Kaplan Test Prep Still Brokering Meetings with Lobbyists

Zachary Roth reports that Newsweek, a subsidiary of Washington Post aka Kaplan Test Prep, is teaming up with the American Petroleum Institute to host an event on climate change.

Newsweek magazine is teaming up with an oil-industry lobbying group to host an event on climate-change and energy issues involving lawmakers, just as the Senate gets set to take up legislation on the subject.

The panel discussion, entitled “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?,” will feature Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, and, as moderator, Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, according to an email invitation sent by a Newsweek business staffer and obtained by TPMmuckraker.

Roth is working off the invite for the event, rather than any internal funding documents, so he doesn’t explain who is funding this shin-dig. But he does provide a list of those–aside from Gerard and Fineman–who have been involved in the schmoozy relationship between Newsweek and API:

  • Newsweek International editor Rana Foroohar
  • Newsweek International managing editor Tony Emerson
  • Columnist Jonathan Alter
  • Editor Evan Thomas

And Roth notes that one of APIs front groups has a big ad today in the WaPo:

And today, the Washington Post is running a full page ad from a group called Energy Citizens, attacking climate change legislation. Energy Citizens is essentially a front group for API — the two share a Washington address, and the astroturf rallies that API organized this summer were officially projects of Energy Citizens.

Roth asked Newsweek if they had thought to invite an environmentalist. Director of External Relations Mark Block feigned interest, then said they probably couldn’t do it because they had to give Congressmen time to bloviate.

Asked whether Newsweek planned to invite a representative from an environmental group to the upcoming event, to balance Gerard’s appearance, Block said the magazine “would definitely consider that opportunity,” if there were a high-profile environmentalist who might be appropriate. But he said that because members of Congress would likely also participate, time constraints might dictate against it.

Again, thus far we have no proof that this is another WaPo Pay2Play scheme. Rather, Newsweek pitches this as them trying to make news, with reporters invited and on-the-record treatment understood.

But it does point out how cozy Newsweek is with the climate denier industry.

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12 replies
  1. phred says:

    We may not have proof, but since most of the climate denier industry floats on a sea of oil revenues, the possibility of this schmooze-fest not being another episode of WaPo Pay2Play seems negligible.

  2. Mary says:

    I don’t know why you are concerned EW. We all know that Newsweek is so radically liberal that they made Cheney cry and hide. /snark

    Maybe Isikoff will come up with an anonymous source to explain to us how the API has insta-decarbonification authority.

  3. alabama says:

    What’s a newspaper (or a newsmagazine) without credibility?

    I think the “stay behinds” at the WaPo and Newsweek have simply given up all hope, and I find that very sad. They’re hanging on to their jobs to support their families, and they’ve come to believe that their only raison d’êtreis to make money for the boss; if they fail at this, they’re fired.

    My own folks are mostly journalists;somewhat to my surprise, they’ve been in the business continuously since 1885 (and that’s not a typographical error!). They’ve always had a cardinal rule: when the boss trashes the product, out you go. At one point or another, most have had to act on that rule, and some of them more than once. Not out of some high-minded notion of purity, but out a primitive, or savage, will to survive. No one gets rich on this rule, but then no one has left the field after leaving a paper, either.

    Man up, oh mighty villagers!

  4. freepatriot says:

    they can’t dazzle ew with their brilliance

    they can’t baffle ew with their bullshit

    I wonder what they’re gonna come up with next

  5. Teddy Partridge says:

    “I’m shocked, shocked, to discover there’s gambling….”

    Actually, fuck it. No I’m not. I wonder if KO will ask Fineman about this “opportunity” tonight during Countdown.

    hahahaha

  6. orionATL says:

    am i wrong in recalling that a recent wapo (the corpse, not the newspaper) financial document listed kaplan as wapo corpse’s largest source of revenue (25%?> ?

    no, i wasn’t wrong, at least not in direction, but a lot in magnitude.

    how ’bout these profit numbers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103001166.html

    think the good ship wapoop might be pumping water like mad below deck?

    which is why they retain petrified columnists broder, will, samuelson, krauthammer, dionnne, cohen, king.

    they’re syndicated!

    the post is playing monoply and it’s stable of dumb-assed columnists are all the newspaper has got left to collect rent with –

    but then there’s kaplan test prep.

    imagine that, 60% of the post’s revenue comes from being paid to teach children how to test more knowledgeable than they are.

    it’s a wonderful corporate-limned society we live in today, and amoral corporations desperate to survive such as wapoop help make it so.

  7. orionATL says:

    mary @4

    i’ve been thinking the same.

    maybe he’s just having to get himself back together after having his career destroyed.

  8. orionATL says:

    orion @9

    i hate it when the damned machine eats my spaces.

    pac man must be stopped from running on firedoglake.

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