Washington Post Defends George Will: The Editorial Page ‘Checks Facts To The Fullest Extent Possible’
Washington Post Defends George Will: The Editorial Page ‘Checks Facts To The Fullest Extent Possible’
The Washington Post “multi-layer editing process,” via The Onion.
George Will’s recent “global cooling” column contained several demonstrable falsehoods. Despite waves of criticism, George Will and Post opinion editor Fred Hiatt have refused to respond or run corrections on Will’s “stunning, boneheaded, egregious errors.”
When contacted by the Wonk Room, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, veteran reporter Andy Alexander, “sought clarification from the editorial page editors”:
Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will’s column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors.
Wow. I’d hate to see what Will’s columns look like before the “multi-layer editing process.”
Full email from Andy Alexander (ombudsman@washpost.com):
Dear Mr. Johnson,
Thank you for your e-mail. The Post’s ombudsman typically deals with issues involving the news pages. But I understand the point you and many e-mailers are making, and for that reason I sought clarification from the editorial page editors. Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will’s column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors. The University of Illinois center that Will cited has now said it doesn’t agree with his conclusion, but earlier this year it put out a statement (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf) that was among several sources for this column and that notes in part that “Observed global sea ice area, defined here as a sum of N. Hemisphere and S. Hemisphere sea ice areas, is near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,”
Best wishes,
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman
We have plenty of references that support what George wrote, and we have others that dispute that. So we didn't have enough to send in a correction.The Arctic Climate Research Center itself is one of the references that disputes what George wrote. The primary reference that supports Will, so far as the Wonk Room can tell, is this January 1st blog post by DailyTech's Michael Asher, a member of Marc Morano's pack of jokers. Will's claim about global sea ice extent would have been reasonably accurate -- though irrelevant to the question of "evidence of man-made global warming" -- if it had been published over a month ago. But by the time Will's column was published, global sea ice extent had dropped well below its equivalent 1979 levels. I assume Mr. Shearer would have corrected Will if his column claimed George W. Bush was still president.
29 Responses to “Washington Post Defends George Will: The Editorial Page ‘Checks Facts To The Fullest Extent Possible’”
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I don’t care how many people George Will claims to employ. If the Washington Post didn’t fact check the article then they did their readers a disservice. That that would allow this tripe to be republished in other newspapers around the country just adds insult to injury.
They’re basically saying, George Will assured them it was accurate. Is that the standard at the Post these days?
February 19th, 2009 at 6:07 pmAmazing. They continue with the lies even when they’re caught red handed. Sounds like more of that same liberal bias we’ve all been told about.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:25 pmCan’t the WP at least publish the arctic climate center’s rebuttal of Will’s false claims?
February 19th, 2009 at 7:27 pmGeorge Will smells of shit. Perhaps he could bathe once in a while.
February 19th, 2009 at 9:38 pmThe Post’s Ombudsman link still has Debbie Howell’s goodbye post, promising a replacement on Feb. 5.
Is this Andy’s initial post, to be remembered as cover for Georgie Will?
February 20th, 2009 at 8:44 amWe don’t need to worry about climate change because God is planning Armageddon in the next few years. (Remember Watt?)
Oh, wait, maybe global warming is Armageddon.
I predict it will feel like Armageddon in my lifetime. When millions start dying of thirst and starvation, I think we should gather up all the folks who hawked climate change as a hoax and move them to the Florida Keys.
February 20th, 2009 at 9:56 amThis is surreal. I know they are developing a track record for this kind of thing, but you’d think they’d have some conscience about printing bald-faced lies in their paper. Oh well, dinosaurs doing what dinosaurs do.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:03 amThe Washington Post doesn’t appear to understand what corrections are for: The question is not how wonderful their process is, the question is whether they misstated their facts, which they did. That newspaper’s editorial page has really degenerated over the past 10 years or so.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:09 amSo is the ombudsman a stenographer whose job is to report what the Post says in response to criticism, or is he supposed to add some judgment of his own?
And I’d like to hear the Post’s defense of the use of the Science magazine article from the 1970’s where the author said an ice age may happen within several thousand years, and Will omitted the “several thousand years” part.
