On 11/30/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I can't get too worked up over this purchase, except to address the
larger issue of monopolies. Time Magazine was always my choice when I
wanted to see what the "old line conservatives" were thinking. I
suspect that they didn't look anything like their counterparts today,
but since I haven't peeked between the covers for over 50 years, I
have nothing to contribute. But on the bigger issue, we need to
protest any merger. Even if it's a merger between two chewing gum
manufacturers. How soon will we be ruled by a small collection of
huge corporations? These growing monsters hold nearly total power
over our former democratic lives.
Can we see just a short few years down the road, a new Pledge? I
pledge allegiance to the Slogan, "Toyota/Ford will carry you to the
Moon, and beyond". But whether it comes to that, or not, the world
will be different under Corporate Rule. And thanks to our own Supreme
Court, that day is coming.
And we worry about Terrorists infiltrating our national borders! As
Pogo told Albert, "We've met the enemy, and they are us!"..
Carl Jarvis
On 11/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Can Time, Inc., Survive the Kochs?
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
29 November 17
Time magazine’s cover story from its November 6th issue was a point of
pride
in its twelve-person Washington bureau. It featured three swinging
wrecking
balls emblazoned with Donald Trump’s face and a tough-minded, fact-laden
investigative report on three Trump Cabinet secretaries who were
systematically dismantling protective regulations in their respective
government agencies. The section on Scott Pruitt, the head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, was particularly critical, opening with
a
story from a mother from Minnesota whose eight-month-old baby appeared to
have suffered brain damage from a pesticide that Pruitt’s E.P.A. had
recently removed from the list of banned chemicals after meeting with
executives from the company that manufactures it. (An E.P.A. spokesperson
told Time that the conversation was brief and that the pesticide,
chlorpyrifos, was not discussed.)
The sale of Time Inc. earlier this week, to the Meredith Corporation—a
deal
made possible by an infusion of six hundred and fifty million dollars
from
Koch Industries’ private-equity arm—has called into question whether such
independent, accountability journalism from the media company will
continue.
For decades, Charles and David Koch have spent a staggering amount of
money
from their family’s private oil, gas, and chemical fortune to attack
government regulations—particularly concerning the environment, where
their
company has a history of record-breaking violations. The brothers even
helped sponsor Pruitt’s political career. As the New York Times reported,
political operatives working for the Kochs also wrote the early blueprint
for the Trump Administration’s rollback of Obama-era regulations, a
corporate wish list called, “A Roadmap to Repeal.” And, as I reported,
Pruitt placed Patrick Traylor, a lawyer for Koch Industries and other
fossil-fuel companies, in charge of the E.P.A.’s enforcement of key
anti-pollution laws. In other words, the Kochs are directly invested in
promoting policies and politicians that the publications they now partly
own
would ordinarily cover.
Despite their long and deep involvement in trying to align American
politics
with their conservative libertarian views, spokesmen for the Kochs insist
that the multibillionaire brothers have no plans to play any role in
running
or shaping the editorial content of the Time Inc. publications. In
addition
to Time magazine, the company publishes Fortune, People, Sports
Illustrated,
Money, and several other previously iconic national weeklies. Instead,
spokesmen for the Kochs and for Meredith say that the brothers intend to
act
merely as “passive” investors. They and their underlings will have no
seat
on the merged company’s board of directors, and play no managerial role
other than meeting on a quarterly basis with senior management to discuss
“financial and strategic matters.” According to an eighty-page agreement
on
the merger filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Kochs
do,
however, reserve the right to send an emissary to attend board meetings
if
Meredith fails to make good on its hefty 8.5-per-cent interest payments
to
the Kochs. But the brothers’ motive for financing such a large chunk of
the
$2.8 billion merger, according to those close to the deal, is purely
financial, akin to the role that Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican telecom
tycoon, has played at the Times, where he is the single largest investor.
Those familiar with the Kochs’ history, however, have reason to be
skeptical
about their professed passivity. Charles Koch, in particular, is known
for
the unusually tight control he exerts over Koch Industries, the
second-largest private company in the U.S., and also over his and his
brother’s political and philanthropic ventures. As I wrote in my book
“Dark
Money,” a former political partner of the Koch brothers, Murray Rothbard,
once testified that Charles “cannot tolerate dissent” and will “go to any
end to acquire/retain control.” His brother David, meanwhile, has been
quoted saying that “if we’re going to give a lot of money, we will make
darn
sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent.”
