Here's a rule of thumb about public relations: When P.R. pros begin furiously spinning a story before it has even come out, there's a pretty good chance the story is going to be damaging to the reputation of said P.R. pros' bosses.
And that's exactly what we're seeing right now, as an anonymous person or persons in the orbit of the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch try to discredit a forthcoming story in Bloomberg Markets magazine.
Based on the prebuttal items appearing this week in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller, and U.S. News and World Report, the Bloomberg story focuses on alleged malfeasance and/or fraud and/or bad behavior by the conglomerate Koch Industries.
One of those episodes apparently involves bribery by a Koch subsidiary in France, according to the piece by Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott. He reports that "Bloomberg reporters have been trolling among former Koch employees overseas in search of disaffected voices willing to talk," but Tapscott suspects the story may be animated by bias against the Tea Party. And he notes that, "Koch USA officials say they were as surprised and angered as anybody else when they were first apprised of the bribery allegations, and moved as quickly as possible to get to the bottom of the situation and fix it."
