Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’

[Magda Hassan]

Beside screwing with EPA regulations meddling in Wisconsin and courting Supreme Court Justices - what else are the Koch brothers up to now? Try rewriting Wikipedia. ThinkProgress has uncovered evidence that the Koch's employed a PR firm to act as a "sockpuppet" for them on websites.
A "sockpuppet" is Internet lingo to refer to someone who creates a fake online identity to hype up himself or herself or a company they work for on message boards or social networking sites. If a sockpuppet is found out it usually leads to the person's account being disabled. The Koch's "sockpuppet" edited their several Wikipedia pages to remove any references to the Tea Party hype up George Soros conspiracy theories and delete any citations to progressive media outlets essentially scrubbing the Internet of any potentially embarrassing or damning facts about the Kochs.
The Kochs have contracted with dozens of PR firms they are BILLIONAIRES to ensure their political agenda is kept under wraps. But thanks to some great reporting nowadays these guys aren't in the shadows anymore. http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/0...-wikipedia

Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical Sock Puppets'

By Lee Fang on Mar 9, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in "word-of-mouth marketing" for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for "Charles Koch," "David Koch," "Political activities of the Koch family," and "The Science of Success" (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of "MBMAdmirer," NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a "sock puppet" one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor.
Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, "I'm not going to talk about this, thanks," before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites.
As ThinkProgress has reported, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms. Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also relied on a conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely linked to them by way of their donor conferences. We have documented how the Koch message machine has targeted ThinkProgress and even placed hit-pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their image.
Update


New Media Strategies at one point tried to lie about its affiliation with Koch Industries. The account "MBMAdmirer" wrote in December on Wikipedia: "I am a citizen who has read about and admires the Koch family. I was not pleased with the way that they have been presented in the media. And I thought that I could come to Wikipedia to try to make sure that there are balancing facts. Nothing I do is in coordination with Koch or authorized by Koch."
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/03...ck-puppet/