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/

[Peter Lemkin]

Saturday, May 28, 2011
Koch Brothers Behind "Healthy Formaldehyde" Campaign
Original Link: http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/09/koch...-campaign/

By Leon Kaye

It isn't easy being a Koch brother these days. Preferring to stay behind the scenes and fund causes that have little benefit for society yet plenty for their business portfolio, they have found that more of their schemes have been revealed. They have been funding California's Proposition 23, which would overturn AB32 (California's emissions reduction law); their funding of purported groups denying climate change makes ExxonMobil's contribution look like that of a dime store's, and now they are behind an organization that is attempting to convince the public that formaldehyde is safe. …

Formaldehyde is in some pharmaceuticals, building materials, and yes, those animals that you dissected in your high school biology classes. Millions of tons are manufactured around the world annually, and it is naïve to believe it could be replaced with substitutes overnight. Mind you, I am a little biased as I had an uncle who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease), and some research has linked formaldehyde to ALS. With the dependence on products that make life convenient, lies the possibility that some inconvenience could occur in the long run.

Many chemicals can be safe when they are handled with integrity and are not overused. But that is not always the case, which is why health issues have been documented over the years. And consumers should know what is in the products they buy and what various organizations have stated about toxicity levels in chemicals present in those products. California's Air Resources Board, for example, has suggested that formaldehyde could be a potential air contaminant; the EPA, meanwhile, has identified formaldehyde as a possible carcinogen. Like many chemicals, synthetic or "from nature," there is always the "possibility" that a material is harmful. So as is the case with many things in life that we encounter, there is a possibility that something could cause us harm and make us sickso as consumers, we should expect those risks to be articulated and transparent, and then make that decision whether we will go with product or find an alternative.

This is particularly helpful in the case of building materials, especially with the push to make homes more energy efficient. Plenty of documentation exists that often the most harmful air we breathe is in our homes and officesand this is coming from someone who's lived in Seoul, the San Joaquin Valley, Baltimore, and LA. Formaldehyde is in many building materials, which are great if they help us make our homes energy efficiently, to a point. It is beneficial that we prevent heat from leaking out of our homes, but there is the trade-off of having more contaminants like formaldehyde accumulate in the homehence the need to either ban the use in building materials, or at least ensure we have a market where alternative products exist. I make the analogy to a friend who does not allow her kids to drink cola or other potentially unhealthy snacks in the homeshe cannot control what they eat at school or at friends' homes, but she sure can make the choice in the environment she controls. So I look at building products and other goods the same wayI may work in an office built before I was born and likewise cannot control the conditions of other places that I visit, but I sure can make those decisions about where I spend my evenings and weekends.

I am not sure what is more offensiveindustries like tobacco and asbestos that denied any dangers associated with their products for decades, or a purported industry group that shows pictures of multicultural families that say that hey, formaldehyde is all right because it is in trees. And to that end, it is even more absurd when some make the assertion that those who advocate a clean energy economy or dare I say, environmental causes, are exerting some kind of socialist "mind control" or crass government-subsidized agenda, when it is well documented that industries from fast food to oil exploration companies have been extracting government subsidies for yearsleaving the rest of us to pay for and subsidize the costs, whether they create health epidemics or leave behind massive environmental cleanups.

It is not my or anyone's business to tell Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, or my neighbors where or how to spend their money. But when characters like the Koch brothers fund phony organizations with bucolic sounding titles to obfuscate an issue or take down anyone who brings up another point of view, or speaks out to expose the risks with a product on the market, it is anyone's perogative to expose them for the frauds that they are. Let me have a choice, and do not passive aggressively dupe us into thinking that something that may pose a danger, even if a small one, to be 100% safe.