Washington Post Ombudsman Apologizes for WP Story on Radical Conservative Billionaire Koch Brothers

Finds the WP Did Nothing Wrong – Huh?

This Forum has long been a critic of the Washington Post.  This once great newspaper has descended into competition with the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to capture the conservative readers.  It has left behind much of the great journalism it has produced in the past, apparently afraid of offending the Washington D. C. Conservative power elite. 

It publishes a large number of Conservative columnists, men and women who have no credentials or ability to write for a great newspaper.  Recently in the interests (?) of fairness it allowed bigotry to grace (?) its editorial pages.

Several weeks ago the Post, in conjunction with Bloomberg News published a story highlighting the many abuses of the companies owned and controlled by the Koch Brothers in dealing with Iran.  The Koch Brothers are billionaire radical conservatives who pump millions of dollars into right wing causes.  The story was hard hitting and factual, but now the Post, who employees an ombudsman to render judgment on itself thinks maybe it was not a good story.

Here is the description of the core of the story.

The story was about illegal or questionable business practices by Koch subsidiaries dating back to the 1990s and earlier. The Post story, shortened from the original, describes Koch company activities that include bribing foreign officials in Africa, the Middle East and India to get contracts; selling petrochemical equipment to Iran (legal at the time); being found liable for a pipeline explosion that killed two teenagers in Texas; falsifying records about the amount of oil pumped from federal and Indian lands; and misreporting the amount of benzene emissions at a refinery.

It all looks pretty bad, and it is, on many levels. Koch companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and settlements to resolve these cases, no small change.

And here is the conclusion of the “independent” judge at the paper.

But I think The Post erred in republishing this story, or at least in the way it did. And when the Kochs complained to The Post after publication, The Post’s response wasn’t handled well.

So maybe the story was not correct, maybe there were errors for which the Post should be apologetic.  Well, no.

Now, I couldn’t find any outright falsehoods in the story that would warrant corrections. Bloomberg, too, has published no corrections. But I think the story lacked context, was tendentious and was unfair in not reporting some of the exculpatory and contextual information Koch provided to Bloomberg.

So no falsehoods that need correction by either the Post or Bloomberg.  And rebuttal information was published in the Post.

In the days immediately after Bloomberg published its story but before The Post republished it, Koch swung its PR machine into action and put up a point-by-point rebuttal onKochFacts.com. The Powerline blog, written by lawyers who defend conservative causes and who have ties to the Kochs, did a deep-dive legal rebuttal of the story. Jennifer Rubin, The Post’s conservative opinion blogger, did a post that quoted Koch General Counsel Mark Holden extensively.

So the story was correct, the response was published and publicized  by Ms. Rubin, a house Conservative of the Post.  So why did the Post err in publishing the story?  Well it is probably this.

The brothers tie for fourth on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, with a net worth of $25 billion each. 

Yep, that would explain things wouldn’t it.