Thread by @jamisonfoser

Hi, @nytimes. Seems like an article that attempts to equate a donor to environmental causes with the Koch brothers and includes a quote from a “watchdog group” explicitly equating them should mention that *the watchdog group is funded by the Kochs.* desmogblog.com/capital-resear…

A key difference between the Kochs and Wyss, Arabella, etc etc, is that the Kochs have spent decades and billions of dollars attacking the concept of truth and funding a movement that seeks to destroy democracy, and Wyss, Arabella, etc etc have, you know … not.

This is some spectacular false equivalence by the @NYTimes. The substance of the Kochs’ actions — their goals, and the damage they do to society in order to achieve them — matters.

@nytimes And to rely on the Capital Research Center — a Koch-funded cesspool affiliated with Sheriff David Clarke — to draw that equivalence is obscene.

(I wouldn’t recognize Wyss & Bainum if they punched me in the nose, but it’s extremely obvious from the @NYTimes own article equating them with the Kochs that they are not at all like the Kochs.)

For the record, the NYTimes didn’t rely *exclusively* on a Koch-funded organization for this article equating an environmental donor with the Kochs. It also relied on … material stolen by Russian intelligence. Nice to see they’re still getting mileage out of that.

Most major news companies are owned by billionaires, by the way. This … isn’t great. But that doesn’t mean they’re all Kochs.

For example, the New York Times’ largest shareholder is Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

UPDATE: The New York Times has now added a disclosure that the person it relied on to explicitly equate Wyss & Kochs is funded by the Kochs. Naturally, no acknowledgment of the initial omission.

And still no quote from anyone explicitly rejecting the comparison.

I guess I’ll put this here.

The NYT doesn’t do exposés on the fact that big news companies are owned by rich people and their economic coverage favors the wealthy.

But a liberal thinks about buying a newspaper and OMG what if it influences the paper!

https://twitter.com/jamisonfoser/status/1382385433418502146

Are there any differences between oil barons who spent decades and billions of dollars accelerating climate change, undermining they very concept of truth, and funding a movement to destroy democracy, and billionaires who haven’t that might explain this?

https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/1382164300228272130

yes, it's true, people often find reporting on bond villains who are destroying the world more compelling than an attempt to scandalize a funder of conservation causes. this is an outrage!

the Koch Brothers could shoot a guy in the face on Fifth Avenue and reporters would be like "liberals criticize the Koch Brothers, but many liberal billionaire are similar to the Koch Brothers -- for example, they, too, have been to New York City."