Kochspeak in the Times

Journalistic coup or public relations placement?

What do you make of the Times's exclusive interview with David Koch, the friendlier, East Coast Koch? David Koch and his older brother Charles don't often appear in the news, and they don't often give interviews. They prefer to be known by their names appearing on the honor rolls of numerous big charities.

Yesterday, the Times scored a brief, and rare interview with David Koch at one of the socially desirable charity functions that rich people are wont to attend by virtue of their huge gifts. It sets them apart from you and me. Their peers, as well as the recipients of the largesse always applaud the featured donors. The story played on the top-level web page, but was on Page 12 of the paper version.

The occasion yesterday was the opening of a new research center at M.I.T. that will bear Koch's name. He gave the center $100 million. A trifle for a multi-billionaire, but vastly more than the $43,000 the Kochs' political action committee gave Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, which is why Koch is talking to the reporter. The Kochs' support of Walker, who's out to bust state employee unions in his state, became big news in the last few weeks, and the Kochs don't like it.

They counter by entertaining a few questions, the answers to which are recorded and published. The follow-up interviews in the article went to the doctors who benefit from the largesse. The doctors' work, of course, is a good thing, and it's perfectly understandable that the doctors are grateful. But something's amiss. It's rare that a single charity contribution gets 1,300 words in the Times.

As for Walker, oh, the Kochs don't really know what he's up to there "more than 1,000 miles away" from Cambridge, Mass., where the reporter caught up to Koch. The article doesn't dwell on the money that the Kochs gave to Walker, but quotes Koch as saying only a small portion of his donations goes to politicians. He complains in the article: "I read stuff about me and I say, 'God, I’m a terrible guy,' And then I come here and everybody treats me like I’m a wonderful fellow, and I say, Well, maybe I’m not so bad after all."

If you want to get a feeling for the big picture about Koch donations to all sorts of things, and the Koch's motivations, there was an excellent article in the New Yorker in August:

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. It was written by Jane Mayer, a former Wall Street Journal reporter now on the New Yorker staff. The Kochs refused to talk to her. I think they know how to choose their shots.

Maybe that's ancient history to the Times.

But Koch does respond to the famous phone call Ian Murphy, the editor of a tiny website in Buffalo, N.Y., who impersonated David Koch and got through to Gov. Walker when no one else could. Koch now says it was "identity theft".

In discussing the call, Koch himself explains the reason all this is important. Although the writer of this story soft-pedals it by pointing out twice that Koch was joking, Koch's one sentence is the essence of the role of money in politics, and a rather clear contradiction of Koch's assertion that he has no idea about what these little politicians are doing.

He told the Times: "I was thinking to myself, My God, if I called up a senator or a congressman to discuss something with them, and they heard David Koch is on the line, they’d immediately say, 'That’s that fraud again — tell him to get lost!'"

Oh, if that were true, what a great public service Ian Murphy has done!

But don't count on it. Those senators and congressmen will
answer the call.