But several other news organizations have irresponsibly repeated the report in a dishonest and manifestly false way.  A British newspaper called the Daily Mail, for instance, ran a headline saying that we were “telling [employees] to vote for Romney.”  Not true.  In fact, the letter makes it perfectly clear that any decision about which candidates to support belongs solely to our employees, based on the factors that are most important to them. Reporter Meghan Keneally’s story was so sloppy she wrote that Georgia-Pacific was based in Washington State while is it actually headquartered in Georgia.

Then, on October 15th, ABC commentator Whoopi Goldberg said on the air that Koch had indicated layoffs would occur if President Obama was re-elected. Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters easily exposed how she had deceived her own viewers and called on ABC to issue an immediate retraction.

The Atlantic Magazine’s Adam Clark Estes wrote that we had “sent employees a list of people to vote for” and that  we were “pushing our political will onto employees.”  Wrong again — the mailing indicated the candidates that Koch was supporting and said plainly that employees should vote for whomever they prefer.  (This is the same Estes who wrote earlier that same day, “even though it’s a bummer that the folks reading the Bible in North Korea think the government will kill them if they find out, progress takes patience.”) So too, apparently, does fact checking.

It should be noted that over the course of decades we have publicly commented on the negative consequences of unbridled government spending and have opposed such practices regardless of the political party in power. That’s why, as we cite in the letter, we do not support candidates based on party affiliation. Some commenters have claimed that employees will “suffer the consequences” of their vote.  But again, this refers to economic and societal problems that will be the consequence of continued unchecked spending.  Discussing these issues with employees isn’t coercion or intimidation – it is treating employees with the respect they deserve as self-determining citizens of the United States.

In an effort to set the record straight, Koch’s General Counsel, Mark Holden, agreed to appear on the Martin Bashir show on May 17, 2012 to hold Ms. Finney and MSNBC accountable for having deceived viewers. Prior to the broadcast, MSNBC President, Phil Griffin, acknowledged that the network and Ms. Finney had erred, agreeing that what Ms. Finney said was “wrong.”  He also said he hoped that MSNBC’s coverage of Koch can move beyond “bomb-throwing.”

Speculating about the sources of funding for the group, National Organization for Marriage, writer Erin Gloria Ryan wrongly and maliciously states, “Who are these anonymous bigots?  My money’s on the Koch brothers.”

The reality is that neither Charles Koch nor David Koch are bigots.  Neither has funded any opposition to same-sex marriage issues, nor have they voiced any opposition to same-sex marriage. The Kochs and Koch Industries are not involved with National Organization for Marriage in any way and there is no factual basis for any such assertion.

Obviously, Ms. Ryan never called us before printing her slur against the Kochs.  In this case, it seems that unfounded, irresponsible smears are more convenient than honesty and fact checking.

[The article seems to have been removed from the Providence Journal website but a Google Cache screenshot is available here]

Providence Journal: “Editorial: The Kochotpus”

First, the headline.  It is plain invective and it is also misspelled.  The term “Kochtopus” is often used by far-left activists in an attempt to, literally, demonize our company.  But for readers it actually serves a useful function — as a signal that what follows is heavy on ad hominem and light on rational thinking.

PJ: “Koch Industries, the huge closely held conglomerate run by Charles and David Koch and founded by their oil-man father, and John Birch Society member, Fred Koch, has a famous reputation for playing tough in business and in politics.”

Phrases like “closely held” and “secrecy-obsessed” are also boilerplate disparagements that you’ll often see in agenda-driven journalism about our company — also seen in the headline of the Bloomberg article that this editorial relies on.   The reality is that we are a privately held company — rather than a public company that sells shares on the open market.  There are countless other such companies in America including, yes, Bloomberg itself.

Private companies are not obliged to provide detailed financial information to the public, but to describe that utterly normal and commonplace practice as somehow nefarious is another kind of smear tactic often seen in advocacy journalism.  It’s worth noting that we addressed every issue Bloomberg presented us while, for their part, Bloomberg has refused to answer even basic questions we had about their reporting methods.

PJ: “In the latter they fund directly and indirectly numerous anti-regulatory and anti-tax candidates and have become big players in the Tea Party movement in its move to slash federal taxes and reduce regulation. Tax cuts and deregulation have worked so well for America in the past decade …”

The last ten years have actually seen an unprecedented rise in government expenditures and regulation both of which, yes, we have long advocated against.  If the Providence Journal wants to argue that those factors are somehow helpful, then let’s hear it.  But sarcasm alone just isn’t persuasive. Our views on pro-growth, pro-free markets, and pro-entrepreneurial ideas can also easily be found on our website if readers or the Providence Journal want to learn more.

PJ: “You get a pretty good idea of why the Kochs don’t like regulation by reading a Bloomberg Markets Magazine investigative piece on the brothers headlined ‘Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer with Secret Iran Sales.””

This is the same article that was thoroughly discredited by other news outlets including the Washington Post, Atlantic, Power Line, RedState, National Review, the Examiner, Weekly Standard, and even in Bloomberg itself.  That’s right, even the reporters’ own colleagues at Bloomberg BusinessWeek felt compelled to set the record straight on the shoddy reporting.

PJ: “In it, reporters Asjlyn Loder and David Evans detail how Koch Industries has been involved in “improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East . . . has sold millions of dollars in petrochemical equipment to Iran,” going around a U.S. trade ban, “rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada” and stolen crude oil from federal land.”

Notice how the Providence Journal omits any mention of our position on the matters involved or how we have tried to hold Bloomberg accountable for its irresponsible and dishonest reporting.  A thorough dissection of that article as well as the questions we posed to Bloomberg editors (thus far unanswered) can be found at KochFacts.com.

PJ: The secrecy-obsessed (Again!  Have we mentioned that the editorial is unsigned?  By the same logic, that must mean the writer is a secretive recluse.) Koch Industries is the sort of, er, gung-ho enterprise for which business regulation was invented at the turn of the 20th Century with the help of the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and the “Muckrakers.”

At this point the criticism — “Koch…is sort of, er, gung ho” — becomes almost incoherent.  (Teddy Roosevelt invented regulations?)  The fact is that Koch and its businesses are subject to thousands of regulations in its day-to-day businesses.  While not perfect, we are painstaking in our compliance and we have been praised by various agencies for that diligence.  EPA recently cited Koch, for instance, as “a model for other companies seeking to transition to federally-approved permits.”  In 2009, EPA also wrote that by working with them, we “achieve(d) significant environmental benefits, and we encourage other new owners to do the same.”

PJ: “Koch, et al., play an increasingly important role in our money-soaked political culture –– even more so with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opened up unlimited contributions to political campaigns by business and unions.In a seamless web of philanthropy and PR, the Kochs also give money to such worthy nonprofits as public broadcasting and some other highly visible and admirable nonprofits, making many people from those groups highly hesitant to criticize them.”

Huh?  If the Providence Journal thinks that public broadcasting has been hesitant to criticize us, then they aren’t paying much attention.  Here, in just one example among many, we expose NPR for laughing at how our owners received death threats.

PJ: “David and Charles Koch are each worth an estimated $20 billion, but they say that taxes and regulation sap companies like theirs. But then, you never know when you might need that extra $10 billion.”

The overwhelming majority of Charles and David Koch’s net worth is invested in manufacturing facilities and business operations that employ more than 50,000 Americans.  That’s what private enterprise is all about and, yes, when the government takes resources from those initiatives, then economic slowdown is the direct result.

PJ: “David Uhlmann, former chief of the environmental-crimes unit at the U.S. Justice Department and now a law professor at the University of Michigan, mused to Bloomberg about Koch Industries: ‘How much lawless behavior are we going to tolerate from any one company?’”

Again, a thorough rebuttal of Bloomberg’s widely-discredited report and the Corpus Christi case that Mr. Uhlmann oversaw can be found at KochFacts.com.  As one critique of the Bloomberg piece noted, “It is somewhat amusing that Bloomberg went to David Uhlmann, who led the failed prosecution, for comment on the case.  This is akin to going to Napoleon for the inside story on the Battle of Waterloo.”   Here’s more on the real story about the abuses that occurred in the Corpus case and Mr. Uhlmann’s role.

PJ: “A lot more apparently. After all, Koch has spent $50 million in lobbying in Washington since 2006; it’s just getting cooking.”

