Tag Archives: petition

TODAY: 14 Protests in U.S. Cities against Koch bid for Newspapers

Posted on by

Help bolster today’s fourteen protests to keep Tribune Company newspapers out of the Koch Brothers’ hands: Call Tribune Company and urge the company to reject the Kochs’ offer!

Add your voice: Click for directions to call Tribune Company and tell them to say no to Koch!

Photos below. Today, protests are being held in fourteen U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, to amplify over 500,000 petition signatures to Tribune Company not to sell its newspapers to Koch Industries. Tribune Company publishes the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, and four other daily national papers, as well as several weekly papers including Spanish publications.

The protests are being held outside the headquarters of Tribune Company’s major national newspapers, its TV stations, and cities with offices of companies who purchased Tribune Co after it filed for bankruptcy–Oaktree Capital Management (L.A.), Angelo Gordon & Co (New York City) and JP Morgan Chase (Boston).

Greenpeace has joined SEIU, Forecast the Facts, Daily Kos, Courage Campaign, Free Press, The Other 98%, DeSmogBlog, Common Cause’s national, Maryland and California chapters, CREDO Action, Working Families and 99 Uniting as the Coalition to Save our News. Continue reading →

Media Manipulators: David Koch resigns as WNET Trustee amid New Yorker article

Posted on by

Amid concerns that Koch Industries could buy several major U.S. newspapers from Tribune Company, industrial billionaire David Koch was forced to step down as trustee of WNET, New York City’s largest public TV station, after the New Yorker revealed how WNET gave Koch inappropriate influence over its programming. Mr. Koch was floating a seven-figure donation over WNET’s leadership as the station aired a movie that portrayed him as a particularly greedy Manhattan resident.

Sure enough, WNET didn’t wind up receiving David Koch’s hefty donation.

Click to read New Yorker’s article on David Koch’s influence over WNET. Image: The New Yorker.

Last Thursday, David Koch submitted his resignation at a WNET Board of Trustees meeting, and Brad Johnson at Forecast the Facts* reports that Koch’s name was scrubbed from WNET’s website several days prior to the resignation. Koch Industries’ public relations website, KochFacts, released a preemptive response to the New Yorker article (which it has now urgently elaborated on), attempting to stifle New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer and the details of her newest piece. David Koch’s resignation as a WNET Trustee, coupled with telling quotes from WNET president Neal Shapiro and other sources, makes it clear that Koch had too much influence at the decreasingly-public TV station in New York.

The article is a fascinating culmination of two portions of the ongoing legacy of the Koch brothers: their desire to influence media, which is playing out with their company’s bid for the Tribune Company’s eight national daily newspapers, and their attempts to intimidate journalists and silence reporting they consider unfavorable. Continue reading →

Tribune Company: Don’t Sell Newspapers to Koch Industries!

Posted on by

Today, Greenpeace proudly ads its voice to a growing coalition of groups to urge Tribune Company, publisher of the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other major US newspapers, not to sell their print media to Koch Industries. SIGN OUR PETITION TO TRIBUNE COMPANY CEO PETER LIGUORI TO KEEP TRIBUNE’S NEWSPAPERS OUT OF KOCH’S HANDS.Koch bros climate denial tribune

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the US, oversee an estimated $115 billion in annual revenue. The Kochs are each worth $31 billion to $45 billion, and the brothers have a bad habit of funneling tens of millions of dollars to organizations that deny the reality or severity of global warming. They have a keen interest in influencing US politics and culture, hosting secretive gatherings of wealthy elites who collectively raise hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on state and national politics. This quiet circle of business leaders already has a concerning amount of influence in the US media and has prioritized increasing that influence.

Greenpeace’s opposition to the Koch bid for Tribune Co. newspapers is rooted in the billionaire Koch brothers’ proven track record of peddling misinformation on climate change science through media outlets they already have ties to, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and the Washington Examiner. And when the Kochs can’t get favorable reporting, they fund organizations to gin up their own media that promote Koch priorities–busting unions, beating back environmental protection laws, smothering public education, watering down healthcare reform, and a variety of other initiatives that only the 1% stand to gain from.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION. And stay tuned for more updates from Greenpeace on our work to keep the Kochs’ corrupting influence out of Tribune Company newspapers.

Koch Bros Tribune Co? Climate change denial in Koch-friendly media

Posted on by

Brothers Charles and David Koch have spent decades and millions of dollars to influence the news we read in newspapers, see online and watch on TV. The Kochs regularly convene high security meetings with high society attendees, many of whom work in the media, influence it, or own it.

  

Now reporters across the country are eyeing the Koch’s first attempt to directly own media themselves. Last weekend’s New York Times confirmed Koch Industries’ bid for the Tribune Company as a way for the Kochs and their allies to “make sure our voice is heard.” Tribune’s newspapers reach tens of millions of U.S. citizens, an ideal captive audience for Charles Koch’s self-serving philosophy to promote “economic freedom,” and to end “crony capitalism,” an ironic choice of words for the one of country’s most infamous corporate political manipulators.

Tribune Co. owns eight newspapers and 23 TV stations across the country including the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and Hoy, the country’s 2nd largest daily Spanish newspaper, a clear asset for conservative politicians still reeling from their underwhelming rapport with the U.S. Hispanic population in the 2012 election.

Reaching Hispanic and Latino voters will be a major topic at the Kochs’ secretive “billionaires caucus” next week, which was delayed three months so the Kochs could audit the results of their 2012 electioneering activities, bolstered by hundreds of millions of dollars raised at previous Koch meetings. Continue reading →

DUKE: DUMP ALEC!

Posted on by

Written by Monica Embry, Greenpeace field organizer in Charlotte, NC.

Yesterday, members of Greenpeace, Energy Action Coalition, and other groups sent a message loud and clear to Duke Energy that we want them to dump ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) before the end of the Democratic National Convention.

Group Duke Dump ALEC

ALEC is a rightwing bill mill group that connects corporations with our elected officials
to draft model legislation in support of corporate profits over the welfare of people and our planet. ALEC has written legislation including Arizona’s racist immigration law SB1070, Stand Your Ground Laws relating to the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and many voter suppression laws such as Voter ID here in North Carolina. But that’s not all, ALEC also has an Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force which is working on legislation to stop regulation of coal fired power plants and to prevent laws from being passed that support renewable energy. Continue reading →

Over 60,000 Tell Obama to Prevent Chemical Disasters

Posted on by

What would you do if 60,000 people asked you to do something?

I bet you would sit up and take notice.

Yesterday, in a meeting with White House staff, Greenpeace joined representatives from a coalition of over 100 organizations to deliver 60,833 signatures to the White House calling on President Obama to use his authority to prevent chemical disasters. Labor union representatives talked about the workers who would be the first to die in a poison gas release at a chemical facility. Environmental Justice leaders described the communities surrounding dangerous facilities who are next in line to suffer the results of a disaster, and who are most often communities of color and low-income communities. Health experts explained that hospitals would be overrun and incapable of responding the casualties of a poison gas catastrophe.
Continue reading →