Rolling Stone delivers a point-by-point smack down to an epic Koch Brothers freak-out.
Rolling Stone delivered a knockout punch to Koch Industries last October in a response to their freak out about a Rolling Stone expose.
As Joan McCarter of the Daily Kos wrote last week: “Tim Dickinson’s fantastic expose of the Koch brothers in the latest issue of Rolling Stone has gotten plenty of attention,” adding this is “for very good reason: it’s a well-sourced, deep dive into the very toxic—literally toxic—business that earned the Kochs enough money to buy up an entire political party. That and the wrongful death judgement, six felony and numerous misdemeanor convictions, the tens of millions of dollars in fines, and the trading with Iran are all included in the story, well worth your time.”
McCarter adds, and a quick perusal of the Koch’s response confirms that “No one has given it more attention, it seems, than the notoriously thin-skinned Kochs. In typical Koch fashion, they don’t argue the facts of Dickinson’s story. They attack Dickinson.”
In similar fashion to the Washington Post who delivered their own K.O. to Sarah Palin back in July, Rolling Stone delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to the Koch freakout.
Dickinson‘s 14-point take down of the Koch’s claim that his expose was “dishonest and misleading” is a brilliant work of art, but it is his intro that we appreciated the most and wanted to share with you here.
By Tim Dickinson | September 29, 2014
Koch Industries has written a lengthy response to our feature story on the company in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. In tweets the company apparently paid to promote, Koch bills this write-up as a “point-by-point response to Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson’s dishonest and misleading story.” The salient feature of Koch’s response is that the company does not argue the core facts of our 9,000-word expose. Instead, Koch targets the messenger. Koch’s top target here is not even Rolling Stone, but me, Tim Dickinson.
I find it, frankly, amusing that a company that has been convicted of six felonies and numerous misdemeanors; paid out tens of millions of dollars in fines; traded with Iran, and been so reckless in its business practices that two innocent teenagers ended up dead, attempts to impugn my integrity, and on the basis of my association with Mother Jones — where I worked as an editor in the late 1990s and early 2000s, on a team that was twice nominated and once awarded a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
Koch, in particular, takes umbrage with my reporting practices.
Be sure to reach the full response at Rolling Stone by going here.
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