out on a limb. You can readily understand the risks these sources would run if they weren’t Anonymous.
Big Brothers of the lassaize faire set. As in free for all most powerful and ruthless corps rule and crush all others. That is what the Koch’s and others like them want. Total domination by the eugenically “superior.” Taht is where the Ayn Randian version of her “superman” cold, grandious, without empathy, believes might makes right and such. What any dictator of any political stripe would understand and want.
How do we make sure our voice is being heard? By destroying the other side. Duh!
I am in despair of the fact that those criminal, lying Koch brothers and their vicious fellow billionaires might eventually own 7 major newspapers in large important cities. Most people just glance at headlines, some don’t even read papers. Many get news from the short, news shows in the evening on tv. Therefore, they know nothing of the truth. There must be some way to stop this takeover of the news media or our country will just never recover what it once was – a caring, democratic, fair place with the balance of power invisioned in our Constitution. I despise what the Koch’s (cokes Like cocaine) have done. And I am angry at NY Lincoln Center for accepting their money ande renaming the NY State Theater after them. I will never step inside that place!
Money in politics has allowed for these radicals to become ‘clear and present danger’ to representative government as much as the environment itself. The Kochs are anti-patriotic extremists, that apparently think their massive wealth allows them dominion over you and me, to run the globe as they deem necessary. I used to think of Hitler, Pol Pot, or Stalin when I heard the word evil but: the extremism of the Koch’s is something that can truly put the entire planet in peril. These are dangerous, seditionist, corporate terrorists.
Tell me pray tell…. who was it Al Gore sold his little media empire to?Al Jazeera?I only hope that the brothers grim(to liberals)make this concern a smashing success.That smashes liberal success- by telling the truth!!!!