'Incestuous and unethical': Washington Post's Koch oil sands piece a 'disgraceful episode'

Brett T. | 11:19 PM on April 08, 2014

As Twitchy reported, Powerline’s John Hinderaker took apart a March 20th Washington Post article about Koch Industries and its leases in Canada’s oil sands. Hinderaker found that the Post’s story “relied uncritically on a goofball far-left report” provided by an anti-Keystone XL pipeline activist group called the International Forum on Globalization.

The next day, the Post printed something vaguely resembling an explanation: reporters Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin wrote the piece because “the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year.” Weeks later, though, the Post finally printed a real correction:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece said Koch Industries was the largest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands. On a net acreage basis the company is the largest American and foreign holder of leases in the region, but it might narrowly trail two Canadian companies overall.

Hinderaker writes today in response:

Substitute “does” for “might” and you have a true statement, but one that fails to address what the controversy is all about: the Post’s article was published for the sole purpose of suggesting that Koch is the main force behind the Keystone Pipeline, and that suggestion is 100% false. Far from being the driving force, Koch has no interest in the pipeline at all. An honest correction would admit that the March 20 article never should have been published.

This fake quasi-correction is yet another firing offense for the fake reporters involved. http://t.co/TwAimkXgvK

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) April 9, 2014