Last week, the New York Times ran a front page, in-depth article about the fossil fuel industry’s advertising push leading up to the election.   The article, “Fossil Fuel Industry Ads Dominate TV Campaign,” looks at how an industry disenchanted by President Obama’s policies became more involved in politics.

The  New York Times has a history of wading into the campaign finance debate.  Although the Times is a well-respected, prominent publication, they have a distinguished history of writing misleading articles on the topic.

Last week’s article is far worse than misleading; it levels very serious accusations implicating a Presidential candidate, a prominent businessman (and his family), and a corporation.  These accusations and assertions are simply wrong. The Times states:

The surge in energy-related political spending partly reflects the rise in overall election spending after the Supreme Court lifted limits on corporate contributions in 2010. Mr. Romney, for example, has accepted $3 million in contributions from Oxbow, a coal company controlled by William Koch, a brother of David Koch.

In the first sentence, the Times makes the patently false assertion that the Citizens United decision lifted the ban on corporate contributions to candidates.  At the moment, it is illegal for companies to give money to federal candidates.  By the same token, it is also at this point illegal for federal candidates to accept donations.

The second sentence makes the claim that this did, in fact, happen.

Pretending for a moment that the Times is correct and the corporate contribution ban was lifted, Oxbow would still have violated contribution limits by $2,995,000 and Mr. Romney would have violated the law by accepting the contribution.

The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets page for Oxbow Corp page tracks contributions from Oxbow’s PAC, individuals who work at Oxbow and their family’s contributions, not the corporation itself. The page asserts that Oxbow has made $3,101,950 in total contributions defined as: “PAC or employees and their family made contributions to candidates, party committees like the RNC or the DSSC, other PACs, outside spending groups or 527s in the current cycle.”  Eric Lipton, one of the article’s authors, clarified that they came to this number by watching hundreds of ads, rating them based on their message, and used estimates on how much it cost to run the ads using data from Kantar Media.

According to Open Secrets, employees from Oxbow contributed only $10,000 to Mitt Romney and a grand total of $50,750 to all federal candidates.  In other words, the New York Times inflated the amount Oxbow employees gave to Mr. Romney (assuming that is what they meant to calculate) by 300,000%.

Intentional or not, the New York Times published a first-page story attacking a Presidential candidate and an entire corporation, using faulty information to justify their narrative.  The Times has done a grave disservice to their readership and seriously undermined its integrity as a serious news source.

CCP calls on the Times to retract their erroneous story.