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Post Ombudsman Responds, Unconvincingly, On Will Column
After days of radio silence from the Washington Post, the paper's ombudsman, Andy Alexander, has sent out the following statement (via Think Progress) about the George Will column that misrepresented the facts on global warming:
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
Hilzoy at the Washington Monthly shows that the statement Alexander cites in fact points to the opposite conclusion from the one Will drew from it.
But engaging at this level of detail is sort of beside the point. As the Post knows, every reputable scientific organization that has studied the issue has confirmed that global warming is occurring. Will's column was intended to mislead readers into believing that not to be true. That's the case whether or not it contained a statement that meets the Post's criteria for factual inaccuracy.
Late Update: Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress says it better than we could:
As for why it's okay for Will to write stuff that isn't true, the Post didn't have much of substance to say. They picked one of debunked subsidiary claims, and said they think Will is right, though they acknowledge that the very organization Will was citing as an authority says Will is wrong. One could say that on this subsidiary point, Will perhaps made an honest mistake that the Arctic Climate Research Center has since corrected. But the Post instead says that Will is right and the Arctic Climate Research Center wrong about what the ACRC's own research says. Meanwhile, they have nothing whatsoever to say about the other problems with the column.These problems, it should be said, include Will's overarching thesis. Will wrote, and is trying to get readers of The Washington Post to believe, that there was a scientific consensus about global cooling in the 1970s. This is false. Post readers are being deceived. And the Post is standing by the deceivers.
This started as a problem for Will, his direct supervisors, and the Post's ombudsman. But now that the Post as a paper is standing behind Will's deceptions, I think it's a problem for all the other people who work at the Post. Some of those people do bad work, which is too bad. And some of those people do good work. And unfortunately, that's worse. It means that when good work appears in the Post it bolsters the reputation of the Post as an institution. And the Post, as an institution, has taken a stand that says it's okay to claim that up is down. It's okay to claim that day is night. It's okay to claim that hot is cold. It's okay to claim that a consensus existed when it didn't. It's okay to claim that George Will is a better source of authority on interpreting the ACRC's scientific research than is the ACRC. Everyone who works at the Post, has, I think, a serious problem.
Late Late Update: Carl Zimmer, who writes frequently about science for the New York Times, goes into more devastating detail to show that the very statement the Post cites rebuts Will's point.
If someone from the Post's crackerjack multi-layer squad of fact-checkers had bothered to pick up the phone, they could have simply asked, "Is it indeed true that global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979?"And they would have probably gotten an answer like this: "Well, what do you mean by now? Today? And what do you mean by 1979? Exactly thirty years ago today? If that's what you mean, the answer is no."
A good fact-checker would then say, "Well, it seems this claim is based on an article that came out January 1."
To which the scientist would say something along the lines of, "At that point it was near or slightly lower what was observed in late 1979."
At the very least, that discrepancy would have to be corrected. But a good fact-checker would see a deeper problem, saying, "Whoa, that changed a lot in a month and a half."
Which would then lead to a discussion of the fact ice cover is such a noisy process that picking out a single day to compare these numbers does not say a lot about how it is affected by climate change. Climatologists look over longer time scales.
A good fact-checker would also learn that almost all climate models project that increasing greenhouse gases will cause a decrease in the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area over the next several decades, but the response of the southern hemisphere is less certain. In fact, evaporation caused by the warming might lead to more snowfall onto the sea ice. If the southern ice expands, it cancels out some of the retreat of the northern ice. And lo and behold, the northern hemisphere ice is almost a million square kilometers smaller than it was in late 1979, and the Southern Hemisphere ice is about half a million square kilometers bigger than in late 1979. So not only is Will wrong on the particulars of his statement, but he's wrong on what it means about climate change. A good fact-checker would make sure that this was fixed too.
How can I be so confident that a good fact-checker would learn this? Because it is in that same January statement from the Center that the Post cited as "evidence" that Will was correct.