So, supporting a particular candidate or interacting with Congress and federal agencies is akin to “lawless behavior” in the eyes of the Providence Journal?  That revelation is going to come as quite a shock to the many elected officials that the paper itself has endorsed.  On that position, and many others apparently, we would urge them to do some serious reflection.  (And for the sake of comparison, GE spent about $136 million over that same period.)

“So the supposedly explosive charge that Bloomberg chose to headline–Koch “flout[ed] the law” and acted “in defiance of a U.S. trade ban” is simply false. Koch did no such thing; what is more, unlike hundreds of other American companies, it has voluntarily gone beyond the requirements of the law and has, in more recent years, prohibited all subsidiaries from doing business in Iran.”

Bloomberg’s Exposé Reveals What Exactly?
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/bloombergs-expos-on-koch-industries-reveals-what-exactly/246154/

“Some reporters’ bias cuts so deep that it causes them to produce an article that squints too hard to see smoke when there is no fire. Unfortunately, such an article was produced this week by Bloomberg Markets Magazine on Koch Industries.”

Bloomberg Whiffs, Part 2
Powerline
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/10/bloomberg-whiffs-part-2.php

“The Koch subsidiary’s termination of Mrs. Egorova-Farines was held to be amply justified. But Bloomberg didn’t want you to know any of that. Bloomberg, motivated by political animus against the Koch brothers, wanted you to get the impression that she was a heroic whistle-blower who was fired for lifting the lid on another employee’s improper payments. This is the sort of dishonesty that pervades the entire hit piece.”

The Bloomberg Hit Piece on the Koch Brothers
National Review

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/278968/ibloombergi-hit-piece-koch-brothers-daniel-foster

“Koch Industries is, of course, a privately held company and has no obligation to publicly disclose any details at all. In fact, it’s not so different in this respect from the privately owned Bloomberg, L.P. Want to know what Bloomberg’s revenues and profits were last year? You’ll have to rely on leaked company memos and educated guesses from analysts, because, you know, Bloomberg is obsessed with secrecy.”

Dear Ms. Cohlmia-

I apologize for the delay in responding to your email. As I mentioned, the executive producer of the Rachel Maddow Show was recently on vacation. I have subsequently reviewed the issue and have had discussions with him and some of my other colleagues. We concur Governor Dean went too far during an interview that became somewhat overheated. We do not intentionally invite guests on our programming who will speak in rhetoric or become emotional on air, but that can, unfortunately, happen.

I have spoken to the producers of our MSNBC programming and have alerted them to your specific concerns.

Again, thank you for your patience.

Sincerely-
Marian Porges
Senior Producer, News Standards and Practices NBC News

Ms. Marian Porges
Senior Producer
News Standards and Practices
NBC News

June 30, 2011

Dear Ms. Porges,

In your most recent correspondence, you invited me to contact you with any further concerns about MSNBC’s coverage of Koch Industries. I appreciate that offer and to that end I bring to your attention an intellectually dishonest appearance by Howard Dean on the Rachel Maddow Show on June 28.

Within a span of 10 seconds, Governor Dean implied FreedomWorks is affiliated with Koch (it is not); that Charles and David Koch “don’t believe in democracy” (that is not accurate); implied another affiliation with “the New Hampshire speaker” (there is none); said that we attack unions (we do not; in fact, many of our employees are unionized, and their leadership has praised us); and that a get-out-the-vote effort that we are not involved in will somehow suppress voters. Governor Dean went on in this tone and tenor for the balance of his appearance saying, “…the Koch Brothers are a danger to America,” and made an appalling and fictitious claim that we oppose desegregation.

Governor Dean is infamous for making impulsive, disparaging, and sometimes self-destructive remarks, and I understand that such imprudence makes for entertaining television in some circles. But is there no responsibility to challenge or even, after the fact, attempt to verify such outlandish, partisan disparagements when they occur? A little hyperbole may be one thing, but are guests permitted to make any outrageous and baseless accusation, no matter how defaming or unhinged from easily verifiable facts?

If what Mark Halperin said about the President on Morning Joe today is “completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” then what standard is MSNBC applying to false and derogatory remarks about individual citizens and private companies such as Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries?

I would be grateful if you could review the segment and provide me some guidance on how the standards at NBC News apply here and, especially, how they might be applied more diligently when Koch is discussed on-air in the future.

Sincerely,

Melissa Cohlmia
Director, Corporate Communication
Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC