Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson appears to be in the middle of something of a tiff with the Koch brothers. After publishing a scathing article detailing the environmental record of Koch Industries and the businesses' myriad transgressions in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, the Kochs have fired back with a bullet-point rebuttal detailing various of what the inaccuracies in what they called a "dishonest and misleading article." Mr. Dickinson, for his part, is undaunted, and has offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the criticisms advanced by the Koch brothers.
Mr. Dickinson's response is almost certainly bullshit. But leave that aside, because his response is also entirely beside the point. The real point is that Mr. Dickinson, like many reporters, utilizes court records and judicial holdings in his reporting, despite appearing to not have the first idea of how the law actually works. Not just at the specific level—the nitty-gritty of legal minutiae for which attorneys are specially trained—but at the broad level of what a judicial holding says about the underlying facts. Anyone seeking to hold his- or herself out as a journalist who relies on legal documents for the stories should make the effort to understand what they actually say, within the context in which they were written—just as one would expect a journalist to familiarize him- or herself with the basics of the scientific method before becoming a science reporter. Mr. Dickinson's misunderstanding (or worse, willful misrepresentation) of how the legal process works grossly undermines his credibility as a journalist.
The centerpiece of Mr. Dickinson's response is a rebuttal to what he calls "The chief 'gotcha' point in Koch's write up" (because "gotcha" points are always the third of fourteen bullet points): a dispute of the facts underlying the closure of a facility in North Pole, Alaska. Before the Kochs purchased the facility, and for some time thereafter, sulfolane leaks from the facility contaminated local groundwater (which is bad). The Koch brothers contend that after discovering the problem, they "voluntarily began providing alternative water to the community" (which is good. If probably motivated more by risk mitigation than by charity) and eventually shut down refining operations (which is . . . ambiguous? Yes the leaks stopped but . . . also people lost jobs? I digress).
Irrelevant, says Mr. Dickinson. A "state judge in Alaska [twice ruled] that Koch is solely responsible for the 2.5- by 3-mile plume of the refining solvent sulfolane that has fouled the groundwater for hundreds of residents there. . . . [t]he judge ruled that Koch's failure to seek redress from the previous owner within the statute of limitations have made the pollution at North Pole Koch's problem, alone," so clearly they are morally culpable.
Except, y'know, that last part (that isn't in quotes) is probably not what the judge said, and for Mr. Dickinson to glean it from the court's rulings probably entails a misunderstanding of how law works. See, a basic tenet of corporate law is that the purchase of assets (the valuable part) presumptively includes a purchase of liabilities (the not-valuable part). So, when Koch industries purchased the North Pole facility, it assumed liability for any environmental damage caused by the facility's operations, unless it could show that the previous owner was liable because, e.g., he or she had failed to disclose the problem. Koch Industries claims to have eventually (if lackadiasically) discovered the problem and immediately taken remedial action. The court, according to Mr. Dickinson's own reporting, said that Koch Industries was liable because the claim against the previous owner was too late, which is another way of saying "not soon enough to get a ruling on who was morally responsible," which is another-nother way of saying "the court expressed no opinion on who was culpable, but just stated who was liable."
To translate away for a moment, imagine you buy a car, and five years later discover the car has been leaking motor oil the entire time, because the duct tape the dealer used to hide the problem fell off quickly. You point out that you didn't try to poison the environment, but the court doesn't care, because something happened 3 years ago that you should have investigated which would have led to you discovering the problem and bringing suit against the dealer—since you didn't, it's your problem now.
That appears to be what happened to the Kochs in this instance. Which is fine, because our laws are set up to make sure someone pays when things go wrong, based on a variety of factors—someone is liable, even if they aren't culpable. But far too often, journalists misapprehend this distinction, and use liability as evidence of culpability. Mr. Dickinson did that to try to prove he was right, and that he isn't culpable for any misrepresentation.
And he isn't! He (probably?) did not commit conscious wrong. But he sure as hell is liable for journalistic malpractice.
No comments:
Post a Comment