Josh
Zachary
"...it contained a statement that meets the Post's criteria for factual inaccuracy."
This is WaPo we're talking about. It's not clear whether their criteria are for too much or too little factual inaccuracy.
February 20, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the public and NGO's hsould continue down this road with Mr Alexander. Surely after reading the original article cited in its entirey could he come to this pitiful conclusion. As I understand it the ombudsmen job is to ensure the public trust. In this article it is quite clear that Mr Will is trying to decieve the public with information taken out of its original context to serve the prurpose of his article. This seems quite relevent given the last 8 years in which the previous presidential administration was constantly accused of "cherry-picking" the date to service its intended goal. I am sure that all journalist are aware that you can write an article which is full of cited facts but as a whole lacks accuracy. Simply tracing back citations to their source should not be the job of an editor, maybe an intern. Perhaps it is an ethical issue for journalist but either Will was ignorant of the subtext which was a part of the original article or he deliberately ignored it for ideological purposes. Surely Mr Will has more to do than write such shoddy articles, and surely the public demands more attention by the editors and fact-checker employed by the WAPO. As for Mr. Alexander he statement sounds like one who backs his paper and the writers and editors associated with his paper. Something tells me that the paper business has been doing bad lately, maybe this is just another reason why?
February 20, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Earth is flat. George Will has never accounted for the aggregate ice before, has he? The right needs a new hero. I guess he's here to step up to the plate, which is a saucer, which is flying, and is not flying, and is not a saucer, because the truth about measureable objects is relative not to the standard (1m=1m) but the special interest and the axe he grinds.
See? Make sense now? Truth is relative if you're convinced you're right and the facts indicate the opposite.
February 20, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish I had kept the information, but I remember an WaPo editorial a couple of years ago that cited a fact which, the very same day, was contracted by a front page news article.
Some fact checkers.
Actually, I don't believe their statement on the fact checking process, either.
February 20, 2009 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
There has been a lot of that going on since Fred Hiatt has been in charge. Maybe not the same day thing, but Hiatt seems to believe that “opinion” doesn’t have to be grounded in fact, even when the facts have been reported in the Post news section.
February 20, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
some time ago i wrote to the wapo ombudsman about jsut such an instance. their response was that there was a firewall between the news dept and the editorial dept. i wrote back to angrily explain that the wall is supposed to keep opinions from influencing the facts reported in the news pages, not to keep facts from influencing the opinions on the editorial pages. that they don't understand this is why i don't read wapo anymore.
February 20, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had the equivalent problem with the "LA Times". On the editorial page, a lie becomes an "opinion," even when the actual news reveals the "opinion" to be a lie.
I don't think there's any fact checking going on -- and I include the "news" in that statement. And I doubt Will would employ fact-checkers who found that his "opinions" were actually lies intended to sustain a false ideology.
February 23, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Carl Zimmer, a science writer who is familiar with science fact checking in magazines and newspapers, has a blog on this. He is highly suspicious of WaPo's claims of fact checking:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/19/the-sea-ice-affair-continued/#comments
Whereas there is extensive fact checking in magazines such as the New Yorker and Discover, he says that in his experience newspaper fact checking is non-existent or weak.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/02/16/george-will-liberated-from-the-burden-of-fact-checking/
February 20, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure their fact-checking is even weaker when the author is of similar stature to George Will. I'm guessing their relationship is pretty much for the Post to run whatever Will gives them, risking a tantrum if the paper pushes back at all. A correction? Doubtful.
February 20, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Zimmer is correct. Even the national papers (NY Times, WSJ, WaPo, LA Times) don't have the resources to routinely do the kind of thorough fact-checking that the New Yorker, the Time Inc. family and some other magazines do. They simply publish too much material for that.
For most articles, reporters and apparently columnists are their own fact-checkers. What backup there is relies, first, on editors' background knowledge (i.e., they see something they know isn't right), and second, and more important, on editors' radar about possible problems (such as internal conflicts within a story and things that don't seem plausible for one reason or another).