This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred
million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of
allied
conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories
in
the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time
magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their
allies
to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel
as
free to do so now?
“Everyone who has worked in journalism knows that even if you never see
the
rich and powerful owner of your publication, and you have the most
powerful,
independent editors, it inevitably has an effect on what you write, or on
what you leave out. You just don’t do a terrible story on yourself,”
Emily
Bell, a professor of professional practice at the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism, told me. Bell said that she doubts that
the
Kochs have put six hundred and fifty million dollars into the purchase of
a
media company saddled with ailing print publications only for financial
reasons. “It can’t just be the return on investment, because, if so,
you’re
in the wrong asset class,” she said. But even if that is their intent,
she
argued, they will end up exerting cultural and political influence
because
“investments in media companies are different from any other kind of
investment. Media companies affect the broader cultural life.”
The Kochs’ ownership stake in a mainstream media company may affect not
just
how the public thinks about politics but how it thinks about the Kochs.
For
decades, the brothers have been regarded as fonts of fringe ideas, so
much
so that William F. Buckley, Jr., who famously tried to purge the
conservative movement of its more embarrassing followers, once dismissed
their extreme libertarianism as “anarcho-totalitarianism.” For years, the
Kochs eschewed press coverage, following their father’s admonition that
“it’s when the whale spouts that he gets harpooned.” But in recent years
they and their company have spent a fortune on advertising and public
relations aimed at improving their reputations. Becoming press barons,
even
if passive ones, may burnish their images more effectively.
Bell suggested that media investments often “confer the perception of
influence on their owners,” and also an aura of public-spiritedness. She
pointed out that for Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of
Amazon,
buying the Washington Post “was a tiny investment for him, but it’s
transformed his profile because nothing pleases journalists like someone
investing in journalism.”
Despite the reassurances from those close to the deal that the Kochs have
no
plans to use the media platform to proselytize, many of the liberal
activists who closely track them remain suspicious. “There is zero chance
that the Koch brothers are going to keep their hands off the content of
these magazines,” Mary Bottari, the deputy director of the Center for
Media
and Democracy, a nonprofit that documents right-wing and corporate
influence-buying, told me. “When they donated six hundred and fifty
million
dollars to Florida State University, they wrote a contract giving them
control over hiring decisions in the economics department,” she said.
“The
entire point of the purchase is to infuse the mainstream media with their
extreme views.”
Scott Peterson, the executive director of Checks and Balances Project, an
environmental watchdog group, agreed. “Acquiring a major media platform
is
all part of their repositioning campaign,” he argued. “The Kochs want to
be
thought of as free-market philosophers, not protectors of a fossil-fuel
empire.”
Although the Kochs have flirted with other media purchases in the
past—including taking a close look before deciding not to buy what was
then
called the Tribune Company, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times and
Chicago Tribune, a few years ago—their relationship with reporters who
have
covered them has hardly been a love story. Their corporate Web site used
to
feature a section called “KochFacts” that attacked reporters whose
stories
they disliked, including my own. The Kochs also hired private
investigators
to discredit critics, including investigative reporters such as myself,
as
was discussed here. In 2012, the Kochs paid for Facebook ads attacking
what
they called the “deceptions” of David Sassoon, the founder and publisher
of
the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site InsideClimate News, because the Kochs
took umbrage at his site’s coverage of their controversial Canadian oil
interests. The attack ads featured a mugshot of Sassoon, personalizing
the
public-relations battle in a manner usually reserved for gutter political
campaigns. After showing such contempt for the press, it’s not surprising
that the Kochs’ vows to respect independent journalism have struck some
as
unconvincing.
Ironically, though, reporters at Time Inc. may end up having more to fear
from the Meredith Corp. than from the Kochs. According to the Daily
Beast,
the real role of the Kochs’ investment may be to enable Meredith to sell
off
the publications it previously expressed little interest in, including
Time
magazine, to others. One person who has in the past expressed interest in
the Time Inc. publications is David Pecker, the chief executive of
American
Media, Inc., which owns the unabashedly pro-Trump tabloid the National
Enquirer. Last July, Pecker told my colleague Jeffrey Toobin that he
wished
he could buy Time Inc., and was in search of a deep-pocketed partner to
help. As pockets go in America today, very few are deeper than those of
Charles and David Koch, who, together, according to Forbes, are worth an
estimated $96.6 billion.
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