Last fall, Alex Gibney, a documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2008 for an expos\u00e9 of torture at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, completed a film called \u201cPark Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream.\u201d It was scheduled to air on PBS on November 12th. The movie had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation. \u201cPark Avenue\u201d is a pointed exploration of the growing economic inequality in America and a meditation on the often self-justifying mind-set of \u201cthe one per cent.\u201d As a narrative device, Gibney focusses on one of the most expensive apartment buildings in Manhattan\u2014740 Park Avenue\u2014portraying it as an emblem of concentrated wealth and contrasting the lives of its inhabitants with those of poor people living at the other end of Park Avenue, in the Bronx.<\/p>\n
Among the wealthiest residents of 740 Park is David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, who, with his brother Charles, owns Koch Industries, a huge energy-and-chemical conglomerate. The Koch brothers are known for their strongly conservative politics and for their efforts to finance a network of advocacy groups whose goal is to move the country to the right. David Koch is a major philanthropist, contributing to cultural and medical institutions that include Lincoln Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. In the nineteen-eighties, he began expanding his charitable contributions to the media, donating twenty-three million dollars to public television over the years. In 1997, he began serving as a trustee of Boston\u2019s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York\u2019s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country\u2019s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications\u2014which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times\u2014might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company \u201cas a vehicle for their political voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPark Avenue\u201d includes a multifaceted portrait of the Koch brothers, telling the history of their family company and chronicling their many donations to universities and think tanks. It features comments from allies like Tim Phillips, the president of the Kochs\u2019 main advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, and from activists in the Tea Party, including Representative Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, who share the Kochs\u2019 opposition to high taxes and regulation. (It also contains a few quotes from me; in 2010, I wrote an article about the Kochs for this magazine, noting that they were funding much of the opposition to President Barack Obama by quietly subsidizing an array of advocacy groups.)<\/p>\n
A large part of the film, however, subjects the Kochs to tough scrutiny. \u201cNobody\u2019s money talks louder than David Koch\u2019s,\u201d the narrator, Gibney, says, describing him as a \u201cright-wing oil tycoon\u201d whose company had to pay what was then \u201cthe largest civil penalty in the E.P.A.\u2019s history\u201d for its role in more than thirty oil spills in 2000. At one point, a former doorman\u2014his face shrouded in shadow, to preserve his anonymity\u2014says that when he \u201cstarted at 740\u201d his assumption was that \u201ccome around to Christmastime I\u2019m going to get a thousand from each resident. You know, because they are multibillionaires. But it\u2019s not that way.\u201d He continues, \u201cThese guys are businessmen. They know what the going rate is\u2014they\u2019re not going to give you anything more than that. The cheapest person over all was David Koch. We would load up his trucks\u2014two vans, usually\u2014every weekend, for the Hamptons . . . multiple guys, in and out, in and out, heavy bags. We would never get a tip from Mr. Koch. We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch. Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too\u2014yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
For decades, federal funding for public broadcasting has been dwindling, and the government\u2019s contribution now makes up only twelve per cent of PBS\u2019s funds. Affiliates such as WNET are almost entirely dependent on gifts, some of which are sizable: in 2010, WNET received fifteen million dollars from James Tisch, the C.E.O. of Loews Corporation, and his wife, Merryl. (James Tisch is now the chairman of WNET\u2019s board.) In New York City, such benefactors inevitably live in lavish buildings. Indeed, several relatives of WNET board members live at 740 Park.<\/p>\n