So unfortunately it isn't terribly surprising that Will's column made it into print in the form it did. What is surprising is that the Post seems to be circling the wagons. This column should get at least a long editor's note or clarification, even if they don't want to call it an outright correction.
Failing that, they are obliged to publish a rebuttal from the ACRC or Zimmer or someone, should they receive one (and hopefully they'll get many).
February 20, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does the Post have a science writer ?
The science writer could attend a AAAS meeting to report on papers presented on the topic of Climate Change.
Report on any consensus about the topic ... report on any papers presented debunking the idea of anthropogenic global warming.
Report on fake science : report on Exxon funding the debunkers of science. Follow the money - it has already been done.
Report on how Exxon funds fake science even though Exxon's in-house scientists know the fake science is fake.
It is a great story - get busy !!
February 20, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
YOU ARE ALL MISSING THE POINT!
The scientists are right and George is right. Global warming is happening in the summer and isn't happening in the winter. Get with it!
February 20, 2009 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
The response is so peripheral to the entirety of the problem with Will's column.
My takeaway is that the Washington Post can't really say for sure that what it publishes on any given day is true or false.
While they may not realize it, fortunately, we are in the post Washington post-era.
February 20, 2009 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ombudsman at the WP, in support of Will, cites a 1 page pdf, which when read by any competent researcher should lead to a different conclusion than Will's. And Ygesias is plain wrong here. The ACRC source document is clear. The sentence quoted is a misleading representation of the entire document. My take is that Will is often intellectually lazy. He has a tendency to take the easy road and regurgitate conservative talking points when he obviously has not checked the facts: e.g., his assertion that it was not New Deal Keynesian spending that turned the economy around but WWII. It really doesn't take much research to debunk this claim. Will -- his whole manner really -- seems to yearn for authoritativeness, but it is delivered with much style and backed by very little substance. Though public discourse via the TV is at such a low standard that anybody can just make up shit and most of the time get away with it, newspaper ombudsmen are supposed to call bullshit. Mr. Alexander either has a different understanding of his job description or he has been co-opted. If the latter this is a terribly demeaning position for an ombudsman.
February 20, 2009 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Have you ever dealt with an ombudsperson who was actually an in-house advocate against in-house?
Me either.
February 23, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Post's claim to have "fact-checked" is a joke. It's obvious that the Arctic Climate Research Center was prepared unambiguously to reject the conclusion Will drew the moment they learned of it--so how do they excuse the obvious conclusion that nobody even bothered to call them prior to publication? THAT"S fact-checking. For a layman to "interpret" data like this (forgetting for a moment it was disingenuous anyway) without consulting a knowledgeable person is just plain negligence: the fact that the ombudsman-apologist cites the number of people involved in the editing process just makes the failure worse and even more inexcusable.
February 20, 2009 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
ITEM:
George Will pens column claiming world is flat. Washington Post Editors nail feet to floor in fear of sliding off!
February 20, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good one John :D
February 21, 2009 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
... And I would add that the ombudsman aggravates the oversight by again citing/interpreting in error information he too rather obviously hasn't bothered to corroborate with the source. What's his excuse for not fact-checking his lame defense?
February 20, 2009 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
joevan,
the WaPo's ombudsman is like Dick Cheney's John Yoo
February 20, 2009 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ouch
February 20, 2009 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paging Daniel Okrent... Urgent call from Washington!
February 20, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
You missed this paragraph:
In addition, the Washington Post would like to point out that the date of original publication for Mr. Will's column was opposite day.
February 20, 2009 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is, of course, appalling, the entire situation. But sadly, it is more than self evident that the powers that be at the WAPO just don't care. They do as they please and as long as the advertising keeps coming they will continue to do as they please. It's pathetic.
February 20, 2009 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
that complacency isn't going to last that much longer, as the newspaper industry in the traditional sense is finished. If I were to advise any news organization right now, tv, newspaper, magazine, internet, doesn't matter, there's a giant market now for credibility.
There is a paradigm shift.
It used to be less expensive to lie. Access to all Information wasn't readily available to readers so who needs fact checking departments? Print a retraction here and there and it helps ground the illusion that you're a fact-based organization.
Now it is more expensive to lie. It's just not a viable long term business model for an organization--just look at the Republican party.
It's less expensive to tell the truth. And now more than ever, there's a lot of money in it.
February 20, 2009 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree completely but apparently all of those guys with management degrees who pull the levers that be think we are wrong. So instead of truth the print half-truths by celebrity pundits and spend an enormous amount of paper space on entertainment(sports, celebrities and others) and gossip. People want a stable ground to stand on and yet they keep on flinging shit towards the public and wonder why there business are failing. You know it has always suprised me that it would seem many in the GOP(and some DEM's) have been champions of media consolidation and now that those business have gotten to big and bloated all they have been doing over the last couple of years is bloodletting of writers and editors so there company can stay competative. It is clear now that the smaller companies have some space to exploit in this downturn. Hopefully we might see a rebirth of community papers whether in print or online but I believe these will be the places where a public will find its voices heard.
(local stories about the lives of those in the community, local stories about the issues the citizens of that community face when dealing with businesses and government institutions. We all have to reconnect and rebuld from the ground up) It is quite apparent everyday that many of those who have positions of prominence simply don't get what average Americans are going through.
February 20, 2009 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's pointless to belabor it--we all know what G Will is. But your point is a good one: we now all can see, on a daily basis, that the "expertise" or "judgment", or whatever quality pundits, who have no particular knowledge of anything, allegedly brought to the table was never anything more than a monopoly on printer ink and public attention. Those days are over. Broder, Joe Klein--they've all been humiliated over and over now.
I think you are over-optimistic that good reporting can prevail--there's still lots of money in partisan echo chambers. But it's also true that the pretend centrists, or the ones like Will who at least play at respectability, who pretend to appeal to a common ethic of journalism or conventional wisdom but who are really corrupt and sloppy--they're the ones who will die out first.
February 20, 2009 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an interesting thought: With such unprecedented free flow of interactive information, people both consuming information and reporting it, and millions of new access points from which to consume or contribute that information, it seems likely that a lie can travel as quickly and intrusively as the truth.
But it seems that lies are being defeated at a pretty high rate nowadays.
Anyone care to comment on that?
February 20, 2009 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
We can debunk them. But the sticky point is that it doesn't mean much if that same info flow just divides everyone into niche markets. There has to be a common public sphere with a premium on truth.
Will and idiots like David Brooks are partisan hacks--but they have also invested in presenting themselves as part of the mainstream community that does indeed expect a degree of responsibility; they get their respectability by maintaining plausibility--so it hurts them, I think, to be corrected.
Not so with a Bill Orally, for e.g. It's pointless to prove him wrong. Who could be wronger?-but he's still on the air, because the Fox crowd has no standards, so long as they hear what they want. Which is why, I think, it makes more sense to attack him not on facts, but for -say-having an incredibly obvious narcissistic personality disorder. That's not ad hominem--I mean sincerely that we need to come up with a language to talk about character defects--hypocrisy, rather than accuracy, for example.
February 20, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. Straight mockery of the bow-tie clown, with as many viral epithets as possible.
Bow tie, Hitler forelock, faux-macho barky verbal style, bares teeth instead of smiling, a name easily rhymed, hasn't changed his look in decades--should be an easy target.
February 24, 2009 8:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
You said it tpm gary. It is remarkable how the newspapers just haven't gotten it yet. I was just talking with my neighbor about this issue. He is just not that into the web but even he gets his news off the web now. I can go to any links from TPM for more information. I can search for different points of view on any topic in seconds. I can verify a newspaper article and I'm a painter for gods sake. The only downside to this is the rural and underserved city areas that don't have good web access. That has to change.
February 21, 2009 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
News and opinion are only to fill pages that would otherwise be blank because they didn't get advertising with which to fill them.
February 23, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dump the Post; subscribe to TPM. (And for your climate change news, Realclimate and Warminglaw). The only thing the Post has over TPM is Sports and Style Invitational, and I am sadly willing to sacrifice those.
February 20, 2009 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which is why political pundits need to stay out of MACRO-ECONOMICS and SCIENCE!
Cherry picking and trying to analyze raw scientific data or economic conditional analysis is not for the layman, nor is meant for a political pundit to play games with.
February 20, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yesterday, when I emailed Mr. Alexander, I recieved exactly the the same piece of boilerplate. It's not just the content of the pdf file that's damning, but the embedded link to the ScienceDaily article describing a June 2005 paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans) makes things even worse.
Either Mr. Will did not read or understand the data used to support his "argument" or he willfully "cherry-picked" sentences in order to advance a pre-existing agenda and hoped that no one would bother to check the primary sources.
As I wrote to Mr. Alexander: "One can only assume that the "standards" for accuracy at The Washington Post have fallen below those of an introductory composition course for college freshmen."
harlan.
February 20, 2009 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Willful cherry picking seems to be all that Republicans, and most conservatives too, have available to them these days.
February 20, 2009 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, should Will write his own retraction column now?
"But now that the Post as a paper is standing behind Will's deceptions, I think it's a problem for all the other people who work at the Post."
This is a serious problem for the Post. It doesn't need to be sloughing credibility as newspaper revenues are declining, unless it wants to fast track into another business form.
February 20, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will has taken a sampling of general media and scientific reporting and arrived at a conclusion directly at odds with those of the vast majority of the relevant scientific community. Does the Post feel Will is qualified to interpret climate change data and arrive at a meaningful conclusion on his own? Does the Post believe that they are capable of instituting the appropriate editorial controls necessary to publish original scientific research? Why?
What I see as most disturbing about Will's article is not his misleading/misunderstood use of scientific reports, the Post's failure to fact check or their refusal to print a correction (all serious problems in their own right) but rather the fact that the article even received consideration in the first place.
George Will is not a climate change scientist, yet his opinion and interpretation of facts was printed as if it was relevant or worthy of serious consideration. Paul Krugman is qualified to write on the technical merits of the auto industry bailout but not on the technical merits of an automotive engineering design choice. Similarly, George Will would be qualified to write on the response of the US Government to climate change research but not on the validity of that research.
I see the most disturbing element of this fiasco being that the Post felt that George Will had opinions about climate change that deserved publication. By printing the article they have presented Will's misunderstanding (or flagrant deception) of climate change science as if it has the same weight as an expert in the field.
And we wonder how public perception is so out of step with scientific knowledge.
The entire purpose of the article seems to be to reduce the issue of climate change to an issue of personal opinion. Will opens his piece by stating that Steven Chu "seems to embrace the corollary" to Murphy's law that "things are worse than they can possibly be" but fails to follow Gregg Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying".
He then goes on to imply that it is Chu's speculative opinion that the California snow pack (Chu actually said Sierra, but let's not be picky about factual issues) will be reduced by 90% (the time frame of "by the end of the 21st century" is conveniently left off and the "law of doomsaying" quote would lead one not paying attention to think the time frame much shorter).
Will was apparently too lazy to find the article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which is likely Chu's source for the statistic.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=26638
Instead he seems to be more interested in portraying Chu as a hack creating arbitrary predictions of doom to scare the American people.
Interestingly, Chu states in the LAT interview that Will references that he sees public education as a key part of the Obama administration's strategy to fight global warming.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story
Could George Will's motivation for writing this article be to combat that strategy?
February 20, 2009 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
what is Will's expertise? I don't read much of his stuff.
February 20, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Making stuff up to advance his false ideology.
And he apparently ties his own tie.
February 23, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to rephrase my question.
When was Will's expertise?
I say this because his view of politics was born and honed in the mid 20th century--and like many of his conservative colleagues, though not all, his beliefs stiffened over time--became less pliable, flexible, or open to diverse points of view, even in the face of facts.
February 20, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
George Will is one of America's finest baseball writers. I don't know what all this fuss is about the environmental opinions of a sports writer. It's not like he knows anything about politics or policy. But his knowledge of baseball, especially losing teams, is legendary.
I'm wondering if he's become interested in global warming due to the possibility of a warmer October Classic.
February 20, 2009 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't know he was that prolific a baseball writer. I've read a bunch of articles he's written on the subject, but I didn't know that was his thing.
February 20, 2009 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, he does claim it as one of his myriad areas of expertise.
I think he's actually a bullshitter, myself. But what do I know: I'm not published by the "Washington Post".
February 23, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
He isn't particularly prolific in sports, he's just a gasbag about the history. Like everything else with Will, the best days of baseball are behind us, even the ones he didn't witness himself. He's a full-of-himself putz.
February 23, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since the earth is spinning, chances are good that it will throw off climate change into space, thus ending the problem, except on the moon and on Mars and Venus, where the problem will land. Well, more on the moon than on Mars and Venus, because its closer. However, as we all know, Venus is already very hot with climate change, which it cannot throw off into space, becase it doesn't spin. Since adding the earth's climate change to its own will make Venus even hotter, this will be a real problem for it, notwithstanding the low amont of climate change Venus wll receive from the earth compared to what the moon will get. This will increase the unlikelihood that Venus will ever be colonized by earth people.
George Will and the RNC ought to realize this and start publicizing it. Don't bother to thank me, I am just doing my scientific duty.
February 20, 2009 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, I really insist on thanking you chaszz. With the information you passed on I was able to cancel my flight to Venus and get a nearly full refund. The benefits of blog sites that have real scientist commentors are just endless!
February 21, 2009 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is good for what it is, but the real scoop on George Will being a real blue-blood when it comes to living up to the old adage of "never let the facts (or truth) stand in the way of a good story", or in Will's case, his own opinion, the must read on Will is "In Support of Shunning", Media Matters, 2/20/09
http://mediamatters.org/items/200902200022?f=h_column
Covers the Post's less than stellar fact-checking and a close focus on George Will going back to 1988 and then forward. It's quite a piece.
Sorry Zack - what you wrote is good but Media Matters really zings the Washington Post AND George Will.
Disclaimer: Mr. Kelly is not affiliated with Media Matters.
February 21, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Washington Post has long since determined that "opinion" is just noise to increase internet hits. Its ombudsman claims he has no jurisdiction over "opinion" and evidently even he thinks the thinnest shred of pretext can justify the Post in printing it.
With its recent hiring of neocon pretexter-in-chief Kristol after being canned by the Times, it's clear the Post "opinion" page should be viewed in the same light as any other mindless screaming game -- like Fox "News".
February 23, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's sad here is that Will is one of the few national syndicated columnists in our small hometown paper that the Luddites here in this part of central PA might read and NEVER see a retraction, corrected information, or this sort of discussion about the untruths that were said. Hell, the paper itself is luddite and publishes nothing online.
February 23, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
George Will, armpit extraordinaire.
February 23, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
George seldom tells the truth and never tells the whole truth.
This has always been a problem for him and cost him standing in elementary school.
You may not be aware of it but the photo that accompanies your essay is a picture of young George that was taken when he was in the fourth grade.
That's right, George was the only kid in his fourth grade class who carried a briefcase to school.
He consistently lied about its contents, describing peanut butter sandwiches as "important briefing documents," and "research materials."
February 23, 2009 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seems pretty clear that the new WP ombudsman is not going to rock the corporate boat. In his refusal to just give a straight apology for Will's lying, he resembles the late, not so great 'Lil Debbie' Howell in his siding with Mr. Hiatt and Mr. Graham at the Post.
Too bad... many of us had high hopes.
Hiatt really has to go.
February 23, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink