WashPo Embarrasses Itself (#1 Lesson in Reporting: Check your Sources!)
The Left’s obsession with the Koch Brothers is so out of control that the Washington Post, once a respected newspaper, now nothing but a shill for left wing causes, has made itself a laughing stock with its latest article entitled, “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.”
The article asserts:
The Koch Industries subsidiary holds leases on 1.1 million acres — an area nearly the size of Delaware — in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, according to an activist group that studied Alberta provincial records.
The main point of the Post story, which relied uncritically on a two-page report by the far-left International Forum on Globalization (“IFG”), is dead wrong. The Post story itself acknowledges that the tar sands encompass 35 million acres, so Koch’s 1.1 million comprise less than 3% of the total. The whole point of this exercise is to make the Keystone Pipeline all about Koch.
The IFG apparently were too lazy to check on any other companies’ leaseholds, and the Post reporters obviously don’t understand that the big oil companies (Koch is not a big oil company) are not the biggest players in Alberta.
Why would the Washington Post embarrass itself by republishing a thoroughly discredited attempt to link the Koch brothers to the Keystone Pipeline? Because that is a Democratic Party talking point, and the Post is a Democratic Party newspaper. But the truth is a little worse than that.
Who is Post reporter Juliet Eilperin? Among other things, she is married to Andrew Light, who writes on climate policy for the Center for American Progress (“CAP”). CAP is an Obama administration front group headed by John Podesta, who is a “special advisor” to the Obama administration. CAP’s web site, Think Progress, has carried out a years-long vendetta against the Koch brothers that has focused largely on the environment. This article was meant to trash the Koch brothers and the Keystone Pipeline in one shot. Instead, it made the Post look like unprofessional hacks.
Hey Post, would you prefer scrambled or poached eggs on your face?
