Koch Brothers and the Media

The billionaire industrialist Koch Brothers have generated controversy over their role in influencing media coverage.

In 2013, Koch Industries was mentioned as a potential buyer of eight Tribune Company daily newspapers, leading many to suspect the papers would be transformed into a tool for advancing Koch's political and ideological agenda. Those fears about interference with freedom of the press were exacerbated after reports emerged of PBS self-censoring documentaries for fear of offending David Koch, a major PBS funder.

Purchase of Tribune Company Newspapers

In April 2013 The New York Times reported that the Kochs are considering a purchase of the Tribune Company's eight regional newspapers, giving them control of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune as well as papers in electoral battleground states. This acquisition has faced a large amount of opposition from public employee unions and liberal advocacy groups, as well as some members the California State Legislature. Darrell Steinberg, the California Senate President pro Temp has expressed his opposition to to the sale stating, "“I oppose it. I believe newspapers are a public trust. The Los Angeles Times has a long and respected tradition of community leadership and impartiality. The Koch brothers have a long and demonstrated history of a rigid political ideology.” Steinberg was supported by the speaker of the California Assembly, John A. Perez, who expressed that he was "deeply concerned about media outlets being purchased to further a political agenda."

The Koch Brothers are advocates of legislation to cut public pension benefits and reduce the power of public unions, most notably in Wisconsin. In contrast, about a quarter of the assets of the Tribune Company's biggest shareholder, Oaktree Capital Management are from public employee pension fund investments. The potential Koch acquisition created a direct conflict for public employee unions, ten of which sent a letter to Oaktree opposing the sale. The letter expressed concern that the Koch brothers are "anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-public education and anti-immigrant." Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rossendahl took it one step further, introducing a motion to pull city pension funds from Oaktree if they agreed to sell to buyers who do not support "professional and objective journalism." Art Pulaski of the California Labor Federation and Maria Elena Durazo of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor sent a letter to the Los Angeles City Council expressing their belief that "The Koch Brothers' America is one not consistent with the policies and values of the city of Los Angeles."

On May 8, 2013, union workers in Chicago protested outside the Chicago Tribune headquarters. Further protests involving 300 union members and activists took place on May 14 in downtown Los Angeles outside Oaktree's headquarters. Workers protested in concern that the Koch Brothers' anti-labor and pro-profit beliefs would trump fair journalism practices. Vernita Randall, a Los Angeles teacher who participated in the protest explained, "All they care about is profit. And they won't tell both sides of the stories."

On May 29, protests expanded to include 12 more cities in addition to Chicago and Los Angeles. Two dozen protesters returned to Tribune Towers in a rally lead by Stand Up Chicago and supported by The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, Common Cause, Greenpeace and The Service Employees International Union. Citizen Koch filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin attended protests outside of Angelo, Gordon Co. in New York. Lessin was quoted saying, “They killed our public broadcast. They killed the funding for our film. And we’re here to tell you the Kochs and media are not a good mix.” During the rally Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party announced, “Journalism is too important to be left in the hands of the Koch brothers, and when they get their hands on something, bad things happen.”

The Chicago City Council passed a resolution on June 26, 2013 urging The Tribune Company to sell their papers to local investors in the cities in which they are located. Speaking on the resolution, Alderman Joe Moore, who was the key sponsor, stated, "The sale of the Chicago Tribune affects everyone in Chicago and it is our duty as the elected officials closest to the people to do everything we can to ensure that the sale of the Tribune is in the public interest. The Trib should not be owned by a major corporation outside of Illinois that prioritizes profits and political ideologies over accurate, impartial, and non-ideological reporting.”

Suppression of PBS Documentary

In May 2013 PBS withdrew funding from Citizen Koch, a documentary by Academy Award nominated filmmakers Carl Dean and Tia Lessin documenting how the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision helped pave the way for secret political spending by political players like the Kochs. According to an article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, the rescinding of funds was a direct reaction to the airing of Park Avenue, a documentary by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney on a New York City PBS affiliate WNET. Park Avenue explored the growing disparity between residents of a luxury Manhattan apartment building on one end of Park Avenue and residents of the other end of Park Avenue in the Bronx. The documentary painted David Koch, a resident of the Manhattan apartment building, in a negative light.

David Koch is on the board of WNET and has donated $23 million to public television. WNET broadcasts to the New York metropolitan area, the country's largest public television audience. When the president of WNET, Neal Shapiro heard about the controversial aspect of Park Avenue, he made an unprecedented call to Koch to notify him of the negative content of the documentary. Koch was the only wealthy New Yorker featured in the documentary to receive a phone call. Shapiro admitted that he made the phone call because Koch was a trustee. In reaction, Koch aired a disclaimer at the end of the documentary which called the film "disappointing and divisive." He also requested a change in the introduction, which was originally delivered by Stanley Tucci, to one which called the film "controversial" and "provocative."

Both Park Avenue and Citizen Koch were produced by Independent Television Services (ITVS), a branch of public television which funds and distributes independent films. After the incident with Koch and Park Avenue, Shapiro turned to ITVS and blamed them for impairing WNET's relationship with Koch. He threatened to stop airing ITVS films on WNET. Rumor had it that Koch was going to make a large seven figure donation to WNET, but decided not to because of Gibney's documentary. WNET began pressuring ITVS to appease Koch and in turn ITVS began to pressure Dean and Lessin. Although they had initially been highly supportive of Dean's and Lessin's film, after the airing of Park Avenue there was a sharp change in their approach, Mayer reported.

A week after Park Avenue aired, Lessin's and Dean's documentary was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival. It was initially named Citizen Corp but to avoid comparisons to a corpse, they changed the name to Citizen Koch. This was a reflection of the evolution of the film, which focused on the efforts by Governor Walker to ban collective bargaining by public-sector-employee unions. Koch Industries was one of Walker's primary financial backers and strongly supported Walker's anti-union agenda. The film reflected the view that the Supreme Court of the United States' ruling on Citizen's United allows corporations to drown individual voters' views with large monetary donations.

Dean and Lessin kept detailed records of all interactions with ITVS during the making of their film. After the airing of Park Avenue, ITVS began pushing to drop the Koch name from the title of the film and to place less emphasis on the Koch Brothers' political influence. Lois Vossen, the vice-president and senior series producer at ITVS, who is in charge of selecting programming for the "Independent Lens" series and pitching it to PBS expressed the conflict with the name Citizen Koch. She said of the title, “I think you understand why it’s problematic... We live in a world where we have to be aware that people with power have power.” ITVS knew that WNET would not air the film under the current title and with the Koch storyline in place.

Although Citizen Koch received a positive reception at Sundance, Deal's and Nessin's negotiations with ITVS began to suffer. The filmmakers worked on cutting the film according to ITVS's notes but the production company never viewed the changes. Instead, on April 15, 2013 they notified Lessin and Deal that it had “decided not to move forward with the project.” ITVS officials ascribe their decision to growing editorial differences. Their prepared statement said: “ITVS commenced negotiations to fund the film ‘Citizen Corp’ based on a written proposal. Early cuts of the film did not reflect the proposal, however, and ITVS ceased negotiations.” Lessin and Deal disagreed with this assessment of the situation. They released a joint statement which said, “The film we made is identical in premise and execution to the written and video proposals that ITVS green-lit last spring. ITVS backed out of the partnership because they came to fear the reaction our film would provoke. David Koch, whose political activities are featured in the film, happens to be a public-television funder and a trustee of both WNET and WGBH. This wasn’t a failed negotiation or a divergence of visions; it was censorship, pure and simple." The filmmakers consider this an ironic turn: “It’s the very thing our film is about—public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors.”

Despite WNET's efforts to appease Koch, he resigned from the board on May 16, 2013. The reason, according to Mayer, is said to be a result of his unwillingness to back a media organization that had so unsparingly covered its sponsor.

NOVA Controversy

In September 2010 there was an outpour of negative response to a re-broadcast of the NOVA documentary Being Human, which explored the ancient human past and the forces that shaped our evolution. David Koch is a major sponsor of NOVA and the negative reactions were an expression of concern that he was using his donation to influence the development of programming. In the last couple minutes of the first segment of the documentary, it presented a controversial theory by Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian, that climate change was an influential force in the development of human evolution.

Koch has been a major supporter of WGBH, the Boston affiliate of PBS, since the 1980s and is a member of the WGBH Board of Trustees. Because of his interest in science, his support has been intermittently directed to NOVA beginning in the early 1990s to be used for programming in archaeology, anthropology, and antiquities. Given the broad scope of NOVA's work, his donations have comprised roughly 2-3% of NOVA's overall budget. NOVA's Senior Executive Producer Paula S. Apsell is a former board member of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and this relationship has provided a valuable point of contact with leading scientific research in many fields.

In 2009 Koch donated $15 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History dedicated to the study of human evolution over six million years. A 15,000-square-foot hall was named after him, the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. A multimedia exhibit there explores the theory that mankind evolved in response to earlier climate change, and that echoes Koch's views. This was the same theory that was presented in the NOVA documentary. The three-way link between Potts, the Smithsonian and David Koch were not explained in the program or online.