On Monday, Bloomberg Markets Magazine published a 7,000+ word, 14 author hit piece, on Koch Industries Inc. The headline? Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales. But today, Bloomberg Businessweek exposes that headline as a fraud:
Did Koch break the law? It seems not. The company relied on a loophole in the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act and subsequent laws and executive orders that make it illegal for U.S. companies to do business in Iran’s oil sector, the lifeblood of the rogue nation’s economy. This weakness in the sanctions regime has allowed opportunistic foreign subsidiaries of American companies to conduct business in Iran as long as American or U.S.-based employees weren’t involved in the transactions.
The Atlantic‘s Daniel Indiviglio is even less kind to the original Bloomberg story:
All reporters have bias. It’s unavoidable: bias results even through as simple an action as deciding what to write an article about. Much of that bias isn’t necessarily a problem. If you report facts in a fair-and-balanced manner, then readers can judge the story for themselves based on those facts. But at other times, some reporters’ bias cuts so deep that it causes them to produce an article that squints too hard to see smoke when there is no fire. Unfortunately, such an article was produced this week by Bloomberg Markets Magazine on Koch Industries.
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Really, the most shocking thing about this expose is that an army of Bloomberg reporters working for months only found eight instances of alleged misconduct by a giant multinational over the span of 63 years. To put this in context, do a quick Google search of “GE Fines.” Within a few pages of results you find:
* $16.1 million fine for Pentagon fraud (1990)
* $200 million settlement for various environmental pollution claims (1998)
* $23.5 million settlement for bribes associated with Iraq Oil for Food program (2010)
* $50 million fine for accounting fraud (2009) * $97 million for unlawful debt collection practices (1998)
* $1 million settlement for misrepresentation of airline circuit board testing
* $7.1 million settlement for fraud regarding aircraft engine plant (1995)
* $69 million fine related to defense contracting (1992)
…
The reality is that this article failed to uncover any truly damning revelations about Koch Industries.
…
Really, the most shocking thing about this expose is that an army of Bloomberg reporters working for months only found eight instances of alleged misconduct by a giant multinational over the span of 63 years. To put this in context, do a quick Google search of “GE Fines.” Within a few pages of results you find:
* $16.1 million fine for Pentagon fraud (1990)
* $200 million settlement for various environmental pollution claims (1998)
* $23.5 million settlement for bribes associated with Iraq Oil for Food program (2010)
* $50 million fine for accounting fraud (2009) * $97 million for unlawful debt collection practices (1998)
* $1 million settlement for misrepresentation of airline circuit board testing
* $7.1 million settlement for fraud regarding aircraft engine plant (1995)
* $69 million fine related to defense contracting (1992)
…
The reality is that this article failed to uncover any truly damning revelations about Koch Industries.
