Amid concerns that Koch Industries could buy several major U.S. newspapers from Tribune Company, industrial billionaire David Koch was forced to step down as trustee of WNET, New York City’s largest public TV station, after the New Yorker revealed how WNET gave Koch inappropriate influence over its programming. Mr. Koch was floating a seven-figure donation over WNET’s leadership as the station aired a movie that portrayed him as a particularly greedy Manhattan resident.
Sure enough, WNET didn’t wind up receiving David Koch’s hefty donation.
Click to read New Yorker’s article on David Koch’s influence over WNET. Image: The New Yorker.
Last Thursday, David Koch submitted his resignation at a WNET Board of Trustees meeting, and Brad Johnson at Forecast the Facts* reports that Koch’s name was scrubbed from WNET’s website several days prior to the resignation. Koch Industries’ public relations website, KochFacts, released a preemptive response to the New Yorker article (which it has now urgently elaborated on), attempting to stifle New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer and the details of her newest piece. David Koch’s resignation as a WNET Trustee, coupled with telling quotes from WNET president Neal Shapiro and other sources, makes it clear that Koch had too much influence at the decreasingly-public TV station in New York.
The article is a fascinating culmination of two portions of the ongoing legacy of the Koch brothers: their desire to influence media, which is playing out with their company’s bid for the Tribune Company’s eight national daily newspapers, and their attempts to intimidate journalists and silence reporting they consider unfavorable.
Jane Mayer’s epic 2010 profile of the secretive billionaire brothers has left Charles and David Koch firmly positioned in the center stage of politics, and they have cursed her since. In repeated and increasingly desperate attempts to discredit Mayer and ease the impact of her reporting on Koch Industries’ terrible reputation, the companypostedher face on the Koch “Facts” website and wrote letters urging the American Society of Magazine Editors to stop considering Mayer’s 2010 article for an award.
The Koch brothers’ attacks on Ms. Mayer provide more examples of how they use their connections to manipulate media (including in Mayer’s new article, which caught Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia in a complete lie).
Following her 2010 expose, Koch Industries was caught trying to fabricate a scandal to take Mayer down. Using the Daily Caller, founded by Koch’s billionaire political ally Foster Friess and run by Tucker Carlson, a senior fellow at the Koch-founded, Koch-funded and Koch-governed Cato Institute, the Kochs tried to get a story placed into the New York Post accusing Mayer of plagiarism. The Post dismissed the idea–and that’s saying something, given the lack of integrity at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, not to mention FOX News, the collapsed News of the World and other outlets the media mogul owns. (NOTE: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has also expressed interest in Tribune Company’s L.A. Times.)
Click to sign Greenpeace’s 32,000-strong petition to Tribune Company: Don’t Sell Your Newspapers to Koch Industries!
Greenpeace remains concerned about how the Kochs have already used their media ties to promote denial of climate change science. Beyond the pressing issue of global warming, the implications of media manipulation from Koch Industries spans across issues from education to public employee unions to immigration to healthcare reform.
This is why Greenpeace is working with a growing coalition of unions, media transparency advocates, environmentalists, good government watchdogs and other organizations to oppose Tribune Company’s potential sale of its newspapers to Koch Industries, as well as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and any other politically-charged business interest whose history indicates they would manipulate reporting at Tribune’s papers for political and financial gain.
*Disclosure: Forecast the Facts is one of the groups Greenpeace is working with to oppose Koch Industries’ bid for Tribune Company.
