Is there an anti-George-Will critical mass building at the Washington Post?
Just in the last few days, we’ve seen three separate efforts, from three separate sections of the paper, to push back against the bow-tied columnist’s well-chronicled deceptions on global warming.
* As we noted yesterday, a Post news story about the alarming reduction of Arctic ice levels characterized the news as contradicting “data cited in widely circulated reports by … Will.”
* Also yesterday morning, Andrew Freeman, a writer with the Post’s weather blog (of all places) posted a long dissection of Will’s various distortions, entitled “Will Misleads Readers on Climate Science - Again.” Freeman concluded: “George Will’s recent columns demonstrate a very troubling pattern of misrepresentation of climate science.”
* And check out this cartoon by the Post’s Tom Toles, published last Friday, which depicts Will thinking: “I need an idea on how to follow up on my irresponsible global warming column,” before getting the idea for a “light bulb column.” (Last week Will wrote a column about the shortcomings of energy-saving light-bulbs. Seriously.)
That’s three examples. And as we all know, three makes a trend.
Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that there are people at the Post who want to make sure that it remains a source of reliable information about crucial topics in the news. It’s just too bad that — outside of Toles — the uprising doesn’t seem to have spread to Fred Hiatt’s op-ed page, which continues to give no indication it has any problem at all with Will’s writing.