The New York Times has retracted a particularly appalling error from its March 30 editorial attacking Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS). The editorial claimed that Pompeo received $80 thousand in campaign contributions from Charles and David Koch. That claim was the entire substance of the editorial, and was the basis of its title “Without the Campaign Donors, This Wouldn’t Be Possible.”
Since $40k is well over the legal contribution limit, it would surprising if the claim were true. And it’s not. John Hinderaker shows that, to obtain the $80k figure, the NYT searched for every occurrence of the string “Koch” and added the sums together. Thus, they included the Koch PAC, every contribution made by an employee of Koch Industries (since contributors are required to list their employers), and even unrelated people who happen to have the name Koch.
In fact, Charles Koch gave just $2400 and David Koch gave nothing at all.
Hinderaker also asked the Times to explain what fact-checking, if any, is done on its editorials. They declined to answer, but I think we know the answer anyway.
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