The coverup is worse than the crime. The Post seems to have forgotten about that.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:37 pmIt’s worthwhile noting that the Post’s responses include only the (rather feeble) justification for the sea ice level claim–where are the justifications for the rest of the trivially disproved hokum?
February 20th, 2009 at 2:09 pmG. Will-a-ker’s article is not only fact-free, but his arguments are logic-free. It’s because of articles like his that cause climate change to NOT be ranked higher in current public opinion polls.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:28 pmObviously, Will hired fact-checkers who wouldn’t do their job, and to give the Post editors plausible deniability when called to account for the fabrications they’re running. The Post editor would look “liberal” if he didn’t run Will’s column, so he likes having Will hire lackey’s to pawn off responsibility to.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:26 pmAt best, there is intellectual laziness. When I challenged a right-winger’s distortions and misstatements (read: lies) in an “LA Times” EDITORIAL, and demanded fact-checking and correction, the effort went round in circles several times, with the editorial page editor claiming the distortions and misstatements were the writer’s “opinion”.
By contrast, the objective facts were reported by the actual journalistic media, and were other than the editorialist’s relatively common RIGHT-wing attacks on Clinton.
In view of the lousy “fact-checking” of the “news” section, the “Washington Post” employs the same standard intellectual laziness when the concern is editorials: outright lies, rebutable distortions are considered “opinion,” and will not be corrected.
Then, when caught being thus lazy, they will do all they can to reject the criticism and correction so as not to be exposed for what they are: intellectually lazy, careless, and wrong.
And, incapable of critical/ethical thinking in the first place.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pmRichard Wang Says:
Can’t the WP at least publish the arctic climate center’s rebuttal of Will’s false claims?
_____
Of course not: that would espose Will for the entitled politcal hack he is, and it might get him disinvited to Washington Post editorial coffee clatches and martini lunches.
The fact is that Will doesn’t employ fact-checkers — he doesn’t them: first, because he’s a liar to begin with, and doesn’t intend to be corrected; and second, because he knows that the editors who publish his shrill shilling will cover for him.
February 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pmDamned MSM needs to learn some editing tricks from the meme-makers. You’d never get this sort of misinformation from the internet professionals.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:02 pmI’ve rarely seen such clear, deliberative effort given to being intellectually lazy as evidenced by the Post, here. It’s hard work keeping yourself in the dark about such matters.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:26 pmNo surprise, excellent post / discussion. Thank you for seekign out comment from the Post.
We must, however, not lose track of two things:
1. Will’s column did not have one error, but a serious of explicit twisting of material into false representation. Whether we are talking ice, temperature records, etc, there is no truth in Will’s OPED. The egregious element, which too many are glossing over, is how Will quoted item after item out of context to create the false impression of global cooling have been some form of ‘consensus’ scientific opinion. While he did, in many cases, cherry pick articles, he also cherry-picked sentences from the articles to then portray the articles 180 degrees out from their actual conclusions.
2. The Will piece is far from isolated. Time after time, the Washington Post has given space to global warming skeptics and deniers (Krauthammer, Will, Samuelson, Lomborg, etc …) without, it seems, laying any serious evidentary standard to their deceptive pieces. And, when called to task for the dishonesty on their pages, the Post responds with weak corrections which few read, if they react in public at all. See: http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/02/15/washpost-complicit-in-disformation-or-explicit-collaboration/
February 21st, 2009 at 12:33 amMr Will was comparing the END OF 2008 with the END OF 1979. If you check CT’s website, you will see that his statement is accurate. In fact, due to a malfunction of the satellite instrumentation, the data reported on CT has been underreporting sea ice extent for over a month.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:44 pmsiegel,
The egregious element, which too many are glossing over, is how Will quoted item after item out of context to create the false impression of global cooling have been some form of ‘consensus’ scientific opinion.
Will said nothing about a consensus. He quoted from a series of news reports from the 70s reporting scientific findings of cooling. If you falsely inferred a claim of consensus from those quotes, that’s your problem, not Will’s. And yammering on about “context” is equally vacuous. You’d have to show that the context materially changes the meaning of the quoted text for your complaint to have merit.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:02 pmA Wrinkle In Ice (or Not)
Nothing there for George Will or his apologists.
Sorry, Will.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm~
Mr. Will should stick to right wing journalism and leave science to peer-reviewed, research based, published scientists. His ignorance is laughable were it not for the gravity and consequences of which he obviously knows so little about.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pmJerry
What an absurdity. Will started a paragraph of cited sentence fragment quotations with the following:
It is my error to read that Will is striving to suggest a consensus?
More egregiously, in this, is that Will selectively chose words from those sources, to misrepresent what was within those articles.
I write: “It is not very hot today”. Will says that Siegel wrote “hot today”. That would be a true fact that I typed those words even if the quotation would be utterly out of context and a misrepresentation. That is the level of quality of much of Will’s citations related to Global Cooling (and otherwise).
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:33 pmBeing an indefatigable reader, I’ve learned that one must constantly challenge statements made and facts purported as “facts” in any given article. Conscientious fact checking often results in more conflicting facts thereby prompting further inquiries to corroborate their facts. This can become a fulltime research job for it requires discipline, patience and, of course, time. The expenditure of all three often leads to more, rather than less, confusion.
Artic Science Summit Week begins in Bergen Norway March 24. It is most likely that the latest data collected by scientists conducting global warming experiments will be presented, discussed and further analyzed by the world’s top environmental experts. This may, in fact, result in George Will’s claims-and those who now dispute them-becoming moot.
February 22nd, 2009 at 4:22 pmVigiliance is an exhausting business.
At least there’s one editor at the Post who takes responsibility for what he prints. The comparison between Alexander/Shearer and Tom Shroder is instructive:
http://justweirdstuff.blogspot.com/2009/02/tale-of-two-editors.html
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 amApparently, George Will is anticipating a career change to that of a right wing media entertainer and is experimenting with controlled substances to prepare his mind for taking over Rush Limbaugh’s job. George has a special talent for sounding intellectual even while abandoning logic and suffering from amnesia. The departure of his hero Dick Chaney from national leadership has damaged him emotionally as well and only prime quality medical care can rescue George Will from serious health consequences. Pray for him.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pmKeep it up, Will. If Republicans still claim membership to the flat earth society we may finally be free of them, except in four or five Southern states. Goody!
Just remember they wanted our Social Security invested individualy – they wanted to close the geophysical studies of the government – they put a war off budget – and they live to suppress the vote.
Barbara Mathieson
February 24th, 2009 at 1:49 pmEvidence supports George Will’s Cooling column.
The following data taken from NOAA datasets is further confirmation that the statement made by George Will in his Feb 15th column is correct with respect to global sea ice extent.
Dec, 79 SH sea ice extent – 10.4 M km^2
Dec, 79 NH sea ice extent – 13.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 79 extent – 23.9 M km^2
Dec, 08 SH sea ice extent – 12.2 M km^2
Dec, 08 NH sea ice extent – 12.5 M km^2
Total Dec, 08 extent – 24.7 M km^2
An increase of .8 M km^2 from December 1979 to December 2008. An area larger than the State of Texas.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/S_197912_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/N_197912_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/S_200812_extn.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/N_200812_extn.png
credit to: Bill Illis, Watts Up With That science site.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:57 amSome things never seem to change
March 10th, 2009 at 6:54 pmNASA’s James Hansen and the entire environmental movement, politicians included, have completely lost touch with objective reality. This is why I have stopped all donations to environmental and political groups. I have asked them to permanently remove me from their database of donors. All my donations now go to local charities within one day’s walk (20 miles) of my front door. My independent review of scientific papers reveals nothing has done more to “GREEN” the planet over the last century than elevated levels of CO2 together with moderate sun-driven warming. As a matter of fact commercial greenhouse operators invest heavily to install CO2 generators in their greenhouses to dramatically improve productivity. Doubling CO2 levels increases plant growth rates by 33 percent. And this process has been happening around the world for decades. Welcome to “1984″. Why are environmentalists and their political poodles so threatened by this rare gift of nature that they are quite willing to torpedo it with draconian tax legislation and a willingness to jail anyone disagreeing with their propaganda? I’m not helping this totalitarian activity with my donations.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:42 am