Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For
Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/
Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an
Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major
corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It
appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS
employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,”
“Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a
book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees
edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party
movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy
theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to
liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account
as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media
sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is
connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees
like Jeff Taylor.
Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is
reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone
yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about
this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account
director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also
maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an
active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of
blogs and news websites.
As ThinkProgress has reported, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain
contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms.
Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also relied on a
conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely
linked to them by way of their donor conferences. We have documented how
the Koch message machine has targeted ThinkProgress and even placed hit-
pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it
seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their
image.
Update: New Media Strategies at one point tried to lie about its
affiliation with Koch Industries. The account "MBMAdmirer" wrote in
December on Wikipedia: "I am a citizen who has read about and admires the
Koch family. I was not pleased with the way that they have been presented
in the media. And I thought that I could come to Wikipedia to try to make
sure that there are balancing facts. Nothing I do is in coordination with
Koch or authorized by Koch.
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