Los Angeles Times LAT
PRIMARY LEGACY 10 24 JRNL FAUIL TRUMP ENDORSE
see press suppression exxon knew CJR
SEE JRNL FAIL 4 SEE BILLIONAires
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3X JOB WHAMMY, DOGE CUTS, SHUTDN, TECH CUTS AI 11 25
AN 11 25
'Really hurting': US job cuts surge to decades-high level amid Trump recession fears
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The Wilderness Society
New map illustrates public lands reach of Trump's "energy dominance ...
Feb 24, 2025A new map and data from The Wilderness Society illustrate the potential reach of executive and secretarial orders issued to fulfill President Trump's fossil fuel-centric "energy dominance" vision.
Los Angeles Times
How the Trump administration sold out public lands in 2025
Dec 25, 2025Almost a year into the Trump presidency, it's clear his administration has sided with the corporations seeking to mine and drill our nation's public lands.
westernpriorities.org
New map illustrates Trump's destructive "energy dominance" plan for ...
Feb 25, 2025The Wilderness Society produced a new map to illustrate the potential reach of executive and secretarial orders signed by President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in pursuit of their shared fossil fuel-centric "energy dominance" vision for America's public lands. "As we speak, the Trump administration's Department of the Interior is deciding which of our treasured ...
Center for American Progress
A Historically Bad Year for Public Lands Under President Trump
Dec 11, 2025The Trump administration's attacks on parks and public lands broke records in 2025, but they also met intense public opposition.
New York Times
Why Is Trump Dumping East Wing Rubble in a Public Park?
2 days agoThe East Potomac Golf Links is a municipal course that has been a fixture in Washington for decades. President Trump is turning it into something else.
UPI
https://www.upi.com › Top_News › US › 2025 › 10 › 15 › public-land-alaska-texas-oil-drilling-mining › 8411760534258
Most public land already open to energy production; Trump wants ... - UPI
Oct 15, 2025The Trump administration has vowed to open up public land to usher in an age of American energy dominance but in the West there is little frontier left.
Western Environmental Law Center
https://westernlaw.org › trump-escalates-war-on-nature-with-attack-on-public-lands-rule
Trump escalates war on nature with attack on Public Lands Rule
Sep 10, 2025The rescinding of this common-sense rule shows that the Trump Administration is dead set on prioritizing energy development and extractive industries over all other uses on our public lands, rather than seeking to uphold balanced land-management practices." - Alec Underwood, conservation director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council Contact:
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2025 › 09 › 30 › climate › coal-power-trump-public-lands
Trump is handing out public land and millions of dollars to ... - CNN
Sep 30, 2025While the Trump administration wages war against clean energy, it is now vowing to lease millions of acres of public lands at a discount and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up the ...
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AN 11 25
It’s not just President Donald Trump’s claims about Thanksgiving prices at Walmart that are under scrutiny. According to a new analysis from the*Los Angeles Times*, “faulty arithmetic” plagues the administrations claims about everything from inflation to mortgages to weight loss.
"On inflation, healthcare, mortgages and much more, the Trump administration offers bogus math," according to the Times.
In a new column from Tuesday, business columnist Michael Hiltzik cited numerous examples of “suspect” math and figures claimed by the Trump administration “deliberately aimed at portraying some condition as better than the real numbers show.” The first example was Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz’s recent claim at a White House event this month that cuts to prescription costs for weight loss drugs would lead to an estimated 135 billion collective pounds lost in the U.S., a figure that would require every single person in the country to lose over 340 pounds.
The faulty math doesn’t stop there, and some of it hits much closer to home amid the current concerns around affordability. Trump recently touted the introduction of 50-year mortgages as a solution to the difficulty Americans have with buying homes. While such a policy would lower monthly payments compared to 30-year plans, many have pointed out the it would also drastically increase the amount of interest paid over the life of the mortgage.
Using a $400,000 home as an example, Hiltzik calculated that a 50-year plan would cost buyers $650,000 in total interest, up from $461,000 on a 30-year option. For all that, buyers would only save a little less than $300 on their monthly payments.
Back on the subject of prescriptions, Hiltzik also highlighted Trump’s tendency to exaggerate the amount that he’s allegedly cut their costs to impossible degrees. In August, the president claimed that he had helped cut drug prices by “by 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400, 1,500 percent,” even though cutting prices by any percentage over 100 percent would result in the company having to pay consumers to use their product.
All this wonky math comes amid surging concerns about affordability for everyday Americans. It’s an issue credited with helping get Trump reelected in 2024, but which also led to huge wins for Democrats in the 2025 elections.
In attempting to address the issue this month, Trump tried to claim that costs were dropping during his presidency, citing only a 25 percent drop in the cost of Walmart’s Thanksgiving basket. While the selection of items is cheaper this year compared to 2024, many have been quick to point out that this is because it contains 15 products, down from 22 last year, many of which were also swapped for Walmart-brand alternatives.
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AN 11 25 LAT
Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Michael Hiltzik writes that President Donald Trump has reversed the trend of President Joe Biden's booming economy and it's only getting worse.
Tuesday night's election boon for The Democrats, Hiltzik writes, only proves his point.
"The lesson delivered by the results is that Americans sense that the economy is reeling," he writes. "Most economic indicators are flashing yellow or even red."
Polls also point to Trump's abysmal economy, he notes, adding, "the indicators of economic pain are all around us. Every one of the leading opinion polls taken since Oct. 1 has shown Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy to be deeply underwater, with the average calculated by RealClearPolling at negative 13.4 points."
Inflation, he writes, is "unmistakably on the rise again," as the consumer price index rose to 3.0 percent in September from a low of 2.3 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
An increase in food prices — up from 2.1 percent in May to 3.1 percent — "has potent political implications, since food is an expense experienced by consumers on almost a daily basis," Hiltzik says.
Job growth has also ebbed, he says, with monthly job creation "fading since Trump took office, with the figures turning negative in June, August and September," he writes.
Farm bankruptcies are rising, too. "Prices of such key crops as corn, wheat and soybeans have been falling as Trump’s trade war shrinks foreign demand for American produce," Hiltzik says.
Consumer spending is also down in "a serious slowdown from the 3.7 percent and 4.0 percent growth rates in the third and fourth quarter of last year, before Trump took office, Fitch Ratings calculated in September," he explains.
As the historic government shutdown continues, "headwinds threaten to keep building" against the economy, one which was thriving under Biden, he says.
"It’s proper to note that the economy Trump inherited from Biden was strong and getting stronger," Hilzik says.
”In truth, Biden inherited an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent from Trump’s first term, and bequeathed second-term Trump a rate of 4.1 percent, the lowest rate since the election of George W. Bush. Annual job growth fell to negative 6 percent during Trump’s first term, and Biden brought it up to an average of 1.4 percent."
Under Biden, "real gross domestic product growth per capita had fallen to an annualized rate of negative 1.8 percent under Trump 1.0; Biden brought it up to positive 2.1 percent," he notes.
Trump 2.0 also inherited an excellent employment to population ratio for workers 24 to 54 years old.
"When Biden took over, it was 76.2 percent, rising to to 80.5 percent when he ceded the White House to Trump — the highest handover value since 2000, according to the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute."
Conservatives "viewed Trump’s impending second term with a certain level of trepidation," Hilzik notes, saying some expected “the actual policies [would have been] less severe than suggested by Trump’s blustery campaign platform.”
They were more severe, he writes.
"The strongest headwind against growth is the uncertainty that Trump has imposed on the economy," he says.
About 71 percent of CEOs polled by Yale said that Trump's tariffs"were harming their business, 62 percent said the tariffs weren’t prompting them to invest more domestically and 59 percent said they expected no results from domestic investment as a result of the tariffs."
Despite the White House insisting the economy is strong, Hilzik says "the signs are that the near future, at least, will be economically bleaker than the present," and that "the one unmistakable positive sign in the economic landscape —a stock market reaching record highs — may be less encouraging than it appears on the surface."
Those highs, he says, are gains concentrated "among seven stocks associated with spending on artificial intelligence, and whether they can be sustained is an open question."
Trump's economic future looks bleak, Hilzik says, with no economic development "visible on the horizon that might relieve consumers of the feeling that they’re paying more for necessities and that their very livelihoods are under threat."
Tuesday's election sounded the alarm bells, Hilzik writes, but he's not sure the White House is listening.
"What Tuesday’s election results show is that consumers are voters. A rational administration would take that as a warning siren and reconsider its policies. This administration? Who knows?" he says.
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an 2 25 thom 3
— “Mass Murderer in Waiting”: Reporter accuses LA Times’ billionaire owner of editing his anti-RFK op-ed to support Kennedy. Eric Reinhart wrote an article for the LA Times about Bob Kennedy’s appearance before the Senate, but is now saying that the paper’s editors — presumably at the behest of the paper’s rightwing billionaire owner — rewrote his article and changed the headline to make it seem like he was endorsing Kennedy when in fact it was the opposite.
“I am the author of this OpEd,” Reinhart wrote on X, “which was given a misleading title and from which key lines were cut—lines that made very clear that RFK Jr is dangerously ignorant, has absolutely no business near HHS, and is effectively a mass murderer in waiting.” What’s the old joke about the Golden Rule? “He who has the gold makes the rules,” as I recall. Certainly seems to be the case here, truth be damned…
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MMA
Trump is trying to throttle the free press — and U.S. moguls are going along with it
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 02/04/25
President Donald Trump is wasting no time in carrying out his goal of throttling the free press. Over the first two weeks of Trump’s presidency, his appointees have wielded federal regulatory authority to punish outlets the president dislikes — and American media moguls are responding with submission.
Trump has turned standard conservative attacks on journalists into one of the hallmarks of his political agenda.
He takes as his model Hungary’s autocrat Viktor Orban, who has “effectively dismantled the news media in his country” as “a central pillar of Orban’s broader project to remake his country as an ‘illiberal democracy,’” as New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger noted in an extraordinary warning last year.
During his first term in office, Trump repeatedly tried to leverage state power against his despised “fake news,” and together with his Project 2025 allies has developed a playbook to attack, defund, and delegitimize news outlets in his second.
Major media companies began signaling before Trump took office that they were willing to play ball with his administration in order to preserve their business interests. But since Inauguration Day, as Trump’s appointees have begun showing their intentions, executives at several news outlets have gone into full retreat.
CBS News preps for a Trump settlement
In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump denounced CBS News’ editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris as “the biggest scandal in broadcast history” and declared that CBS should be stripped of its broadcast license. But in addition to invective and threats, Trump also filed a lawsuit against the outlet for producing journalism which displeased him.
The suit, which alleged that CBS airing different portions of Harris’ answer to a question in different venues constituted “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference,” drew derision from First Amendment attorneys, who described its legal theory to CNN as “ridiculous junk” and “a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”
But over the past few weeks, reports have indicated that CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, may be preparing to settle the suit with Trump. Such a settlement would be “an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation,” as The New York Times put it.
But Paramount needs federal approval for its proposed merger with Skydance Media, the production company founded by filmmaker David Ellison, and apparently sees giving the president a payoff as a valid way to smooth the path. Pressure for the settlement is coming from top Paramount shareholder Shari Redstone, the Times reported, who “stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount.”
LA Times’ biotech industry owner goes all-in for RFK Jr.}:
Billionaire doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong once drew plaudits for using a small fraction of the vast fortune he made in the biotech industry to purchase and sustain his hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times.
But Soon-Shiong’s involvement in the paper’s operations has become more heavy-handed since the final months of the presidential campaign, with the owner repeatedly weighing in on Trump’s behalf. Over the past few weeks, Soon-Shiong, whose medical patents are subject to federal oversight, has begun cheerleading for the confirmation of the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services.:
“‘I truly believe [Kennedy] has the American public's best interests at heart,’ Soon-Shiong tweeted Tuesday in a post he pinned to the top of his account on X, formerly Twitter, for much of last week,” NPR reported. “It was one of 18 messages promoting Kennedy that Soon-Shiong — a billionaire surgeon and medical inventor — posted over the course of four days, which included Kennedy's confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.”
Soon-Shiong’s support for Kennedy appears to have bled into his paper’s operations as well. On Friday, an op-ed contributor accused the paper of deceptively editing the piece he submitted in order to remove his criticisms of Kennedy’s nomination.
- ### CNN tries to move on
Journalists at CNN regularly drew vicious attacks from Trump and his supporters during the president’s first term. During a tone-setting press conference shortly before he took office, Trump lashed out at then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta as “fake news” and “terrible.” And Trump’s salvos at the network went beyond just words — his Justice Department tried to block a merger involving CNN’s then-parent company..
This time, CNN’s corporate leadership appears less willing to leave the network vulnerable to Trumpian retribution. Network chief Mark Thompson led an editorial meeting the day before Inauguration Day in which he instructed CNN talent “to be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump” and to avoid “expressing any outrage of their own” or “relitigat[ing] the past,” former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reported in his Status newsletter.
As for Acosta, he left CNN last week rather than accept Thompson’s offer to anchor the network’s coverage from midnight to 2 a.m. ET.
- ### Trump’s FCC targets ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS
The tip of the president’s anti-press spear is Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission whom Trump elevated to chair. Carr authored Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC and has notably refused to reject Trump’s repeated calls for the commission to yank the licenses of broadcast networks whose reporting he dislikes.
Following his promotion, Carr sent a letter to Bob Iger, the CEO of ABC parent company Disney, in which he denounced the network for having “contributed” to the “erosion in public trust” and pointedly referenced the FCC’s regulatory power.
Carr also restored a right-wing group’s bias complaints targeting NBC, CBS, and ABC for purportedly biased coverage of the presidential campaign, which his predecessor had dismissed. In response to the CBS complaint, the FCC demanded that CBS News provide the unedited transcript and tapes of Harris’ 60 Minutes interview, adding government pressure to the benefit of Trump’s private lawsuit. The network ultimately submitted to what one legal expert described as a “highly partisan intervention” with “no historical antecedent.”
And on Wednesday, Carr announced a new FCC probe of underwriting announcements produced by NPR and PBS, “with an eye toward unraveling federal funding for all public broadcasting.”
- ### Defense Department retaliates against news outlets
The Pentagon announced Friday night that the defense correspondents at NBC News, The New York Times, Politico, and National Public Radio are all required to vacate their dedicated workspaces. Their spots will instead go to the right-wing One America News Network, New York Post, and Breitbart — and theoretically to the progressive HuffPost, which does not have a Pentagon reporter and did not request space.
The move came a week after the Senate confirmed former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.
//
Take Trumpist threats to jail journalists seriously
:{09/23/24
Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term}:
:{10/29/24
“Fake News Networks”: Trump and Project 2025’s goal to attack, defund, and delegitimize the press}:
10/16/24
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AN 12 24
Patrick Soon-Shiong—the biotech billionaire whose moves as owner of the Los Angeles Times have prompted a wave of resignations and subscription cancellations—is reportedly now asking the paper's editorial board to refrain from publishing pieces about Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
Oliver Darcy's Status newsletter accused Soon-Shiong of "meddling for MAGA" by requesting that Times members of the board and opinion writers, according to an internal memo, "take a break from writing about Trump."
Based on the memo viewed by Darcy, Soon-Shiong has asked editors to send him "the text of every editorial and the name of its writer" prior to publication, prompting staff "concerns about the ability of the board to do its job without fear of retaliation," according to Status.
Darcy wrote that the memo came from staffers who "said they were notifying [executive editor Terry] Tang, who oversees both the newsroom and opinion section, of Soon-Shiong's alarming actions because the newspaper's ethics policy requires employees to report 'anything that might cast a shadow on the Times' reputation.'"
"Glad I already resigned or I would have to do it now."
Responding Wednesday to the Status report, former Times senior legal affairs columnist Harry Litman wrote on social media, "Glad I already resigned or I would have to do it now."
Darcy's newsletter follows reporting last week that Soon-Shiong scuppered a draft editorial criticizing some of Trump's Cabinet nominees, telling editors that it could not run unless accompanied by a piece presenting an opposing view.
Earlier this month, Soon-Shiong said he planned to embed an artificial intelligence-powered "bias meter" in Times articles and editorials.
Soon-Shiong—a surgeon by training—has praised three doctors tapped for Trump's Cabinet. He has also dined with Trump, calling it an "incredible honor."
While Soon-Shiong has owned the Times—for which he paid $500 million as part of a multi-outlet deal—since 2018, the extent of his involvement in the paper's operations made headlines in October after he blocked its editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
The decision—which Soon-Shiong said was based partly on a desire for more balance in the Times opinion section and partly on Harris' complicity in the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza—prompted the resignation of editorials editor Maria Garza.
Other resignations have followed as "morale in the newsroom has plummeted," according to Darcy.
Litman explained on his Substack following his resignation earlier this month that he does not "want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons."
"My resignation is a protest and visceral reaction against the conduct of the paper's owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong," he wrote. "Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump."
Contrasting Soon-Shiong's hands-on leadership style with TheWashington Post's multicentibillionaire owner,Chicago Tribune contributor Steve Chapman wrote on social media:
Jeff Bezos: "Nobody ever wrecked the reputation of a respected newspaper as fast as I did." Patrick Soon-Shiong: "Hold my beer."
The Los Angeles TimestoldThe Guardian that its management team "is currently reviewing the concerns" expressed in the editors' memo.
11/15/24 mma
11/15/24 mma
November 14, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox News @ Night
TRACE GALLAGHER (ANCHOR): When you talk about the editorial board, because -- when you tweeted, it seemed like you were going to get rid of the entire editorial board. They haven't all left. Is that the plan? To redo the entire editorial board or just fill in the people that have left?
PATRICK SOON-SHIONG (LOS ANGELES TIMES OWNER): Again, I think it's important for us to differentiate. The editorial board is responsible for these opinions on these voices. So right now we don't have an editorial board if we were a truly -- about ourselves -- that are balanced. And so I've gotten beaten up about fair and balanced. So I'm looking for people like Scott Jennings. Scott Jennings, who is on CNN and he's one out of six usually in the room, where we need to have all voices, the right, the left, and the moderate, the center. And I think it's important because the editors are responsible of stories that are told, stories are not told. Editors have this nuances of the word hatred versus could the president-elect make a real impact. And we need views from both sides and my goal is now to change the entire editorial board for that perspective.
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lat OWNER TRIED TO GET TRUMP ADMIN GIG HEALTHCARE
10 24 ymail judd pop info
owner Jeff Bezos spreads his hands after a ceremonial ribbon cutting during dedication ceremonies for the new Washington Post offices on January, 28, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Jeff Bezos is the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately $211 billion. Most of Bezos' wealth is derived from his 9% stake in Amazon, the company he founded. Bezos also founded and owns Blue Origin, a private space exploration company worth billions.
Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013 for $250 million in cash. Is Bezos now making decisions at the Washington Post to protect and enhance the value of his other enterprises? Many current and former employees of the Washington Post believe so.
The business interests of Amazon and Blue Origin — and, therefore, Bezos — are inextricably linked to the federal government. Consider:
In 2021, Amazon was awarded a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with the National Security Agency. It also has a portion of a $9 billion cloud-computing contract inked in 2022 with the Department of Defense and a multi-billion dollar cloud-computing contract with the CIA.
In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging "the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power." The lawsuit seeks "a permanent injunction in federal court that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and pry loose Amazon’s monopolistic control to restore competition."
> In May 2023, Blue Origin was awarded a $3.4 billion contract to build a lunar lander for NASA. Between 2025 and 2029, the company is expected to compete for $5.6 billion in space launch contracts for the Pentagon.
The Washington Post, unlike Amazon and Blue Origin, has been a money loser for Bezos, reportedly running a deficit of $100 million last year. More importantly, Bezos believes that former President Trump's hostility toward the Washington Post, which produced critical coverage of Trump's presidency, cost his companies billions in government contracts. In 2019, Amazon sued the federal government for awarding a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, alleging that Amazon lost out on the contract based on Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post:
President Trump has made no secret of his personal dislike for Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post, or of his express desire to harm them. The seeds of this animus originate with the Washington Post's coverage of him before he even was elected President. That coverage placed Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post directly in the crosshairs of President Trump's wrath.
…After he assumed office, President Trump grew "obsessed" with Mr. Bezos and determined to "f'*** with him." His new powers expanded his ability to punish Mr. Bezos for the Washington Post's coverage of him
…President Trump has frequently referred to the "Amazon Washington Post" as a single entity, and he has frequently hurled invective against Amazon whenever the Washington Post publishes articles that he believes slight him or his Administration. President Trump has also repeatedly claimed the Washington Post is selling "fake news," and he has called it an "[e]nemy of the [p]eople[.]"
In a few months, it is possible that Trump will be president again. This time, Bezos faces an even more acute threat to his business interests. Elon Musk, who owns Blue Origin's chief rival SpaceX, has aligned himself closely with Trump, spending tens of millions in support of Trump's campaign and making appearances in swing states on Trump's behalf.
On Friday, days before the election, Washington Post publisher William Lewis — installed by Bezos earlier this year — announced that "the Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election." The announcement, less than 2 weeks before Election Day, was a break from decades of precedent. Bezos made the decision, according to the New York Times, after the Washington Post "editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris."
Marty Baron, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, slammed Bezos' decision as "cowardice" and linked it to Bezos' desire to appease Trump. Baron said it would backfire, and Trump would "see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Bezos]."
Hours after Lewis published the announcement, Trump was seen meeting with Blue Origin CEO David Limp. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign's chief spokesman, embraced the suggestion that the meeting and the announcement of the non-endorsement were linked.
Robert Kagan, who worked at the Washington Post for two decades and resigned immediately following Lewis' announcement, said the meeting was evidence of a quid pro quo. “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told The Daily Beast. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”
According to CNN, "Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also recently reached out to check in" with Trump.
The apparent capitulation to Trump illustrates the danger of billionaires scooping up major media organizations as a side hustle. For nearly everyone, the price Bezos paid for the Washington Post is an unfathomable amount of money. For Bezos, it's less than half the $575 million he paid for his new 417-foot superyacht, Koru, and its 246-foot support yacht, Abeona, which has a helipad, accommodations for staff, and storage for smaller boats and jet skis.
Bezos did not get to the point where he could afford such yachts through his dedication to journalistic integrity. He became the second-wealthiest person in the world by prioritizing the bottom line. And it appears that continues to be his priority.
The Washington Post's incoherent defense
Lewis claims that the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate was based on principle. Specifically, Lewis says the decision was guided by the belief that the Washington Post's mission "is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."
Lewis doesn't explain why, if that was the case, the Washington Post editorial board endorsed candidates for U.S. Senate and House earlier this month. If it is about the principle that readers should "make up their own minds," why does that principle only apply to presidential candidates?
Further, Lewis tried to insulate Bezos from the fallout. The Washington Post reported that the "decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision."
Lewis attempted to undermine his own paper's reporting, claiming that "[r]eporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate." But Lewis did not directly dispute that it was Bezos' decision. Instead, he said only that Bezos "was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft" — a claim that no one actually made.
Washington Post staff was not buying it. 17 members of the paper's opinion staff signed onto a statement calling the decision not to endorse a "terrible mistake." The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the paper's reporters, said in a statement that the decision "undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it." Legendary Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward called the decision "surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process."
One could legitimately conclude that newspaper endorsements have outlived their usefulness. It is the timing and context of the Washington Post's change that is raising alarm bells.
The billionaire owner of the LA Times
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, also abruptly demanded his publication stay neutral in the presidential election. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.
Soon-Shiong is a healthcare and biotech entrepreneur whose companies rely on the federal government. His companies regularly seek FDA approval for new drugs, vaccines and therapies and federal funding for research.
The editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris and publish a series of columns tentatively titled "The Case Against Trump." But in a post on X, Soon-Shiong said he offered the LA Times editorial board "the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation." Soon-Shiong said that "[i]nstead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision."
Soon-Shiong did not explain why he did not demand a similar approach for U.S. House and Senate races, state ballot initiatives, and many other contests facing California voters. Beginning in September, the LA Times has endorsed in dozens of races up and down the ballot.
In response to the spiking of the presidential endorsement, 200 LA Times staff members signed an open letter calling on Soon-Shiong to "provide readers with an explanation for not issuing an endorsement, along with clarity about the broader endorsement process."
Three members of the paper's editorial board have resigned. "I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Mariel Garza, the LA Times editorials editor, said. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up."
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maybe premATURE, 1 DAY?
Newspaper front pages continue to bury Trump’s former chief-of-staff saying the former president is a fascist who praised Hitler
Only the Los Angeles Times focused a front-page article on John Kelly describing Trump as “the general definition of fascist” and saying he praised Hitler. The New York Times buried its own scoop.
Written by Courtney Hagle
Published 10/24/24 12:33 PM MMA
This week, The New York Times reported that former President Donald Trump’s former chief-of-staff John Kelly said Trump is a fascist, that he has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, and that he repeatedly denigrated soldiers and the military. The Los Angeles Times was the only one of five top U.S. newspapers to focus a front-page article on Kelly’s comments, while the Times continued to bury its own scoop.
The Times’ report, drawn from multiple interviews with Kelly, marked Kelly’s most extensive on-the-record comments about Trump. He detailed Trump’s “dictator approach to government” and concerning disregard for the Constitution, confirmed that Trump has made disparaging comments about the military and wounded soldiers, and spoke about Trump claiming that “Hitler did some good things.”
As Media Matters reported yesterday, the morning after the story broke, it was not covered on the print front pages of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or The New York Times.
Today, the story was adequately covered only on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, with the headline “Ex-aide: Trump is unfit, ‘fascist’.” The Washington Post discussed the comment in a piece focused on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris calling out Trump, titled “Harris, in escalation, calls Trump a fascist.” As journalist Adam Serwer noted, the frame served to position Kelly’s comments as an “aside in a bigger story framed as a partisan attack by his rival.”
The Wall Street Journal and USA Today did not cover the news on their front pages at all. Neither did The New York Times, which placed its own reporting on A12 of today’s print edition. [PIX OF FT PAGES]
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Column: House Republicans give a crash course in how to concoct a conspiracy theory about COVID’s origin
covid origins
Virologists Robert Garry, left, and Kristian Andersen listen patiently at a Congressional hearing Tuesday as a gang of politicians tell them their scientific method was flawed. (House Oversight Committee)
BY MICHAEL HILTZIK
BUSINESS COLUMNIST
JULY 11, 2023
Opening Tuesday’s House subcommittee hearing on the origin of the COVID virus, the panel’schairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), promised an impartial inquiry.
“This is not an attack on science,” he said. “And it’s not an attack on an individual.”
He and his GOP colleagues proceeded over nearly three hours to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — one of the most respected such scientists in the world — of having masterminded the creation of the virus, with the connivance of Dr. Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories...have resulted in significant harassment and threats....Online there are so-called kill lists and I have found myself on those lists.
— Virological expert Kristian G. Andersen
The Republicans’ main “evidence,” such as it is, involves a seminal paper in the scientific study of the virus.
Published as a letter in the journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, under the title “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” the paper weighed the two major theories of COVID’s origin: that it reached the human population from infected wildlife (known as zoonosis) or that it leaked from a government lab in Wuhan, China, the teeming metropolis where the first COVID outbreak occurred in late 2019.
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The paper’s authors noted that all the features of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, are observable in nature, coinciding with the zoonosis hypothesis. They added, “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
For years, Republicans have asserted without a scintilla of evidence that Fauci and Collins manipulated the scientific consensus away from the lab-leak hypothesis.
Why have they seized on this theory? Its provenance may offer a clue: It flowered during the Trump administration among political appointees in the State Department, who saw it as a cudgel with which to beat the Chinese government, which they viewed as an economic threat to the U.S. It was also useful to undermine the authority of Fauci, whose skepticism about Trump’s COVID policies was manifest.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on February 3, 2021. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP) (Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via
Column: U.S. government debunks COVID lab-leak conspiracy theory, enraging conspiracy theorists
June 26, 2023
Soon enough, it became Republican orthodoxy.
Lab leak proponents in government and Congress have smeared and vilified Fauci and Collins, among other scientists, in the service of purely partisan claims, ignoring the utter absence of any scientific evidence for a lab leak and the mounting evidence that it first reached humans through interactions with susceptible animals being sold illegally at a wildlife market in Wuhan.
The foils for this phase of the GOP effort to construct an evidence-free narrative of COVID’s origin were two of the five authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper, Robert F. Garry of Tulane and Kristian G. Andersen of Scripps Research in La Jolla.
Garry and Andersen sat patiently at the witness table in the committee room as the Republican members used cherry-picked quotes from their emails, misrepresented their research findings and ignored their painstaking explanations of how science is done in the real world. They listened stoically to committee members — some of whom have medical degrees but none any evident expertise in scientific research — harangue them about supposed flaws in their scientific methods.
“We do know something for certain,” Westrup said: “that the drafting, coordination and publication of ‘Proximal Origin’ and downplaying the lab leak was antithetical to science.”
One low note among many others during the hearing came fromRep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who charged that “Dr. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins realized that they had been implicated in the creation of production or the creation of this virus and they were doing everything they could including both of you to come on board as tools or vehicles to undermine that theory.”
Truth to tell, however, the committee majority’s purpose was no secret from the start. The hearing was titled, after all, “Investigating the Proximal Origin of a Cover Up.”
It may be useful to examine the path the subcommittee’s GOP majority traveled to come to its assertions that the Proximal Origin paper was a sham.
[Dr. Scott Atlas speaks as President Donald Trump looks on
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Column: These ‘experts’ sold the U.S. on a disastrous COVID plan, and never paid a professional price
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As laid out in written testimony submitted to the subcommittee by Garry and Andersen, it started in January 2020, when almost nothing was known about the virus and not much about its genomic family.
The first examinations of its structure revealed several features unfamiliar to virologists. At first glance, they looked like nothing occurring in nature. Many thought this pointed to some sort of laboratory engineering.
When Andersen brought this concern to Fauci during a call on Jan. 31, Fauci urged him to write a scientific paper about the issue, and suggested that if confirmed, the matter should be referred to the FBI and the British intelligence service MI5.
Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert who is currently the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, convened a conference call on Feb. 1 among nine scientists, including Andersen and Garry. Fauci and Collins joined the call, but by all accounts merely listened in without contributing any opinions.
New data came to the scientific community in a torrent over the next few days and weeks. The unfamiliar features turned out to be more common in nature than many virologists had known, and the process by which they might become incorporated in SARS-CoV-2 progressively better understood.
By the end of February, when the authors of the Proximal Origin paper submitted an initial draft to Nature Medicine, they still did not have enough data to rule out either major theory but had become more certain that a laboratory role was plausible.
The subcommittee Republicans profess to be thunderstruck that a theory about COVID’s origin could be posed and discarded in the space of a few days, but Andersen and Garry tried to explain that they’re wrong.
The scientists started with no data, and incorporated new information into their viewpoints as it arrived. In any event, Andersen testified, the period between the conference and the publication of the paper wasn’t three days, as the Republicans kept insisting, but 45 days. Neither Fauci nor Collins played any role in guiding the authors’ conclusions, the witnesses said.
The published paper, moreover, made clear that the state of SARS-CoV-2 research was in its infancy. “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another,” the authors wrote.
[Column: How Trump’s anti-science meddling erased 3 years of crucial COVID research
May 12, 2023]
But its general conclusion that a lab leak is implausible and the virus probably emerged by natural spillover from animals “has only been further supported by additional evidence and studies,” Andersen told the subcommittee. He and Garry said that if evidence emerged supporting a lab leak, they would examine it objectively and be guided by their findings. As of this moment, there is none.
Under prompting by subcommittee Democrats, the witnesses pointed to the long-term consequences of the Republican efforts to foment mistrust of science by mainstreaming conspiracies.
“Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories around the paper have resulted in significant harassment and threats,” Andersen said. “Including everything from typical targets on social media to emails, to telephone calls to my office ... to death threats.... Online there are so-called kill lists and I have found myself on those lists together with my co-authors.”
The thrust of the subcommittee’s claims, he said, “is that the virus was created and that American scientists played a role in that and have been covering that up.... All of which, as the record clearly shows, is false.... The focus has been that there’s a need to blame someone.”
What has been going on here has been nothing less than a partisan witch hunt. Westrup made clear that the Republican narrative was predetermined: “We’re examining any conflicts of interest, biases or suppression of scientific discourse regarding the origins of COVID-19,” he said. The record shows, however, that what occurred was the scientific method in action.
If the subcommittee members are truly devoted to protect Americans from a future pandemic, they couldn’t find a worse way to reach that goal. “If I was a future scientist, looking at the attacks directed at us, for example, maybe I wouldn’t go into infectious disease research.... It’s incredibly damaging,” Anderson said.
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----
IV. BIG OIL HAS TRIED TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY BY BULLYING
JOURNALISTS AND OBSTRUCTING THE COMMITTEE’S INVESTIGATION
A. Bullying Journalists Who Expose the Truth
:{
}:
Emails obtained by the Committee show Exxon privately pressured journalists about
unfavorable news stories implicating the industry. In October 2015, the Los Angeles Times
published two articles written by students as part of the Energy and Environmental Reporting
Project at the Columbia Journalism School. The articles, which drew on historic documents and
more recent interviews and statements from current and former Exxon employees, showed that
Exxon’s work to prepare its facilities for climate change belied its public statements
downplaying or denying climate science.89
Documents uncovered by the Committee suggest that Exxon baselessly accused a
Columbia Journalism instructor and a post-graduate fellow of wrongdoing in connection with
these stories. On November 20, 2015, Exxon sent a letter to Columbia University’s President
Lee Bollinger, criticizing the articles and alleging ethics violations by the students and the
instructor. Exxon claimed that the journalists were made aware of “significant factual errors” in
the articles and gave the company “less than 24 hours” to respond to a request to comment on the
second story, published on October 23, 2015. 90
The letter singled out the team’s instructor
Susanne Rust for alleged inaccuracies and for not giving the company ample time to respond.
91
However, internal emails indicate that Exxon was given approximately a month to
comment on essential questions and facts of the story prior to the October 23, 2015, publication,
and that the company had resisted multiple requests by the team of journalists to provide detailed
responses.
92
Exxon also accused a post-graduate fellow, Sara Jerving, of “misrepresenting herself as a
Columbia Arctic researcher and [making] no mention of the fact that she was affiliated with the
89 Columbia Journalism School, Two-Year Long Investigation: What Exxon Knew About Climate Change
(online at https://journalism.columbia.edu/two-year-long-investigation-what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change)
(accessed Nov. 22, 2022). The first two articles in the series were published in October 2015. The first article,
What Exxon Knew About the Earth’s Melting Arctic, details how between 1986 and 1992 Exxon was already
planning for the impacts that global warming would have on its operations in the Artic, for example by hardening
infrastructure. The second article, How Exxon Went from Leader to Skeptic on Climate Change Research, reveals
how the company, contrary to its own research, “poured millions” into a public messaging campaign to sow doubt
about the science of climate change. The article asserted that, despite being a leader in climate research, the
company was publicly skeptical of climate change because it “feared a growing public consensus would lead to
financially burdensome policies.”
School of Journalism or that the research might eventually be published in a newspaper.”93
Internal Exxon emails contradict these claims as well. These emails show that the company
knew that Ms. Jerving had represented herself accurately as a journalism student at Columbia
University to the people she interviewed for the stories. 94
These exchanges also show industry insiders communicating with Exxon employees
about their skepticism and denial of the science of climate change. For example, Peter Noble, a
longtime oil and gas industry executive and consultant, wrote to Ken Croasdale, a former Exxon
employee and then-consultant for Exxon:
I see nothing inconsistent twitch [sic] your quote from 1991 when we didn’t knw [sic]
much about global climate change to Exxon’s current position in 2015 when we still
don’t know much about climate change even if our politicians claim it is “settled
science.” This is a cross we have to bear for our oil industry connections I guess? 95
Another oil and gas industry insider,Dan Masterson wrote to Mr. Croasdale:
The murky part of global warming and climate change seems to be whether it is
anthropogenic or related to other very long term [sic] changes not related to human
activity. I think the latter is the case and that the Exxon executives were correct in stating
that the science was “murky.”96
Shell’s internal documents similarly display a marked discomfort with press inquiries
into the company’s past and present climate efforts, even with journalists from whom they
expect positive coverage. In October 2016, David Hone, Shell’s Chief Climate Change Adviser,
and Curtis Smith, Media Manager for Shell, discussed how to deal with a damaging story about
climate denialism in the oil industry. Mr. Smith suggested reaching out to Paul Barrett from
Bloomberg Businessweek, describing him as “the fellow who wanted to do a deep dive in our
archives to prove Shell was a good actor in the climate space for a long time.” However, Mr.
93 Letter from Mr. Kenneth Cohen, Vice President, ExxonMobil, to Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia
University (Nov. 20, 2015) (online at www.politico.com/f/?id=00000151-5a8a-d6a2-a155-dbca213c0000).
94 In a series of emails, Exxon consultant Ken Croasdale asked his contacts about their interactions with
Ms. Jerving. In response, his contacts indicated they knew she was a journalist. For example, in an email from
Peter Noble to Ken Croasdale on October 14, 2015, Mr. Noble confirmed meeting with Ms. Jerving and that she
“[s]eemed like a nice young lady, a student of journalism at Columbia, I think she said but that just shows that I am
a poor predictor of character?” EM-HCOR3-00943385-90. Moreover, in emails from October 15, 2015, from Anne
Barker and Bob Frederking, a current employee and retired employee at the National Research Council of Canada,
both acknowledged they knew Ms. Jerving was affiliated with Columbia and that their interviews with her came
through the National Research Council’s communications group. EM-HCOR3-00943393-94. In an email from
October 15, 2015, Dan Masterson, another oil and gas industry contact of Mr. Croasdale’s, wrote that, according to
his diary entry, he “Met with Sara Jerving, a post-grad student in journalism at Colombia [sic] University. We
talked for about 1.5 hours re what I did in my career and what took place in the 1970’s, 1980’s and thru the 90’s to
now.” EM-HCOR3-00943410-11.
95 EM-HCOR3-00943388.
96 EM-HCOR3-00943411; see also BPA_HCOR_00029193-94 for BP’s treatment of later reporting from
the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.
Smith ultimately explained that the deep dive never happened because “we sort of chickened
out” and chose not to give him access. 97
Despite an extensive public relations campaign detailing their clean energy strategy, Shell
executives were reluctant to engage with press questions comparing their investments in clean
energy to continued investments in fossil fuels. On October 8, 2021, Mr. Smith received an
inquiry from a Teen Vogue reporter who asked for comment on an op-ed “criticizing
publications for working with fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups.” The journalist
explained the disconnect between marketing and the fact that “fossil fuel companies’ clean
energy investments account for a small percentage of their total capital expenditure, compared to
investments into finding new pockets of oil and gas.” Mr. Smith responded internally to other
Shell employees, “Not with a ten foot pole.”98
B. Obstructing the Committee’s Investigation
The Committee launched its investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long
climate disinformation and greenwashing campaign in September 2021, requesting documents
from Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, API, and the Chamber of Commerce.99
220
booktv has lots from rancho mirage
equates cnn bias w/ fox bias?
Author Discussion on the President and the MediaAuthor and ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams; Los Angeles Times…:{
}:https://www.c-span.org/video/?468104-6/author-discussion-president-media:{
}:PO's aT don lemon; cnn in all airports. least watched lax, get paid by networks?:{
}:liberal profs and media sauter:{
}::{:{JANUARY 30, 2020}:
Author Discussion on the President and the Media
Author and ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams; Los Angeles Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine; and former Fox and CBS News president Van Gordon Sauterexamined the relationship between the executive branch and the media.
}:
The Washington Post editorial board claimed that ExxonMobil "deserves criticism for playing down the danger of climate change," but that the company's actions are "not a criminal offense." That conclusion is premature, given an ongoing investigation and evidence that Exxon knowingly deceived shareholders and the public about climate change. And this is not the first time the Posthas argued against the government pursuing a legal response to corporate malfeasance; in the early 2000s, the Post also criticized the Department of Justice lawsuit against tobacco companies that it is now citing to try to distinguish the tobacco companies' wrongdoing from that of Exxon.
Media Investigations Reveal Exxon's Climate Deception, Prompting NY AG To Subpoena Company Records
InsideClimate News Published Six-Part Series Revealing Exxon's Early Knowledge Of Climate ChangeAnd Subsequent Shift To Promoting Climate Denial.InsideClimate News published a six-part investigation in September and October detailing "how Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and then, without revealing all that it had learned, worked at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed." InsideClimate's eight-month investigation was "based on primary sources including internal company files dating back to the late 1970s, interviews with former company employees, and other evidence." InsideClimate News, Exxon: The Road Not Taken,[accessed 11/16/15]
LA Times Investigation Further Detailed How Exxon's Public Statements Contradicted Company's Research. The Los Angeles Times, in collaboration with Columbia University's Energy and Environmental Reporting Project, reviewed hundreds of documents and interviewed "dozens of experts, including former Exxon Mobil employees" for an ongoing series of reports on Exxon. An October 23 article in the series, headlined "How Exxon went from leader to skeptic on climate change research," illustrated how Exxon, "a leader in climate research, [became] one of its biggest public skeptics" because the company "feared a growing public consensus would lead to financially burdensome policies." *Los Angeles Times*, [10/23/15]
New York Attorney General Is Investigating Whether Exxon Lied To The Public About Climate Change.The New York Times reported on November 5 that New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman had "begun an investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business." As The Times reported, Schneiderman issued a subpoena to Exxon Mobil on November 4 "demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents." The Times also reported that, according to people with knowledge of the case, the attorney general's investigation into Exxon started a year ago, but "[n]ews reporting in the last eight months," including the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News reports, "added impetus to the investigation." *The New York Times*, [11/5/15]
Washington PostArgues Against State And Federal Investigations Of Exxon, Dismisses Comparison To Tobacco Companies
Washington PostEditorial Prematurely Concludes: "Exxon Deserves Criticism, But It Didn't Commit A Crime."On November 15, The Washington Postpublished an editorial titled, "Not a criminal offense"; the online version of the editorial, which was posted on November 14, had the headline, "Exxon deserves criticism, but it didn't commit a crime." In the editorial, the Postaddressed the media investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, the New York Attorney General's investigation of Exxon, and calls for a federal probe of Exxon by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Postsaid the media accounts of Exxon depict "a discouraging example of corporate irresponsibility," but prematurely argued that Exxon's actions weren't "criminal" and don't rise to the level of the tobacco industry's behavior, which a federal judge ruled violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO):...
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/17/the-wash-post-doesnt-support-exxon-investigatio/206913
Wash. Post Doesn't Support Exxon Investigations -- Here's What It Had To Say About Tobacco Litigation
==
A Los Angeles Times editor just wrote one small sentence that could send shockwaves through the world of journalism. In a recent piece explaining why the LA Times did not publish letters arguing that Congress is exempting itself from Obamacare, Letters Editor Paul Thornton wrote the following:
“Why? Simply put, this objection to the president’s healthcare law is based on a falsehood, and letters that have an untrue basis (for example, ones that say there’s no sign humans have caused climate change) do not get printed.”
Sounds like a pretty simple principle: letters that contain blatant falsehoods don’t get published. But the thing is, no newspaper has ever stated that policy about climate change denial—until now. Not surprisingly, right wing media outlets are already up in arms. Why? Because they are worried this trend will spread to the country’s other mainstream newspapers.
That’s where we come in. The LA Ti
http://www.alternet.org/print/media/only-koch-brothers-could-make-rupert-murdoch-look-journalisms-savior
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."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/koch-brothers-newspaper-los-angeles-times-chicago-tribune
Here's Why the Koch Brothers Would Buy the LA Times and Chicago Tribune
Not for the profits, obviously. But even today, newspapers are a mighty big megaphone for the Kochs' free-market ideals.
By Andy Kroll | Mon Apr. 22, 2013 8:39 AM PDT
Not long after the November elections, I met with Charles Spies [1], a big-time Republican fundraiser who'd run the pro-Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future [2], to hear his take on why Romney lost. We sat across from each other at a long wooden table in a tenth-floor conference room overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. (Before his firm moved in, Spies says the conference room used to be Al Gore's office.) We talked about super-PACs and the hundreds of millions they spent, the clout (or not) of wealthy donors and how they could get the most bang for their buck in a political campaign. Then, unprompted, Spies told me, "If I had the resources and wanted to impact the policy debate, I'd buy a newspaper or a magazine."
"Even in today's media climate?" I asked.
"Oh, absolutely." He explained:
Not to make money. They're not profitable. But imagine if I was, you know, a mogul that had 30, 40 million dollars to spend and cared about policy issues and elections. I'd buy the New York Times or the LA Times. Buy a major newspaper and put my people in on the editorial page and use that to frame issues the way I wanted to. And then I could claim that the news folks were separate from the editorial page but I think they know where the owner's heart is at.
Spies is not a friend of Charles and David Koch [3], the billionaire libertarians. He does not move in their political circles. But in our conversation, he laid out what may be the best reason why the Kochs and their company are reportedly considering a move to become America's newest newspaper barons.
As the *New York Times* reported [4] on Sunday, Koch Industries, the massive conglomerate run by Charles Koch [5], is mulling a bid to buy eight prominent newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, including the Los Angeles Times,Chicago Tribune,Baltimore Sun, andOrlando Sentinel. Those newspapers are valued at $623 million, which is a pittance compared to Koch Industries'**annual revenues of $115 billion** [6]. If the Kochs wanted to do what Spies described, the megaphone that those newspapers would provide them is nothing to scoff at. TheLA Timesis the nation's fourth-largest paper, theTribunethe ninth-largest, and**tens** [7]of**millions** [8]of people combined visit the newspapers' websites each month.
A bigger platform with which to spread their free-market ideas [9] seems to be what the Kochs want. The Times quotes one attendee of the Kochs' exclusive donor seminars [10] as saying of the brothers,"They see the conservative voice as not being well represented."
Koch Industries spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia told the Timesthat the company is "constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors. So, it is natural that our name would come up in connection with this rumor." She went on, "We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions referenced in the news stories. But it is our longstanding policy not to comment on deals or rumors of deals we may or may not be exploring."
If they did buy the Tribune papers, the Kochs wouldn't be the first conservative billionaire to snap up a newspaper or two in the modern era. The Washington Examiner newspaper and the Weekly Standard magazine, both staples of conservative political media, are run by a company owned by Phil Anschutz, another secretive conservative billionaire [11] who has attended [12] a Koch donor seminar. And of course there's Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation paid $5 billion in 2007 [13] for the Dow Jones and Company, which includes the Wall Street Journal.
Koch Industries has, at times, a fractious relationship with the media. The company says much of the reporting about Charles and David Koch and their privately-held company is inaccurate or unfair. That sense of grievance led to the creation of :{KochFacts.com:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [14], a website where Koch Industries posts requests for corrections, company statements, testy correspondence between Koch officials and reporters, and favorable news and commentary.
One journalist with whom Koch Industries has clashed is David Sassoon, the publisher of **:{:{InsideClimate News:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}::(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:** [15], a nonprofit website devoted to environmental journalism. InsideClimate News recently :{won a Pulitzer Prize:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [16] for its reporting on the dodgy oversight of US oil pipelines. After InsideClimate News reported on Koch Industries' ties to the Canadian tar sands business, Koch Industries :{blasted:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [17] the site's "agenda-driven, dishonest journalism" and :{pressured Reuters:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: [18], 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 first-hand makes me think they would not be trustworthy stewards of the honorable traditions of journalism."
Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/koch-brothers-newspaper-los-angeles-times-chicago-tribune
Links:
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/mitt-romney-charles-spies-super-pac-obama-presidential-election
[2] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/romney-super-pac-obama-20-million-attack-ads
[3] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-makeover-2012-election
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/media/koch-brothers-making-play-for-tribunes-newspapers.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
[5] http://www.kochind.com
[6] http://www.kochind.com/factssheets/KochFacts.aspx
[7] http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2013/03/la_times_editors_happy_wi.php
[8] http://tribunemediagroup.com/miscellaneous/tmg-websites-break-records-with-blizzard-coverage/
[9] http://www.charleskochinstitute.org/mbm/
[10] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/exclusive-audio-koch-brothers-seminar-tapes
[11] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/16/120116fa_fact_bruck
[12] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/koch-brothers-meeting-palm-springs
[13] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118589043953483378.html
[14] http://www.kochfacts.com
[15] http://insideclimatenews.org
[16] http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2013-National-Reporting
[17] http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/moredishonesty/
[18] http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/we-confront-reuters-on-advocacy-journalism/
Koch Brothers Looking to Purchase Several Major Newspapers
By Igor Volsky, ThinkProgress
13 March 13
ight-wing funders and business industrialists David and Charles Koch may purchase the Tribune Company newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times. The brothers are "interested in the clout they could gain through the Times' editorial pages," the Hollywood Reporter notes. Responding to the report, a spokesperson for Koch told the website that the brothers are "constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors":
Missy Cohlmia, a spokeswoman for Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, issued the following statement to THR: "As an entrepreneurial company with 60,000 employees around the world, we are constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors. So, it is natural that our name would come up in connection with this rumor. We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions referenced in today's news stories, but it is our long-standing policy not to comment on deals or rumors of deals we may or may not be exploring. "
The Los Angeles Weekly was the first to report that the Kochs could be mulling the purchase of the newspaper assets, which make up $623 million of the company's $7 billion holdings.
The Koch brothers own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in America, and bankroll a network of Tea Party groups and Republican political war chests.
In 2012, the brothers spent millions to defeat President Obama and even sent mailers to employees urging them to support Mitt Romney and other conservative candidates.