Crusty Koch's ! - NYPOST.com

David and Charles Koch, the conservative oil industrialists, are now feuding with the American Society of Magazine Editors.

The brothers are apparently still fuming over an article, "Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging War Against Obama," by Jane Mayer that ran in The New Yorker last August and is now up for a National Magazine Award in Reporting from ASME.

Koch Industries Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mark Holden said in a letter to ASME board members that it is "inappropriate" for Mayer's piece to be considered for the award because her article is biased.

"Her article is ideologically slanted and a prime example of a disturbing trend in journalism, where agenda-driven advocacy masquerades as objective reporting," Holden said in a letter sent to ASME CEO Sid Holt and several ASME board members. "Given these facts, it would be inappropriate for ASME to give Ms. Mayer's article an award in reporting."

Aside from family feuds and dirty laundry, Mayer's article detailed how the brothers -- who control the second-largest privately held company in America, with sales estimated at $100 billion -- were backers of a wide network of conservative think tanks and groups that helped spawn the Tea Party revolution.

Mayer told Media Ink that the Koch brothers had turned down repeated attempts to be interviewed. "I called and/or e-mailed every week or so, asking for a chance to talk with the brothers for about five months," said Mayer. "The press person at Koch made it sound almost until the end like they might grant an interview with David. Instead, David gave an interview to New York magazine just as we were fact-checking the piece.

"And by the way, we sent them dozens, maybe even hundreds, of fact-checking questions, and for the first time in my more than a dozen years at The New Yorker, the Kochs and Koch Industries refused to even cooperate on fact-checking queries," she added.

David Remnick, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, also rallied to his reporter's defense. "Jane Mayer put together an accurate and honest piece of reporting. To watch them go around to try to undermine a superb piece of reportage is pathetic. . . I'm a little surprised to see a big-time operation behave like a bunch of Inspector Clouseaus," referring to the bumbling detective in the "Pink Panther" movies.

In the letter, Holden acknowledged that the brothers declined to be interviewed but insisted that they had helped out in the preparation of the article by providing names of potential interview subjects and background material.

ASME's Holt fired back: "As the sponsor of the National Magazine Awards since 1966, ASME deliberately eschews any attempt to influence the decisions of the judges who choose the finalists and winners. I can assure you that when the awards are announced on May 9, the winner of the 2011 National Magazine Award for Reporting will have been chosen by an impartial panel of experienced journalists."

The article was embroiled in controversy almost from the start. Apparently someone tried to leak disparaging material to The Daily Caller, a Web site run by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, claiming there were plagiarism issues in Mayer's reporting.

When Media Ink, which had also received the anonymous allegations, began investigating, it found the plagiarism claims to be bogus. The Daily Caller ultimately spiked the story because it didn't pan out. No one ever learned who was behind the dirty-trick operation to smear Mayer.

kkelly@nypost.com

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